100% of my exorbitant income tax is deducted at source. I can’t opt out unless I quit, find someone who will pay me in cash or bitcoin under the table (non existent for the income level I’m at), or cultivate a service based business over time and simply don’t file, and roll the dice. And when I die, it’d just come out of my estate, further burdening my heirs. Here, if an employee doesn’t pay as a deduction at source and doesn’t file and remit, they just garishee future wages or take it out of your bank or the employer is on the hook for it. Essentially making every employer an agent for the state. I asked our HR if I could administer my own income tax and just set that money aside for manual payment each year at tax time, and they couldn’t do it even if they want to. The payroll provider’s software won’t even permit it if you are considered an employee rather than a contractor. There’s an exemption request form you can fill out, but the approvable reasons for exemption are few. It’s all a trap.
The only solution I can see that has worked historically (and not without bloodshed) are mass work stoppages aka general strikes a lá the Polish Solidarity Movement. And the results of that uprising/social movement still took three decades to yield any meaningful results like free and fair elections. My point: We aren’t fixing this in our lifetimes. Encourage your kids and other young people to avoid the combination of traditional employment and any consumer debt for as long as it takes to develop some skills and a market for their own “thing” that enables some tax free earnings and maybe the purchase of a little piece of land and a small home. Even if it’s cutting grass, cutting hair, fixing things for people, anything. Once you get a 9-5 job “on the books” and a mortgage, and people relying on you for three squares a day and a roof over their heads, activism and opting out gets a lot more costly.
And the coup d’état is the policy enacted some twenty years ago in our country that denies workers access to employment insurance benefits if they quit or are fired from a job. So even if you are being totally screwed over for inflation indexed raises, your only choice is to move on to the next similarly exploitive position for another rich fuck who will be more than happy to capitalize on your initial couple years of enthusiasm. This policy, and at source income tax deductions together have effectively enslaved a whole generation of Canadians overnight. Just have to make it to the finish line, stack Sats and try to find what happiness we can. And resist anything and everything that reeks of authority.
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