The Canadian tax system is complex and no single number can give a complete idea of who pays how much. That said, the Fraser Institute annually calculates the most comprehensive and easily understood indicator of the overall tax bill of the average Canadian family: Tax Freedom Day. This Alert examines what has happened to the tax bill of the average Canadian family over the past 47 years. To do so, we have constructed an index of the tax bill of the average Canada family, the Canadian Consumer Tax Index, for the period from 1961 to 2008.