MONTREAL Its not much of a secret that Canadians and Americans have been drifting apart politically for some time now.

But its a less-known though increasingly obvious fact that the financial state of Canadians is also drifting away from that of Americans.

If there were such a thing as money-coloured glasses, someone wearing a pair would swear that Americans and Canadians arent even the same species.

The trend has been going on for decades now, but it accelerated during the 2008 financial crisis, when the U.S. housing market busted out amidst a debt crisis, while Canadas economy came through smelling like roses. Ever since then, the typical Canadian household has looked noticeably different, financially, from the typical American one.

Here are seven ways Canadians are now totally different from Americans when it comes to money and one way theyre surprisingly the same.

Canadians pay lower income taxes

This one may be hard to believe, especially for those of us who remember when our country was one of the worlds most-taxed jurisdictions. But for years, the U.S. has focused on reducing corporate taxes, while successive Canadian governments have made family tax benefits more generous.

The result is that today the typical Canadian family pays less in income tax than a U.S. counterpart.

According to data from the OECDs Taxing Wages survey, the employee net average tax rate in Canada was 23 per cent in 2018, compared to 23.8 per cent in the U.S. Its well below the 25.5 per cent average for the 35 countries surveyed.