Gurney, I have to do the same thing here as an unpaid tax collector with our federal GST too. My resentment is extreme. It's proably one of the reasons I got such a kick out of Costco's jam, even though it was a provincial tax in question, not federal.

The other thing I can pretty well guarantee is, if Costco had been a Canadian company, rather than an American one, the information regarding their customers accounts, would have been in the hands of the provincial government in a heartbeat.

Americans seem to have a far greater willingness to challenge government authority than Canadians do, when it comes to privacy issues. I admire them for it.