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Income taxes and schemes to avoid taxes have grown hand in hand over the past century

Tax-avoidance schemes are not to be confused with tax evasion. Despite its illegality, almost all Canadians at some point in their lives have engaged in tax evasion, usually involving the underground economy. This includes everyday occurrences, such as giving your plumber cash to avoid paying the GST. Tax evasion also takes the form of the plumber not reporting that income, or money earned from illegal activities such as drug dealing or sex work. While the individual amounts of tax evasion are usually small, they add up to billions of dollars, on par with estimates of the tax revenues lost due to offshore bank accounts.

By raising the marginal tax rate on upper-income Canadians and reducing the small-business income tax rate, Trudeau has increased the incentives for people to direct their income into small businesses or to move their money offshore. Both are usually perfectly legal; every large bank in this country advertises the ease and benefits of moving money offshore, especially to jurisdictions like Bermuda or the Cayman Islands which have no income tax.

Some say that citizens have a moral duty to pay taxes they are not legally required to. This has about as much chance of working as requesting taxpayers to voluntarily send money to the federal government to help pay down the debt (in the 1990s, you could check a box on your tax return to donate your tax refund to deficit reduction; the take-up was so low this was quickly discontinued). More broadly, if people were so fundamentally unselfish with their money, we could get rid of government and rely on charities to provide everything from welfare to schooling. If all people were angelic, we could dispense with religion because there would be no sin.