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Give and Take
The Citizen-Taxpayer and the Rise of Canadian Democracy
Shirley Tillotson (Author)
9780774836739
Paperback / softback, published 1 September 2019
448 pages, 13 photos, 8 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.66 kg
Give and Take is amazingly well researched[...] - Patricia E. Roy (Canadian Historical Review) [Tillotson] writes in a light, accessible manner … [she] is skilful in using historical analysis to explain the past through a modern lens. - Victor Rabinovitch, distinguished fellow in the School of Policy Studies at Queen's University (Canada's History) …this is a path-breaking work that hopefully will lead to other investigations of Canadians' love/hate relationship with the state, a relationship where taxes generally land in the hate department.
Can a book about tax history be a page-turner? You wouldn't think so. But Give and Take is full of surprises. A Canadian millionaire who embraced the new federal income tax in 1917. A socialist hero, J.S. Woodsworth, who deplored the burden of big government. Most surprising of all, Give and Take reveals that taxes deliver something more than armies and schools. They build democracy. Tillotson launches her story with the 1917 war income tax, takes us through the tumultuous tax fights of the interwar years, proceeds to the remaking of income taxation in the 1940s and onwards, and finishes by offering a fresh angle on the fierce conflicts surrounding tax reform in the 1960s. Taxes show us the power of the state, and Canadians often resisted that power, disproving the myth that we have always been good loyalists. But Give and Take is neither a simple tale of tax rebels nor a tirade against the taxman. Tillotson argues that Canadians also made real contributions to democracy when they taxed wisely and paid willingly.
1 Talking Tax 2 We, the Taxpayers 3 Our Conservative Tax Structure 4 Resistance in the Interwar Years 5 Taxation at the Edges of Citizenship 6 Honour, Confidence, and Federalism during the Depression 7 Warfare, Welfare, and the Mass Income Tax Payer 8 New Publics and the Tax Man in the 1950s 9 Poverty, Bureaucracy, and Taxes 10 Reform, Populism, and the Presence of the Past in the 1960s 11 Self-Interest, Community, and the Evolution of the Citizen-Taxpayer Appendix: Tables Notes; Bibliography; Index