More than two-thirds of those who received tax credits for children’s sports and arts programs were from the top third of all tax filers, according to the CPJ fact sheets. Photograph by: Chris Young , THE CANADIAN PRESS

While we may grumble about how much we pay in taxes, most of us accept the premise that it’s the price we pay for a civil society.

Without taxes, we wouldn’t have roads, transit, courts, public schools, libraries, hospitals and a social safety net that includes welfare, old age pensions and unemployment insurance.

And most of us take it for granted that the costs and benefits are fairly shared.

But Citizens for Public Justice has just released a series of fact sheets called Taxes and the Common Good (www.cpj.ca/taxes-and-common-good), which provides a snapshot of Canadian tax policy from the past 35 years. (CPJ is a faith-based group that campaigns for an end to poverty in Canada, a guaranteed livable income and tax fairness.)

Its data comes from sources including Statistics Canada, the federal finance ministry and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

How much have taxes and services been cut? The group responds by citing the OECD’s latest update on economic projections.

As a percentage of gross domestic product, Canada’s tax revenue is at its lowest level in 70 years. Federal tax revenue accounts for just 11.6 per cent of GDP, while total tax revenue in 2013 (including provincial and municipal) accounted for just 30.6 per cent of GDP, below the OECD countries’ average of 34.1 per cent.

Here’s another way to look at it. Tax cuts during the past decade have meant that $45 billion has been trimmed from government spending and programs each year since 2006 and almost 30,000 jobs have been lost.

One reason Canadians willingly pay taxes is they believe it’s a fair system. But as the fact sheets point out, the system has been skewed for the past 15 years. It’s not so much by the tax rates themselves; it’s because of two other changes. The first are what the group calls “boutique tax credits” and deductions that favour middle- and upper-income earners.

The second is a shift to regressive taxes such as sales tax, property tax and fees that disadvantage low-income earners.

It’s at the point where some middle- and high-income earners now pay a lower percentage of tax than some of the poorest families, according to research by the OECD.

The same thing happened in the United States and received widespread attention after multibillionaire Warren Buffett noted in 2013 that he paid a lower tax rate than his secretary.

Since 2006, Kevin Milligan from Queen’s University’s John Deutsch Institute has concluded that tax changes have “continued to disproportionately benefit the wealthy, particularly single-earner families with children and senior couples with substantial pension incomes.”

In 2011, for example, tax credits for children’s sports and arts programs cost a total of $192 million. More than two-thirds of those who received the credits were from the top third of all tax filers. Low-income families are less likely to be able to pay the fees in the first place.

The same is true for deductions for registered retirement savings plans and tax-free savings accounts.

Beyond middle- and upper-income earners, the OECD confirms that Canadian corporations have been the biggest beneficiaries of tax cuts. In the last 35 years, the combined federal and average provincial corporate tax rate has been cut nearly in half. In 1981, it was 50.9 per cent. In 2014, it was 26.3 per cent.

The federal rate has had the steepest drop. From 2000 to 2014 alone, it went from 28 per cent to 13.3 per cent.