2 Days from the Diary of Samuel Marchbanks :CRA SOTW
Alan Baggett
We did not want to waste a tax tale on the Christmas period when
families are gathering around their trees instead of their computers
so this week's tax tale is a time-tested favorite that will help tide
us over to the New Year when the Tax Tales begin anew.
Robertson Davies wrote this in 1947 and regular readers here should
get a smile if not an outright laugh out from these two excerpts from
'Ten Days from the Diary of Samuel Marchbanks'. Enjoy!
THURSDAY
Another note from the Income Tax People this morning. A while ago they
presented me with a bill for the whole of my 1941 tax insisting that I
had not paid it. By great good luck and contrary to my usual
unbusinesslike procedure, I had my receipts which I brandished angrily
in their faces. Gradually the whole sordid story leaked out: they had
taxed me both as Samuel Marchbanks and as Fortunatus S. Marchbanks, in
spite of the fact that nobody has called me Fortunatus since 1897;
having billed Sam they were out to skin Fortunatus, but I am not quite
such a dual personality as that. When their error was pointed out to
them, they did not even apologize for their threat to take
proceedings
against me, but managed to dig up an item of a few dollars which they
said I ought to pay, plus interest... The churlishness of tax-
gatherers is phenomenal. I wonder if there is a case on record in
which a private citizen has extracted an apology from a tax-gatherer?
I wonder if their work makes them curmudgeons, or if curmudgeonliness
is a qualification for the job? I have received a stack of letters
about this affair, all written from the standpoint of a government
official addressing a hardened and evasive criminal. The insolence of
these herdsmen of The Golden Calf is past all bearing.
TUESDAY
Every day I pass a beverage room in the course of my duties, and at
least every second day an habitue of the places pursues me for a
hundred yards or so, telling me in a low, compelling voice how badly
he needs twenty-five cents. I have given him money several times,
chiefly from a fear that he will fall dead at my feet, if I refuse,
but I am beginning to be indifferent to his fate. What is more, an
uncharitable suspicion dawns in my mind that he uses my money to buy
beer. Now, if he spends all his daily income, which is my twenty-five
cents, on drink, he is obviously an improvident oaf, and the despair
of economists, and the next time he appears trembling and muttering at
my side I shall tell him so. If he were a TRUE Canadian he would spend
five cents of my quarter on food and drink, he would save five cents
and he would pay the other fifteen to the Income Tax and the Baby
Bonus. That is what I have to do. Why should he live a life of
pleasure, spending his whole income on drink, when I have to slave and
pinch to keep him and several thousand civil servants in luxury? This
is the sort of social injustice which makes communists of white-collar
workers like me.
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Alan Baggett – Tax Collector’s Bible