OTTAWA – In a document posted on its website Canada Revenue Agency has announced that, moving forward, all of the country’s retail workers will be required to give the government 40% of their brief flashes of happiness experienced while on the job.

“When an employee, as a benefit of their employment, gets to take a single minute outside the storeroom to close their eyes and think of a fond memory,” the document states, “then the employer must include that on the T4 form.”

“Also every time a customer smiles at them, is polite or just says ‘excuse me’ before demanding the worker stop what they are doing in order to show them where something is located, now counts as income.”

The new program is part of the government’s overhaul of the tax code. After previously going after the wealthy for income sprinkling, they have now decided to target the other example of tax avoidance pervading the Canadian system: minimum wage workers who live paycheque to paycheque.

However a CRA spokesperson denied that the change is designed to specifically target retail workers’ income.

“We don’t want minimum wage earners to pay more. We just want them to have no more than 3-4 minutes of joy in a given day.”

At press time the Trudeau Liberals had cancelled the CRA’s plan and instructed them to move on to their next target: taxing fast food employees for their free daily soft drink.