As you scramble to finish your income tax return before the April 30th deadline, consider this: if your taxable income was $40,000, you will pay over $1,300 in extra income tax. And if that was your salary over the last decade, you paid over $8,000 in extra tax since 1988 due to "bracket creep" taxation.

Sound hard to believe Here's how the politically approved scam works: The basic personal exemption was $6,456 for most taxpayers in 1998. Fully indexed for inflation since 1988, it would have been $7,991. That means you paid 17% federal tax (plus provincial tax) on the $1,535 difference between what the exemption was and what it should have been. Ditto for other tax thresholds. The middle tax bracket threshold is set at $29,590 for 1998. Fully indexed since 1988, it would've been $36,624 in 1998. You paid 26% federal (plus provincial) tax on that $7,034 difference - as opposed to the 17% (plus provincial) tax that would have been paid. And on it goes.

Bracket creep taxes produce windfall tax revenues for governments. Over $10 billion in extra federal income tax went to Ottawa (just last year) because of the decade-long effects of bracket creep. The provinces raked in an additional $2.5-billion. All that extra loot came from your wallet.

Now consider if that $8,094 in bracket creep taxes lost to the taxman over the last decade (from a $40,000 income) had instead been invested -- it would have produced $22,794 in 2009, $49,212 twenty years from now, and $106,246 by 2029 (assuming an 8% rate of return on your money). A $75,000 salary sacrificed $11,916 in extra tax thanks to bracket creep. That would have brought returns of $33,559 by 2009, $72,451 two decades from now, and $156,417 in 2029.

For years now the CTF has led the charge nationally in opposing bracket creep and demanding full reindexation of the income tax system. To mark income tax filing week the CTF is providing a direct link off its web site (www.taxpayer.com) to Finance Minister Paul Martin and selected Liberal backbenchers so that taxpayers can demand an end to the tax that keeps on growing, and growing, and-