The Feudal Serf is in Good Company!

As the Midnight, May 2nd Filing Deadline Looms,
“Tax Freedom Day" is still two months away!

Definition: Income Tax Filing Deadline • The date when Canadians are – under threat of odious consequence – expected to provide a level of accountability and transparency to those who do not and will not do the same ...despite that they work for us.

The filing deadline is close at hand, so it seems very fitting to put this annual ritual into its proper perspective.

Six hundred years ago in medieval Europe, most people lived and died as slaves (sometimes called serfs) bound to the land they worked and bound to the feudal lords who ruled them.

The serfs had no rights. Their masters could seize anything they owned and even put them in prison if they didn't pay whatever was demanded.

How much did these oppressed Medieval serfs actually pay in taxes? The answer is about 25 percent of what they earned. Historians believe that the typical serf had to "pay" 25 percent of his produce, usually from agricultural efforts, to his feudal lord. What remained was his bounty.

Today the average Canadian considers himself free and living in a democratic nation, yet we pay far more in taxes than Medieval serfs and are bound by endlessly more restrictions.

Over the course of our lifetimes at least 50 percent of our income and wealth will go to pay federal taxes, provincial taxes, social program taxes, property taxes, GST & PST – the list just goes on and on and continues until a person dies and often has to pay death taxes.

In the big picture, ill-considered and wholly unlawful tax 'laws' enslave us as completely as Medieval serfs. For at least six months a year we are tax slaves …little more than modern feudal serfs in a land posing as a democracy of free people.

For those Modern Canadian Serfs who hunger to know exactly when they’ll personally be released from their tax shackles this year, visit THE FRASER INSTITUTE where the institute has kindly placed a calculator that will determine personal ‘Tax Free Day" according to region and circumstances.

As you hurry to enclose your carefully filled-out forms (and perhaps a cheque also) to meet the Master's deadline, there are two more things you may like to be thinking about as you do so.

• In June 2004, Statistics Canada reported that Ottawa and the provinces racked up a collective $25.7 billion over-taxation surplus in 2003 …where did it go?
  
  
• You wouldn’t be doing this at all had Sir John A McDonald and 20 other lawyers not quickly (without consent) removed one small but significant word when the BNA Act was written ...good ol' lawyers ...but that is a story for antother day.

Enjoy your filing day!
The Serf