Don't Try to Read the Income Tax Act Before You File Your Taxes Tonight

OTTAWA, ON: The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) is warning Canadians not to try and read the Income Tax Act before filling out their tax forms, because if they do, they will end up missing the extended tax filing deadline of midnight tonight.

The current Income Tax Act is 3,206 pages long--consisting of 1,038,162 words. The average adult can read 300 words per minute, which means it would take 57 hours and 41 minutes to read theIncome Tax Act, without any breaks. "If you read the Income Tax Act for an hour every night before going to sleep, it would take you nearly two months to get through it... not that anyone would be crazy enough to want to do that," said CTF Research Director Jeff Bowes. First passed in 1917 as a temporary measure to help cover the cost of the First World War, Canada's federal tax law was originally 11 pages long. By 1948, it had grown to 88 pages. The 1970 edition was 424 pages, and Canadians were frustrated with the complexity of the Act. After a Royal commission, and public consultations a major tax reform bill was passed in 1971, but it just replaced one complex tax system with another.

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The Harper government has made matters much worse, amending the act 22 times, introducing dozens of boutique tax credits. In the process they've added 631 pages to the Income Tax Act--that's 220,356 words. More amendments are contained in C-31, the 362-page federal budget implementation bill. "Our tax system has gotten more complicated every single year," continued Bowes. "We need to get rid of boutique tax credits for special interests," said Bowes. "We could toss thousands of pages from the Income Tax Act, cut the number of tax brackets, and cut tax rates for everybody." Bowes noted that in addition to the Income Tax Act there are 1,619 additional pages of regulations that explain and further define the actual law. "It doesn't need to be this complicated," Bowes concluded. For a copy of the Income War Tax Act, 1917, click here. For a copy of the current Income Tax Act, click here. For a graph of Income Tax Act page lengths, click here. For data on acts amending the Income Tax Act, click here. For data on word counts, click here.