that said, my experience suggests that there may be a serious ignorance problem with low wage workers around the question of what kind of tax return they're entitled to, if they'd actually do their taxes. i would suspect that millions of dollars in refunds probably go unclaimed because legions of minimum wage workers are simply too stupid to fill out the forms.

i used to have this argument with people that i worked with all of the time, when they complained about the money being taken off their check. and, i'd ask them point blank - did you do your taxes?

"no. but, don't tell anybody, i don't want to get in trouble."

i can't count the number of people i tried to explain this to, and essentially nobody believed me when i did. they seemed to expect that if they did their taxes, they'd have to pay them - so they just don't do them. they had no idea that there's a check with their name on it sitting at the cra. really...

i guess it's a cost-benefit analysis as to whether non-tory governments want to get the word out or not. they might pick up some working class voters - but at the cost of giving them their taxes back.