• A Taxpayer’s Guide to Your Money and How Politicians Spend It
• New Edition Hits Bookshelves Today
• Mark Milke’s best-selling book revised with 80 per cent new material
• Milke takes on auto bailouts, Occupy Wall Street, Idle No More and shows how Americans designed many of Canada’s taxes

CALGARY, AB: Best-selling author Mark Milke’s latest book, Tax Me I’m Canadian! A Taxpayer’s Guide to Your Money and How Politicians Spend It hits bookstores today. This new edition – with 80 per cent new material, is sure to ruffle a few feathers.

Tax Me I’m Canadian! leaves no sacred cows untouched. Occupy Wall Street, corporate welfare recipients, government employee unions, public sector pensions and even Idle No More all get the treatment of a full-chapter in this new edition. It shows how Canada has moved far beyond even the welfare state to what the author labels as the “entitlement state.”

“The world has changed so much since I wrote the first edition of Tax Me in 2002,” said author Mark Milke. “Governments have gone from paying down debt to accumulating it, from lowering taxes to raising them. Meanwhile, Canadians have lived through misguided protests such as Occupy and Idle No More, movements that either fundamentally misunderstand wealth creation— or outright attack it. It was high time to have a deeper look at these issues.”

Milke has revised the popular sections from his original best-seller where he explains early Canadian attitudes towards citizenship, government and taxes, from George Brown to Wilfrid Laurier. He also delves through the history books to explain how Americans actually created many of Canada’s taxes: “Early on, when Canadian politicians imposed additional and higher taxes, they invariably did so only after the Americans acted first. Think of almost any modern Canadian tax: federal income, gasoline, property and corporate; almost all have American origins.”

In support of his new book that hits stores today, Mark will embark on a ten-city coast-to-coast tour with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF). The tour starts Monday September 30th in Calgary and wraps up in Halifax on October 11th. Tickets to the events can be purchased online here: http://taxpayer.eventbrite.com/

“We’re pleased to be able to share both Mark and his book with our supporters and others around the country,” said CTF President Troy Lanigan. “This is a unique opportunity to come out, get a copy of Mark’s excellent book and get a chance to meet and have your book signed by the author.”

Copies of Tax Me I’m Canadian! A Taxpayer’s Guide to Your Money and How Politicians Spend It can be purchased online at: http://taxmeimcanadian.ca/ or can be found on the shelves of your local book store.

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Mark Milke is a Senior Fellow with the Fraser Institute and a former provincial director with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. The author of five books and dozens of studies, Mark’s work has been published widely in Canada, the United States and Europe.

For more information and to arrange media interviews with the author:

Mark Milke: email: [email protected] or 403-510-6270

Troy Lanigan w: 250-881-1138, c: 250-888-5040 or email: [email protected]

Excerpts from Mark Milke’s Tax Me I’m Canadian!

On early Canadian statesmen:

“Beyond the debts that plagued pre-Confederation colonies, farsighted legislators envisioned a larger country that would create a more prosperous British North America and benefit everyone. In economic lingo, it was a laissez-faire argument for how to pay for needed services and capital improvements and yet keep the tax burden reasonable: expand the economy, and government spending and debt becomes less costly per person as the overall economy grows.”

Subsidies to business:

“It is sometimes difficult to sort out the supposedly capitalist CEOs from the normally anti-business union leaders. A few years after the Chrysler-GM bailout and in an astonishing display of chutzpah, Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne spoke of the “wealth gap” and denounced “corporate greed”…. Apparently Marchionne saw no irony nor greed in how just two years previous, Chrysler’s executives and union leaders demanded money from the public purse at the expense of other businesses and taxpayers across the country.”

The problem of Aboriginal isolationism:

“Advocacy for greater pureness of culture and demands for separateness, isolation, and sovereignty based on a mythologized approach to one’s ancestors, is no more healthy for native Canadians or helpful to remote reserves now, than when such notions animated the American South in the 1870s. Such harmful and divisive ideas are propelled ahead ad nauseam by some native leaders, sycophantic politicians and academics who are either too daft to know, or too deceitful to admit, that they advance a profoundly anti-liberal agenda.”

The CTF is Canada's leading non-partisan citizens' advocacy group fighting for lower taxes, less waste and accountable government. Founded in 1990, the CTF has more than 84,000 supporters and seven offices across Canada. The CTF is funded by free-will, non tax-receiptable contributions.