This country badly needs a tax revolt.

According to a report released this week by Vancouver’s Fraser Institute, the average Canadian family earned just over $82,000 in 2016 and paid taxes of just over $35,000.

That means the typical family saw 42.5% of its income gobbled up by one level of government or another.

That’s a higher percentage than families in every other G7 country, except France.

That’s right, the Germans paid lower taxes than we did in 2016. And the Brits did too.

So did the Italians, the Japanese and the Americans.

According to Fraser, the 42.5% we surrender to federal, provincial and municipal governments is more than we pay for food, clothing and shelter – combined! We pay 37.4% for the basic necessities.

And what do we get for all that tax money? Basically two things: very happy public-sector workers and tons of waste.

Fraser looked at every auditor general’s report for the past 25 years and determined that the federal government alone has wasted nearly $200 billion simply by ignoring AGs’ recommendations.

On top of that, half of all taxes paid go to the salaries of public servants, who now earn salaries that are on average 10% higher than those of private-sector workers doing comparable jobs. Plus, they also have much better pensions, job security and benefits, work shorter hours and retire earlier.

Since taxes consume $2 out of every $5 Canadians earn, and since public servants’ wages consume half of all taxes collected, that means $1 out of every $5 a Canadian earns goes just to paying civil servants, teachers, bureaucrats, judges, social workers and other government employees.

And spare me the lectures on how the “rich” don’t pay their fair share. The top 10% of Canadian income earners paid closer to 56% of their income in taxes.

Enough is enough.

No government in the country has a revenue problem. No government brings in too little money, even though many are running deficits.

Governments are going into debt because they have spending addictions, not because Canadians are paying too few taxes.

And yet, despite all of the taxes we already pay, the federal Liberal government is about to impose one of the largest tax increases in history on middle-class Canadians.

Remember all the Liberals’ high-minded talk during the 2015 federal election campaign about standing up for the middle class?

Several campaign ads featured Justin Trudeau claiming a Liberal government would ask the rich “to pay a little more,” so his party could give middle-class taxpayers some much-needed relief.

Now those same Liberals are talking about small business owners and farmers – the very soul of the middle class – as if they were criminal tax cheats.

This summer, Finance Minister Bill Morneau has proposed eliminating many of the tax concessions employed by entrepreneurs and farmers to help them make up for the lack of benefits, pensions and job security salaried employees take for granted.

Because they have to save for their own retirements and pay their own health benefits, because they get no paid vacations, sick days, overtime or severance, and because they are constantly at risk of losing everything (including their homes), governments have typically allowed entrepreneurs and agricultural producers more write-offs than other taxpayers.

Small business owners may also lower their taxes by “sprinkling” their incomes around – paying dividends or salaries to family members who did a little work for their companies.

But because the Liberals are so greedy for more tax money, Morneau wants to close these “loopholes” and raise billions more (perhaps tens of billions more) every year.

Stop it. Now.