Will Wonders Ever Cease?

A few days ago, J. and I received our Revenue Canada tax packages in the mail.

The Government of Canada sends us tax packages every year as a favor, to remind us that they'll still be expecting our yearly contribution.

Tax time is a very exciting time of year for Revenue Canada. You can imagine how slow it would be in the "off" season, what with no taxation going on. It's so slow, in fact, that legislators once proposed that the entire Revenue Canada Call Centre workforce get reassigned to Saskatchewan's pothole filling department, in an effort to boost it to three.

Anyhow, in an effort to make the Canadian taxation process as easy as possible, have devised a literal library of helpful "guides" which are available, for free, at any Canada Post outlet. Canada Post Outlets also sell stamps.

But due to the size and complexity of the Revenue Canada Tax Guide, Revenue Canada recommends that only Canadian Citizens who hold a Masters Degree or higher, and and who have access to 3 tonne trucks should attempt to make sense of the guides and/or take them home.

The rest of us, they say, should take our highly confidential income information to the highly qualified high school drop outs at the nearest H&R Block Brach.

Lucky for me, J. happens to hold a Masters Degree or higher. It does not matter that J. has a degree in (and I am not making this up), Unsaturated Soil Mechanics. Being that he's a pretty smart dude, when last year, he "suggested" that he could save us $29 whole dollars, rather than give it to H&R Block, and prepare my income tax at home, I readily agreed and mentally started wondering where I could spend my unbudgeted almost thirty dollars.

Well. Imagine my surprise today to find a letter in the mail from Revenue Canada, stating, very officiously, that after reassessing my income tax from last year, they found an ERROR. Shit, I thought. I shouldn't have spent that $29.

On the contrary, the letter said. You have a FIVE HUNDRED AND THIRTY DOLLAR deposit going into your account.

Also, they stated, I was entitled to INTEREST on the FIVE HUNDRED AND THIRTY DOLLARS, which would be considered "income", so I was to include it on line 56,583 of this year's return.

Imagine! Revenue Canada GIVING MONEY BACK!

After this latest development, and for the fine and outstanding work they do, I purpose raises for the employees of Revenue Canada. And may all three of them have a healthy and productive Tax Season.