Individual Obligations
Can you imagine a one page tax act for all of Canada and for all levels of governance? How many biases could politicians, and their minions, weave into a one page tax act? The gist of the tax act might be:
No individual shall pay more tax than the majority of individuals in the jurisdiction pay. One of the Ten Commandments is “Thou shalt not steal.” Many good-hearted individuals would never dream of stealing a candy bar, but blithely encourage the governments to steal lots of money from wealthier individuals. How often have you heard “force the rich to pay their fair share!” It’s a strange definition of “fair” that says the majority can steal from the wealthy because the wealthy are a minority.
A 1909 Supreme Court of Ontario judgment ruled that “the prohibition, thou shalt not steal, has no legal force upon the sovereign body.” What a travesty. How many otherwise rational people agree that the state should be allowed to plunder at will? Too many in Canada. I hope to reduce the number.
If two people gang up on a third person and steal his money, we all agree that is theft. If the same two people proudly walk into a polling booth and vote to steal the third person’s money, that is democracy! Does that make the two-sided polling booth two-faced? Will you allow a small degree of rationality to seep to the surface?
Many Canadians believe that the tax system needs to be changed. Good Neighbour Tax Reform introduces a fundamental change in the tax system which will lead to real democracy, which has been decaying in Canada for at least two generations.
Every resident will submit an annual tax return on or before the anniversary of his or her birthdate. The annual return will be limited to one side of one 8.5″ x 11″ page.
We must align government expenditures with democratic responsibility and ability to pay.
The democratic responsibility to pay can be established by the approval of the majority of residents who pay an equal amount required to balance the estimated budget.
The ability of the minority to pay must be established by a formula that is not only rational, but can be seen to be rational. A suggestion is: every resident individual should have individual obligations for life security and government funding commensurate with ability to pay.
I drafted this piece about thirteen years ago. I still believe in it. One of the implementation issues is the transition from no income tax at the median income to 100% tax on the next income until the maximum tax for the individual is reached. I’m refining a transition which would see a gradual transition from no tax to full tax.