The Canadian tax system is complex and there is no single number that can give us 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 48 years. To do this, we have constructed an index of the tax bill, the Canadian Consumer Tax Index, for the period 1961 to 2009.