I find this to be quite interesting indeed! Read it carefully. It's all the stuff the Canada Revenue Agency can do to you if you don't pay your taxes. You can take this with a grain or even a few shakes of salt upon considering the source - a former Canadian politician, but I think it's accurate. I will never forget the economics professor from, I think it was Acadia University, doing a TED talk in which he said "If you make half a million a year in Canada you don't have to pay taxes and if you make a million, you don't." Of course I don't have a link to that cuz that sort of thing gets washed off the internet all the time. Suffice to say there are some people in Canada paying NO taxes legally because they have almost nothing. This is a good thing. One good thing about my country. I FOUND IT!!! But there are lots of folks in Canada paying no taxes because they have so much money they can take advantage of loopholes strategically inserted into the stories-high tax code of Canada - a work of art so thick precisely for the purpose of facilitating such penetrable holes.
There are people in Canada who are walking tax havens simply because of the way in which they make their money. Passively. "Work hard and pay yer taxes" has been a fate relegated to the non-elite and to be honest the not-so-smart of Canada. If I could ever find a job here in Canada that put me into that class, why, I'd be outraged at the amount of tax I pay compared to the old money in Canada who don't rely on wages or salaries but investments and personal wealth that come with far too generous tax deductions. Holes penetrable only to the rich. It's not enough to say the government and the CRA know about this and don't give a flying fuck because they have actively contributed to this draconian system of taxation.
You may think me delusional but I believe the very reason I have been withheld from financial success in and by my own country has a lot to do with my intelligence. I think there are other poor people like me in Canada who would be rattling cages and shaking things up here if they belonged to what we call the working class of our country. That's why we either end up in the upper class or the lower class. I think those of us, and our numbers are few, who would demand revolution even if we were in the UPPER class are systematically relegated to poverty or possibly pushed out of the country so our influence remains minimal. All I can do is write and who has time to read when they're working their arse off and carrying the country's tax burden?
I probably AM a bit delusional but not entirely. Being passed over by jobs for which I'm massively overqualified; not being able to access websites on my computer while everyone else's computer has no problem with them - this includes numerous government websites some of which booted me out and wouldn't let me back in WHILE I WAS REGISTERING; being sabotaged by coworkers; having my credit rating mysteriously tanked by huge corporations (Telus) who harass me for money I don't owe yet don't allow me to pay it back; having my credit further subverted by a huge corporation (Koodo/Telus) that sold me a product that did not work and expected payment while I was trying unsuccessfully to tell them it didn't work and to shut if off; having every bank account hacked and stolen from; having all my bank cards hacked and stolen from; and being audited by the CRA, having money that I had earned withheld by the taxman and not returned even after I had done everything that was required to get that money UNwithheld.
I believe at least some of this has happened to me because of what I write about Canada. The truth. The rich people don't want to give up their taxless existences and if loudmouths like me are heard, the masses could revolt. Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, "The world is his who can see through its pretention. What deafness, what stone-blind custom, what overgrown error you behold is there only by sufferance - by YOUR sufferance. See it to be a lie and you have already dealt it its mortal blow." Fair enough, Canadian taxes are an example of one of these overgrown errors and I see them for what they are: a huge lie. They are a custom we stone-blindly follow. And the phrases like "If you don't pay taxes, you aren't a good Canadian," comprise their cultural deafness. If I had to pay a lot of them I wouldn't suffer them, I'd protest. Luckily (or is it by design) I can't find work anywhere but overseas and therefore don't pay a lot in taxes. Taxes are no more than a pretention here in Canada. I know that. I don't feel like any of this makes the world mine, however. Maybe only the HONEST world and there ain't much of that left.
But I'm not even writing today about how taxes in this country have ballooned into the massive monster of inconsistency and favouritism that they have... I've written at length about that here. (whisper: That's why I can't live in Canada) I'm here to talk about the swollen powers of the CRA and how their taxation without representation needs to be exposed. (Whispered: After this they might not let me back into this country even for a visit)
Allow me to draw your attention to that first article I linked. 10% of Canadians have 60% of the wealth. As shocking as that may be, take it from a guy who has tried to find accurate statistics on anything that might reflect badly on Canada, if that was up-to-date and if we had any honest stat sources in Canada I'm betting it would be closer to 1% having 60% of the wealth. It could even be worse. Be that as it may or may not, I think we can agree that it IS getting worse and the cavalier acceptance of that fact is, in my personal opinion, downright unCanadian. But on we mechanically wander...
I need to explain that. What I see, and again I'm not alone here, as part of the problem is our limited view of the scientific world as a well-behaved, objective, empirically sensible force that is more mechanical than wondrously abstract and undefined. It makes us feel arrogant comfort to view the world in this way but this is just another of the pretentions that cause problems. Part of this well-accepted vanity is the concept of humanity being composed of material stuff and working in mechanistic ways. If this were true, we could take a person apart and put them back together like a car or a watch. We can put the parts, the "stuff" back together if we are skilled surgeons, but there's one key force, power, entity that makes humans different from machines and surgery is almost entirely ignorant of it. For such a long time science has just ignored that part and tried to work around it. This is what has led to our view of human individuality and competitiveness that is absolutely a stone-blind, stone-deaf, overgrown error. We are taught that the only way to be significant is at other's expense and this is a pretention that has turned a whole world of humanity into a robotic, mechanistic nightmare in which we see 1% of people with the majority of the earth's assets as somehow acceptable, even normal. I'm sorry but I've always thought of Canada as being more human than that, hence my description of this thinking as absolutely unCanadian. I still hope I'm right...
I hate to flog a dead horse but the longer I stay here in Canada, the longer I feel the palpable... I don't want to dismissively (and maybe arrogantly) call it stupidity because I constantly see smart people contributing to a society that they are consciously aware is relentlessly slipping further and further from that which they desire to live in, but it's a general malaise of apathetic surrender, helplessness, and frustration that only the intellectually defeated would abide. Or "suffer." I've said it before, Canada is that elephant being held where it's at by a tiny peg pounded into the ground. We have the power to stop the government, the banks, the rich, and the CRA from hosing us by hosing them back! But it seems we are no longer the country of hosers we are reputed to be, Bob and Doug notwithstanding.
When was the Boston Tea Party? The 1700's? Yes it was. 1773 actually and according to this, it wasn't just tea taxed, it was glass, paint, oil, lead, paper, and tea. The Townshend Revenue Act was passed to get the East India Company back in the black and the hosers of the US said yeah, no! Lo and behold, their government listened! Governments listen to hosers, also, their tax code wasn't a mile high and full of crafty loopholes to benefit the rich either. No, this was not Canada, but we were closer to the States in those days. We were almost all British defectors and depended on each other to fight the power. The government dropped the taxes on everything but the tea! Hooray for the good guys! But can you guess what that tax was? THREE pence per pound! Even THIS was agreed to be outrageous and the colonists who still had spines and still recognized the power of protest launched the Boston Tea Party. For THREE PENNIES! We've been bent over so long by our governments we wouldn't even notice three pennies.I could make a long list of other expenses AND don't forget once a year paying my taxes on TOP of all the other taxes I would pay throughout the year. It's far beyond a 3-penny tea tax and we drink coffee in Canada anyway. But what do we do about it? This sign is great but it's no Boston Tea Party and obviously we have gotten used to a LOT more abuse from our government since the 1700's.
So what if we don't pay these taxes on the grounds that they are contributing to the dehumanization of Canada? We can be charged interest. It can be taken from your GST/HST rebates. Ever wonder why they don't just NOT charge those taxes instead of withholding the money from us then refunding it? Partially so they can use it to collect money you rightfully refuse to pay, but also to make us think (another pretention) that this is a nice bonus from our government. YAY!
Then there's the "jeopardy order." This is a legal document that allows the CRA to take immediate legal action to collect the debt. Needless to say, if this happens it adversely affects your criminal record and your credit rating. This could start the cycle of unemployment I seem to be in right now. Employers check these things before they contact you for interviews and whether you are right or not, they assume your bad credit and criminal record render you unemployable.
That's not all! The government may garnishee your wages or money. That's right, they can dip into your bank account - legally - and take what they reckon you owe them.
They can collect from other people! That's right, the government of Canada can actually make some other person responsible for the debt you owe them! Imaging being THAT person.
Finally, (but there are probably other things they can do that I don't know enough about to print at this time) the government of Canada can put a lien on or even seize any of your assets.
Here's the audit letter I received almost exactly a year ago:
"My Account" is one of many government websites and online services that has been disabled for me. I texted the documents they requested and emailed them to the person I reached at the number provided and was told that even though they were received, it was against policy to send them in that manner. I had to go to Staples and FAX the info they required of me. So I did. Well within the time limitation I was given. I guess they weren't expecting that so they tried several things: first they sent me a letter BEFORE THE DEADLINE stating that I had not submitted the documents by the deadline. Then I sent copies of the faxes and the receipt from Staples showing the number and that the fax had been received by that number long before the deadline. I guess they weren't expecting THAT either. People in Canada generally show more, what's that word again?, SUFFERANCE of the government's pretention and lying. I called their bluff. (In a whisper: ...which is why I can't live or work in Canada).So they finally dropped the pretense and admitted that they had received the papers. They said I now qualified for the GST/HST and other taxes they had no right to threaten to stop withholding then reimbursing in the first place. And the retroactively withheld funds? I calculate about $3500 worth of them. They were not mentioned. I have contacted many people in many ways and have yet to receive an answer as to what has become of these funds. I will never get them back and I am being compelled to suffer this theft.
Non-payment of taxes is considered theft and we know what the government can do to a citizen of Canada for this crime, but what can a Canadian citizen do if the government steals from him/her? Can we charge interest? Can we withhold future payment of taxes? Can we obtain a jeopardy order? The government has no credit rating, criminal record, or wages - per se - so we can't garnishee or affect those in any way. Can we hold another government responsible? "HEY US, Canada owes me money. They're your ally and neighbour, pay up!" Reckon that'd work? Can we put a lien on government assets or seize them? Or can we dip into the government of Canada's bank account? No, no, a thousand times no.
This is pure pretention, lies, corruption, and its practiced as stone-blind, stone-deaf custom by us Canadians. The government has all the power and we have none. It is only thus because we suffer it to be precisely so. Exposing this deceit is only the first step. Hopefully I'll be alive to see the day when we change this. Despite the modicum of hope I maintain, I don't feel a whole lot of Emerson's sentiment that the world is now mine and I have dealt any mortal blows here. But you never know...