Broadening the Political Constituency of Tax Reform: The Visual Rhetoric of Canadian Taxation, 1979-81

Abstract

Published between 1979 and 1981, Canadian Taxation reflected an attempt by Neil Brooks and other tax scholars to democratize debates on taxation in Canada. Contributors drew on a critique of taxation that had emerged through the Royal Commission on Taxation (1962-67) and the controversial amendments to the Income Tax Act that followed. In its earliest issues, it used language, images, and design to popularize a left-wing understanding of Canada’s tax system as benefitting the rich. Over its three-year publication run, the magazine reverted to a more austere visual style and professional tone, effectively abandoning its early democratizing ambitions. This essay studies the visual rhetoric of Canadian Taxation as a historically important attempt to make tax debates resonate outside specialist circles, and as a model for a more generous scholarship that would use rhetoric to present taxation not as a technical field of expertise but as a key activity of modern democratic citizenship.