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2 Days from the Diary of one Mr. Samuel Marchbanks :CRA SOTW

Robertson Davies wrote the following in 1947 and regular readers here should get a smile if not an outright laugh out from these two excerpts from 'Ten Days from the Diary of Samuel Marchbanks'. Enjoy!

THURSDAY - Another note from the Income Tax People this morning. A while ago they presented me with a bill for the whole of my 1941 tax insisting that I had not paid it. By great good luck and contrary to my usual unbusinesslike procedure, I had my receipts which I brandished angrily in their faces. Gradually the whole sordid story leaked out: they had taxed me both as Samuel Marchbanks and as Fortunatus S. Marchbanks, in spite of the fact that nobody has called me Fortunatus since 1897; having billed Sam they were out to skin Fortunatus, but I am not quite such a dual personality as that. When their error was pointed out to them, they did not even apologize for their threat to take proceedings against me, but managed to dig up an item of a few dollars which they said I ought to pay, plus interest... The churlishness of tax- gatherers is phenomenal. I wonder if there is a case on record in which a private citizen has extracted an apology from a tax-gatherer? I wonder if their work makes them curmudgeons, or if curmudgeonliness is a qualification for the job? I have received a stack of letters about this affair, all written from the standpoint of a government official addressing a hardened and evasive criminal. The insolence of these herdsmen of The Golden Calf is past all bearing.

TUESDAY - Every day I pass a beverage room in the course of my duties… …and at least every second day an habitue of the places pursues me for a hundred yards or so, telling me in a low, compelling voice how badly he needs twenty-five cents. I have given him money several times, chiefly from a fear that he will fall dead at my feet, if I refuse,
but I am beginning to be indifferent to his fate. What is more, an uncharitable suspicion dawns in my mind that he uses my money to buy beer. Now, if he spends all his daily income, which is my twenty-five cents, on drink, he is obviously an improvident oaf, and the despair of economists, and the next time he appears trembling and muttering at my side I shall tell him so. If he were a TRUE Canadian he would spend five cents of my quarter on food and drink, he would save five cents and he would pay the other fifteen to the Income Tax and the Baby Bonus. That is what I have to do. Why should he live a life of pleasure, spending his whole income on drink, when I have to slave and pinch to keep him and several thousand civil servants in luxury? This is the sort of social injustice which makes communists of white-collar workers like me.


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