I recently read a very interesting article about the possibility of Canada simplifying its tax system. I've always known that we had a lot of deductions, but I didn't realize that there are 143 of them. I’ve never counted them all because there’s just too many.

We've had weird deductions in the past, like repairs and maintenance of a home, bus passes and newspaper subscriptions. There's some weird stuff out there and it's all spearheaded by corporations and other organizations that have some clout with the government.

Will we ever go to a simplified tax system like many other developed countries have? I highly doubt it. The majority of the clients that we have are people that have business income, rental income, investments, crypto, or whatever the case may be. We don't get a lot of standard employee tax returns to file, and that's a good thing. That means that people are either doing them themselves and saving some money, or they have them done at places like H&R Block or Liberty Tax. Those types of corporations are probably the ones that are going to stop any sort of reform when it comes to personal taxes.

In a lot of countries, your tax return is actually done for you by your employer. You submit other claims to lower them come that country’s tax time. It's very interesting, and I wish that our system was like that. Currently there are a lot of meaningless deductions that - for the amount of effort that goes in to save 60 bucks - are kind of ridiculous.