Saskatchewan is adding its name to the list of governments with an agency designed to collect taxes.
The federal government was the first one with a central agency to collect public sector revenues in this country and then Quebec developed its own system.
Saskatchewan will now follow that lead and move away from the Canada Revenue Agency with an eye to doing its own collection of corporate taxes. It will take a while to build the system but new legislation introduced in Assembly will clear the way for that work to begin.
Back when Ottawa established the CRA, it had hoped it would become a giant government collection agency for all levels of government, a central agency that would eliminate the duplication of collection at local, provincial and federal level.
That dream did not get the traction its designers had envisioned as local governments continue to collect their own taxes and now we are seeing more provinces move away from the federal, central system in favour of one where they have more autonomy and local control.
