T1 General 2005: Revised
I absolutely hate doing my taxes. It's not that I don't think we should have to pay them. I do. It's paying them to a socialist government I can't stand. To me taxes should fund fire suppression, highways, a justice system and a military. Everything else is nonsense and better served by the private sector and non-profits. (I mean the private and public sectors employ the same people right? Just because you stick a person in a union and make him swear an oath of loyalty to the Queen now he's somehow more qualified to issue you a passport. Sure.) Anyway, we have to pay our taxes but does the government have to add insult to injury by making them so difficult to do without the help of a professional?
I've always been a fan of a flat tax. Everyone would pay the same rate. Think of it. It'd take you 5 minutes to do your taxes and save billions in lost time and professional's fees.
Here's a T1 I whipped up in Illustrator to show how a tax return based on a flat tax could fit on a 4x6 postcard.
I fit the entire return in 5 lines:
If this was my tax return I would weep with joy while I filled it out even knowing it was going to line the pockets of some Quebec ad agency or to fund a gun registry that doesn't work or pay some half-dead Senator's salary or whatever.
I was going to add rollovers to explain all the features of my proposed T1 but then I realized I designed it so well there's nothing really to explain. Here's my ultimate point: I comped this in a couple of hours. It's ready to go except for removing a few stray points, lining everything up, and selecting some typefaces. This postcard would increase productivity a million fold and reduce tax fraud and non-payment. Why doesn't the government try to come up with real improvements to people's lives like a flat tax instead of whatever it is they're currently doing?