Cheat on my taxes? Not on your life

Taxes: I get way more out of our healthcare system than I’ve ever put in

Taxes have paid for all my maladies over the years

I’ve had both my knees replaced, and ten surgeries on my knees prior to that.

Oh, and I’ve also had a ruptured Achilles tendon reattached, a ganglion cyst removed from my hand, bunion surgery (twice, since the first incision became infected through my own fault), a laminectomy, several colonoscopies, and countless visits to GPs and specialists.

God knows what I’ve forgotten on this list.

And, thanks to Canada’s single-payer healthcare system, I’ve never paid out of pocket for any of these – taxes have taken care of all of it.

To say I’m grateful for all this care would be an understatement. If I lived in the US, where medical bankruptcies are common, I’d have been destitute and living on the street many decades ago.

Fortunately, we had provincial and federal governments that took Canada in a different direction a little over 60 years ago, in the face of a great deal of opposition from vested interests.

Lord knows ours isn’t a perfect system, with occasional long wait times and shortages of medical personnel, among other issues, but I wouldn’t trade what we have for anything.

Income taxes are on everyone’s mind

In Canada, this is the season to do your taxes, so what those taxes pay for is on my mind. A good chunk of the taxes we pay is used to support single-payer healthcare (I don’t use the term “universal health care” because the system doesn’t cover every medical service — many people, including my wife and I, have supplementary private coverage for certain things).

In other words, governments pool our taxes so that everyone has access to the care they need without having to pull out a credit card or insurance card before obtaining medical services.

As a result, I embrace (yes — embrace) paying taxes because I’ve gotten so much more out of our system over the years than I’ve ever put in, and that’s just in terms of medical services, never mind everything else that our tax dollars support.

I never pay “cash under the table” when tradespeople do work on our house, or otherwise cheat on my taxes. I always ensure that contractors add the correct amount of sales tax. Even when I earned cash tips for the year I drove tour buses as a pre-retirement gig, I declared every single dollar.

I know all the arguments people use to rationalize not paying their share of tax: “Our taxes are already too high,” or “All the government does is waste money,” or “What difference will this little bit make?” All this while demanding ever more government services.

And it’s all nonsense because every tax dollar you or I don’t pay is a dollar that my neighbour has to make up for. It’s a dollar less for a system that’s treated me so well for the almost seven decades I’ve lived in this country.

Taxes: If not I, then who?

I can never repay our health care system for what it’s given me over the years, but the least I can do is pay my fair share of taxes.

It’s not because I’m some sort of sanctimonious moral do-gooder, but because I’m grateful for what I’ve received.

And something tells me that, unless I cash it in in short order, I’m going to need those medical services that our taxes pay for quite a bit more yet before I go.

Like I said — so very grateful. I intend to keep acting like it.