Taxing Illusions (Taxation, Democracy and Embedded Political Theory)

Countering recent interest in promoting tax cuts in Canada, this study examines how taxation helps define the nature of a political community and the values of a political culture. By comparing two Saskatchewan tax reports from the early 1960s and the late 1990s, this treatise demonstrates how assumptions about taxation policy reflect and shape conceptions of democracy and citizenship and contends that tax cuts promote an individual-centered rather than a society-based policy that affirms community values.