Members Highlights

Written by CTF President Troy Lanigan, the book explores the early beginnings of the CTF in the late 1980s when citizen activists who organized “Axe the Tax” rallies to oppose the GST came to understand that as long as taxpayers were reacting to government decisions, nothing would change. Canadian taxpayers, they realized, needed a permanent, proactive and independent voice to counterbalance the inertia of big government.

Founding an organization of taxpayers is the most effective way that concerned citizens can reduce the growing burden of taxes that they are faced with each year.

Canada has roughly 4,000 municipal governments from coast-to-coast-to-coast; and while the CTF keeps tabs on several large cities, one organization cannot be a watchdog for every single one of them. It’s up to concerned citizens across the country to accept a leadership role in “watch-dogging” their local government.

Forming a municipal ratepayers association (RPA) within a community is the first step towards productively channeling concern about high taxes, wasteful government spending and a lack of accountability into positive outcomes. Getting organized can be both fun and rewarding, but success will require determination, patience and as this guidebook’s existence implies, some advice.

New Zealand Taxpayers Union released a new report approaching the tax freedom day concept from a different perspective.

Unknown only three years ago, Emmanuel Macron ascended to the presidency of the French Republic without the support of a single traditional political party. An advisor and later a government minister to a very unpopular President, not only he benefited from circumstances that expelled his main rivals from the race, but he also seduced the French people with the charm of his smile and youth. What got him elected, then, was a real “tour de magie”, a magic trick.

The US-based National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTUF) completed a tax complexity project concluding “…the total economic value of compliance burden of the Tax Code can be valued at $262.632 billion.”

The Slovak-based Institute of Economic and Social Studies (INESS) created and launched in 2016 a Bureaucracy Index. Its goal is to establish a comprehensive list and subsequent cost of bureaucratic burden in a national economy.

April – June 2017

Dear WTA Members, Observers, and Friends:
I wanted to wait until after our Regional Taxpayers Forum in Zagreb before sending this quarter’s Update so it is a month late, but we’ll get back on track in July.

Gia Jandieri, Vice-President of the New Economic School – Georgia, is asking the international delegates to sign a coalition letter in favor of maintaining the Economic Liberty Act untouched.

Taxpayers’ Alliance Ghana has just launched a new website.