I'm not against taxes. I understand that a country needs roads, hospitals, schools, police, firefighters, courts, and an administration capable of sustaining everything that an individual couldn't afford on their own. My question is different, and perhaps more uncomfortable: at what point does a necessary contribution stop seeming fair and begin to feel like an endless drain? We work to earn money, but before we even receive it, a portion has already been deducted. Then we use what's left to buy food, clothes, gasoline, or any other everyday item, and we pay again. We pay to own, to sell, to drive, to consume, and sometimes even to part with what we've bought. The system insists that it isn't charging twice for the same thing, but rather taxing different activities. However, for the citizen who got up early, worked, and arrived home exhausted, money still has a single origin: the irreplaceable hours of their life.
The Hundred Dollar Tale
Let's explain it as we would explain it to a child.
A person works and earns one hundred dollars. Before that money reaches them completely, the government withholds a portion as income tax, in addition to other deductions that may appear on their paycheck. The exact amount depends on the salary, the province, and the individual's circumstances, but the principle is the same: the worker does not receive everything they earned.
Let's say you have eighty dollars left. You go to a store and buy something. A new tax appears at the register. The cashier might ask:
"But hadn't this money already been paid?"
The official answer would be that the first tax was applied to the act of earning and the second to the act of consuming.
For the system, they're two different things. For the wallet, they're two bites out of the same salary.
The store receives that money, pays rent, electricity, permits, payroll, and other expenses. If it makes a profit, it also pays taxes. With that income, it pays its employees, whose salaries are subject to further deductions. Then those employees go out to shop, and the cycle begins again.
The bill doesn't have a stamp that says, "This dollar has already fulfilled its obligations to the State." Every time it changes function, it can be subject to another tax.
Money circulates; taxation follows it.
The legal explanation and the human truth
The tax system has a technically sound structure. There are taxes on income, consumption, property, and certain activities. Each has a distinct tax base and, at least in theory, fulfills a specific function within public finance.
That may be correct in a manual and still seem absurd in real life.
An hour of work cannot be repeated. When someone gives an hour of their life, that hour disappears forever. Salary is not just money: it's time, fatigue, knowledge, risk, and effort transformed into a number.
Therefore, when different levels of government take small portions of that figure repeatedly, the citizen doesn't feel that "different taxable events" are being levied. They feel that the value of the same lost hour is being deducted multiple times.
The law divides reality into categories. The worker experiences it as a single event.
Paying does not guarantee receiving
Taxes are often presented as the price of living in an organized society. This argument would be more convincing if citizens could clearly see what they receive in return.
But what happens when you pay for decades and, when you need medical care, you find endless waiting lists?
What do you think when roads deteriorate, transportation fails, finding housing becomes nearly impossible, or public services seem designed to wear you down before they help you?
How must you feel when each budget asks for more money, while your everyday experience offers you less?
Then a legitimate suspicion arises: perhaps the problem is not contributing, but contributing without visible limits, without proportionate results, and without comprehensible accountability.
They teach us how much we have to pay, but they rarely explain in simple terms what part of our total economic life ends up in the hands of the State.
Income tax is just the most obvious figure. Then there are the taxes included in purchases, fuel, and services; fees, licenses, and property taxes. Some appear separately on a bill. Others are hidden within the final price.
The citizen knows each discount separately, but almost never sees the total sum.
What is necessary can also become abusive
Saying that taxes fund hospitals and schools doesn't end the discussion. A necessary institution can also be inefficient. A legal system can also be unjust. And a collective obligation can also grow to punish precisely those it claims to protect.
The average worker has very little leeway. They don't have tax departments, permanent advisors, or complex corporate structures. They receive, pay, and obey.
The less you have, the greater the real impact of each tax on your life can be, because the same amount represents food, rent, medicine, or gasoline.
A wealthy person can restructure investments, postpone transactions, or pay for advice. Someone living on a salary cannot restructure their finances or indefinitely postpone paying rent.
This reveals one of the biggest contradictions: a system that claims to seek justice can end up being harsher on those who have no way to escape it.
The invisible tax: losing the right to choose
Every dollar given to the government is a dollar whose destination the citizen no longer directly decides. We accept this relinquishment because we assume that the common good requires a shared fund.
But that trust should impose a huge obligation on those who manage the money: to spend it wisely, to demonstrate results, and to explain every failure.
However, when waste occurs, the usual solution is rarely to return resources to the taxpayer. Often, another tax, another increase, or a new program is announced.
Poor management does not always reduce the size of the administration; sometimes it makes it grow.
In a family, if money is tight, expenses need to be reviewed. In the government, too often, the first thing that comes to mind is how much more revenue can be collected.
Contribution or theft?
The word “theft” is unsettling because taxes are established by law. But the legality of a tax does not, in itself, determine its fairness. Throughout history, there have been many legal norms that were also abusive.
I'm not saying that all taxes are theft. I'm saying that citizens have the right to ask themselves when a mandatory, repeated, and poorly managed charge starts to look too much like one.
If a person refuses to pay, the state has mechanisms to prosecute and punish them. If the state misuses the collected funds, the citizen rarely receives equivalent personal redress.
The obligation is immediate and concrete; political responsibility is usually distant, collective, and diffuse.
This power imbalance should compel us to scrutinize every tax more rigorously, not to accept that all criticism is selfishness or ignorance.
Money can circulate; life cannot.
Let's imagine that those one hundred dollars pass through twenty hands. They are used to pay for a service, a purchase, a salary, and another purchase. At each stage, they can generate new tax obligations.
The same money continues to circulate and generate revenue.
But behind its first appearance, there was someone working.
Someone got up early. Someone drove for hours. Someone lifted heavy objects, cleaned a building, cared for a sick person, served customers, or pulled an all-nighter to finish a project.
The system sees a taxable amount. The person remembers the back pain, the time away from their children, and the day of life they will never get back.
That's why the debate isn't just economic. It's also moral.
How much of a citizen's life can the State legitimately claim?
How many times can one charge on the proceeds of a single day?
And what level of service, transparency, and respect should it offer in return?
The lottery exception also says something
It's worth clarifying an interesting point: in Canada, winnings from legal lotteries are generally not considered taxable income. If someone wins twenty million, they typically receive the twenty million. However, any returns generated by that money may be subject to taxation.
The exception is ironic.
Money obtained by chance may arrive intact; money obtained by getting up early every day arrives reduced.
It doesn't mean the lottery should be taxed. It means the comparison reveals a strange hierarchy: chance can receive treatment that everyday effort doesn't.
The question that no one should stop asking
A society without taxes could hardly sustain itself. But a society that stops questioning them risks working to feed a machine that always demands more and never considers what it receives enough.
The real discussion isn't about choosing between taxes or chaos. It's about deciding what's fair, who really bears the burden, what results should be demanded, and where the line is drawn.
It's not enough to simply repeat that we all must contribute. We also need to ask if everyone is contributing with the same level of sacrifice.
It's not enough to show how much the State collects. It's necessary to show what it accomplished with that money.
And it is not enough for a tax to be legal: it must be reasonable, transparent, and worthy of the effort it represents.
The worker bleeds only once to earn his money. The system, on the other hand, finds countless opportunities to claim a share.
Perhaps that's why the simplest question is also the hardest to answer:
If I've already paid to earn my money, why do I never finish paying to use it?
