The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
To find the origins of tax, one has to travel back to the ancient world and to a fertile plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, now modern Iraq. History's first recorded tax was in Sumer, 6,000 years ago. It is there, inscribed on clay stones excavated at Lagash that we learn of the first taxes, instituted to fight a fierce war. As is often the case in history, when the battles ceased, the taxes stayed _ a cause of no small discontent on the part of the locals. Local Sumerians apparently complained that taxes filled up the land from one end to the other. Charles Adams detailed such history in his book For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization. As his title implies, taxes have been both useful and a scourge. In Canada, taxes pay for items any sensible person would regard as desirable. One could point to the most basic functions you'd hope taxes would undergird, such as governments to protect us and courts to enforce laws. On the flip side, it wouldn't take long to identify useless government spending. Think of absurdly high salaries for some native chiefs, or the endless stream of taxpayer-financed commercials that tout the Ottawa's 'economic action plan.' In Canada, the first known instance of taxation was an export duty on beaver pelts (at 50 per cent) and moose pelts (at 10 per cent) in 1650 in what was then New France. While the tax on beaver furs was reduced to 25 per cent within three years, by 1662 every import was subject to a 10 per cent tax for six years, necessary to help pay off colonial debt. Ever since, the number of taxes has multiplied. Two colleagues recently found that, since 1961, tax increases have outpaced the growth in the cost of clothing (up by 607 per cent) food (higher by 578 per cent) and shelter costs (up by 1,290 per cent). In fact, Statistics Canada's Consumer Price Index, which measures the prices Canadians pay for a variety of goods and services, rose by 675 per cent from 1961 until 2012. But taxes? They're up by 1,787 per cent! And taxes are heading up again in Manitoba and some other provinces. But, you may respond, 'taxes are what we pay for a civilized society.' That's what American Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said back in 1927. However, back then, government spending, as a percentage of the economy, was much lower than today. A better perspective on taxes comes from Richard Cartwright, a 19-century gentleman who made clear how he thought politicians had a duty to exercise restraint in matters of taxation and spending. 'It is the sacred duty of the government to take only from the people what is necessary to the proper discharge of the public service,' he said, adding that taxation in any other form is 'legalized robbery.' Cartwright was not some ideologue but the Dominion Minister of Finance in the Liberal government of the day. Those words were spoken during his 1878 budget speech. He had the spirit of it right. Moderation in government and taxes, as in all areas of life, is a virtue. This is an edited version of an editorial by Mark Milke of the Fraser Institute. It was distributed by Troy Media.
