What Are Taxes?

Paying Taxes in BC from People's Law School has been replaced by Essentials of Money & Debt. This new title covers income tax as well as other aspects of managing your finances and dealing with debt-related problems.

Everyone who lives in Canada pays taxes to all three levels of government:

• federal government,
• provincial government, and
• municipal (city or town) government.

Taxes pay for many services that everyone in Canada uses. For example:

• medical care,
• police,
• schools,
• universities,
• defence,
• roads,
• bridges,
• parks,
• swimming pools, and
• community centres.

There are different kinds of taxes in British Columbia. The main taxes to know about are:

• income tax,
• sales tax,
• property tax,
• duty, a tax you pay when you bring goods into Canada, and
• consumer taxes.

This information applies to British Columbia, Canada. Last reviewed for legal accuracy by People's Law School, 2011.

Paying Taxes in BC from People's Law School has been replaced by Essentials of Money & Debt. This new title covers income tax as well as other aspects of managing your finances and dealing with debt-related problems.

Paying Taxes in BC © People's Law School is, except for the images, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence.