From: utzoo!laura Newsgroups: can.politics Title: Re: taxes Article-I.D.: utzoo.2816 Posted: Mon Feb 14 08:28:20 1983 Received: Mon Feb 14 08:28:20 1983 References: utcsrgv.1024 My mother the Canadian history teacher teaches that income tax was a tempory measure instituted during WW1 which ought to go away forever if at all possible. Seeing as this seems unlikely, a flat rate seems a good alternative. William Buckley has been advocating this one for years - I believe that it is in "Up the Establishment" that he quotes exactly how this would change the U.S. tax structure and its social ramifications, but it could be another of his numerous books. I dont understand why taxing the rich heavily and the poor lightly is viewed as so "PROGRESSIVE", unless being rich is another thing which cannot be done in Ontario. (-: I would think that what one ought to do is define "poor" as less than some reasonable figure, and then have all the poor people send in a postcard in April saying "I am Poor". You can define "starving" at some other reasonable figure and have them send in a card saying "I am starving (postage due)" so that all the government agencies interested in do-gooding can identify them and send them relief money (welfare, whatever). Of course there will still be slugs who send in "I am starving" when they should be paying their 20% (or whatever), but this is no different from what some lawyers are charging millions of dollars a year to do in complicated ways right now. Since you dont want to can *all* those government paper-shufflers who handle our income tax forms, you can give them the job of taking 5% of each return and giving it to the appropriate Health Insurance Plan. If this gets popular, one might even get to say where one would like one miserable tenth of what one pays to go -- mine can go to the Canadian Satellite Development, please. laura creighton utzoo!laura