The Canadian Consumer Tax Index 2024
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The Canadian tax system is complex and there is no single number that can give us a complete idea of who pays how much. That said, the Fraser Institute annually calculates the most comprehensive and easily understood indicator of the overall tax bill of the average Canadian family: Tax Freedom Day (see Palacios et al., 2024).
This publication draws from those calculations and examines what has happened to the tax bill of the average Canadian family over the past 62 years.1 To do this, we have constructed an in- dex of the tax bill of the average Canadian family, the Canadian Consumer Tax Index, for the period from 1961 to 2023.
- The Canadian Consumer Tax Index tracks the total tax bill of the average Canadian family from 1961 to 2023. Including all types of taxes, that bill has increased by 2,705% since 1961.
- Taxes have grown much more rapidly than any other single expenditure for the average Can- adian family: expenditures on shelter increased by 2,006%, food by 901%, and clothing by 478% from 1961 to 2023.
- The 2,705% increase in the tax bill has also greatly outpaced the increase in the Consumer Price Index (901%), which measures the average price that consumers pay for food, shelter, clothing, transportation, health and personal care, education, and other items.
Source: The Fraser Institute
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