Who Pays for Canada?: Taxes and Fairness

by E.A. Heaman (Editor), David Tough (Editor)

Overview

Canadians can never not argue about taxes. From the Chinese head tax to the Panama Papers, from the National Policy to the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, tax grievances always inspire private resentments and public debates. But if resentment and debate persist, the terms of the debate have continually altered and adapted to reflect changing social, economic, and political conditions in Canada and the wider world. The centenary of income tax is the occasion for Canadian scholars to wrestle with past and present debates about tax equity, efficiency, and justice. Who Pays for Canada? explores the different ways governments can and should tax their peoples and evaluates how well Canada has done so. It brings together a diverse group of perspectives from academia - law, economics, political science, history, geography, philosophy, and accountancy - and from the wider world of activists and public servants. It asks how Canada compares to other countries and how other countries - especially the United States - influence Canadian tax policies. It also surveys internal tax tensions and politics, through the lenses of region and jurisdiction, as well as race, class, and gender. Reasoning from tax perplexities and reforms in the past and the present, it argues that fair taxation requires an informed populace and a democratically inclined public will. Above all, this book serves as a reminder that it is not only what counts as fair that is important, but how fairness is evaluated. Revealing how closely tax policy is tied to mainstream politics, human rights, and morality, Who Pays for Canada? represents new perspectives on a matter of tremendous national urgency.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780228001249
Publisher:	McGill-Queens University Press
Publication date:	09/17/2020
Pages:	424
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

E.A. Heaman teaches history at McGill University and is the author of Tax, Order, and Good Government: A New Political History of Canada, 1867-1917. David Tough teaches in the School for the Study of Canada at Trent University.

Table of Contents

Figures and Tables ix

Foreword: Tax Transparency and Perceptions of Fairness: What It Means, How to Get It, and Why It Matters Kevin Page xiii

Acknowledgments xix

Introduction: Broadening the Tax Conversation E.A. Heaman David Tough 3

The Comparative Politics of Tax Fairness

1 Funding the State: Taxation in Canada from a Comparative Political Economy Perspective Olivier Jacques 37

2 Taxation and Self-Government Clarence T. Jules David Paul 66

The History of Tax Fairness

3 Jealousy of Taxes E.A. Heaman 81

4 "Set Apart for the Children of Colored Taxpayers of the Entire Town": Race, Schools, and Citizenship in Nineteenth-Century Chatham, Ontario Harrington Walker 113

5 How History Helps Us Think about the Politics of Tax Fairness Shirley Tillotson 129

The Economics of Tax Fairness

6 How to Sell Tax Reform: Lessons from Canada's Three Major Postwar Tax Reforms William Watson 153

7 The Limits of Taxation for Reducing Income Inequality Stephen Gordon 167

8 Who Pays for Municipal Governments? Pursuing the User Pay Model Lindsay M. Tedds 183

The Gender of Taxation and Tax Breaks

9 Tax Fairness for Families: Evolution of an Idea Frances Woolley 201

10 Are Tax Loopholes Sexist? The Gender Distribution of Federal Tax Expenditures David Macdonald 222

11 Gender Inequality and Canadian Fiscal Policy: From "Taxing for Growth" to "Taxing for Gender Equality" Kathleen A. Lahey 240

The Making of the Modern Taxpayer

12 Tax Fairness and the Party System: A History David Tough 287

13 Knowledge and Attitudes regarding Taxation Antoine Genest-Grégoire Luc Godbout Jean-Herman Guay 300

14 Exposing the Political Chameleon: Insights into Canadian Taxpayers' Perceptions of Tax Fairness Jonathan Farrar Dawn Massey Linda Thorne 320

Obstacles to Democratic Tax Accountability

15 The Rock Is a Hard Place: Redistributing Wealth in Twenty-First-Century Newfoundland Robert C.H. Sweeny 337

16 Who Dies for Canada? How Settler Colonial Dispossession Funds the State Anna Stanley 356

17 Canadians Shaping Tax Havens Alain Deneault 379

Contributors 395

Index 401

Editorial Reviews

At its core, Who Pays for Canada? explores the nature of tax fairness and the challenges of tax reform in a thoroughly interdisciplinary way. Twenty-three scholars contribute seventeen chapters on taxation questions that face every order of government, span centuries of Canadian history, and build on insight from several fields of knowledge. In the process, it reveals the incredibly complex set of issues that tax policy must confront.” Canadian Historical Review


“Who Pays for Canada? provides a refreshing way of thinking about taxation, and it provides some deep and useful insights into the necessary work of making taxation not just fairer, but more transparent and reflective of needs and demands of all members of society. This book, and the historiographical interjection from which it springs, should not only be read by historians, but all humanists and social scientists who are engaged with the work of creating a better society. Taxes are, after all, and as they say, the price of civilization.” Histoire sociale/Social History


"Who Pays for Canada? is a welcome collection of diverse perspectives on the idea and practice of tax fairness. There is nothing quite like it in the literature of any country." Kris Inwood, University of Guelph and co-editor of Lives in Transition: Longitudinal Analysis from Historical Sources

From the Publisher