TaxHoursSee where your time goes

Methodology

How TaxHours turns taxes into time

TaxHours is an educational estimate. It translates estimated income tax and employee payroll deductions into working time, then compares income-tax amounts with published public-spending shares.

Estimate only, not tax advice.

TaxHours is not a tax return and does not trace an individual’s exact dollars to a program. It is designed to make the scale of public finance easier to understand.

What the calculator estimates
  • Federal and provincial or territorial personal income tax using stated 2026 parameters.
  • Ontario Health Premium and Ontario surtax where applicable.
  • Employee CPP/CPP2 or QPP/QPP2, EI, and Quebec QPIP where applicable.
  • Working hours, days, weeks, and an income-tax date based on the user’s weekly hours.
  • Proportional federal and provincial spending comparisons using income tax only.
What the calculator does not estimate
  • Most detailed credits, deductions, filing circumstances, or employer-side contributions.
  • Sales tax, property tax, or optional taxes unless a separately labelled user-provided module is enabled.
  • Exact personal budget allocation, personal debt liability, or the outcome of a tax return.
  • Behavioural, tax-planning, or income-distribution responses in the Policy Impact Simulator.
Core formulas
Hourly income = annual income / (hours per week x 52)
Tax hours = tax dollars / hourly income
Daily work hours = hours per week / 5
Work weeks = hours / hours per week
Budget-category hours = income-tax hours x category spending share

Federal spending uses federal income tax only. Provincial spending uses provincial or territorial income tax only. Payroll deductions stay separate from general budget categories.

Expenditure and policy-model assumptions

Spending categories are proportional estimates based on their selected source taxonomy. Sources can be official actuals, hybrid actuals, program-focused views, or Statistics Canada functional data; comparability notes are shown with each budget view.

The Policy Impact Simulator uses a static revenue-yield model. It applies an additive percentage-point rate adjustment to marginal income-tax rates and labels its policy costs, sources, and limitations. It is not an official government forecast.

Release and technical materials

Release: 2026.07.01. Downloadable materials provide the machine-readable constants and the full methodology memo.

Download JSON constantsRead methodology memoBrowse grouped sources