Taxes and Income Transparency Report

Before I begin exposing the details of our taxation to you all, I wanted to encourage everyone to make sure their subscription is still good to go over on the website– it’s been mostly stress free getting off of substack, but there’s been some minor glitches and some people have been lost in the transfer. Unsurprising, but still challenging for the pocketbook. Regardless, I will be continuing on, but if you wouldn’t mind double checking your own subscription, that would be great!

As all of you know, On the Trail is completely reader funded.

In the beginning, I had been open to working with companies such as ground news, but at this point I am uninterested in taking money from corporations. I have no problem working with small, local companies, or doing collaborations with excellent journals such as The Rover and Pivot (my two biggest collaborators)– or even if there are grants that come in, although the problem with grants is that they're temporary.

That being said, I remain committed to being reader funded. There’s something special going on here, and I think everyone knows it. Despite the fact that this continues being one of the smaller publications active in Canada, we have a real good thing going on here. I try to make myself available for all of you, all you need to do is reply to this email and it'll go straight to my work inbox!

Right now, I remain a small player with around 4700 subscribers to this little newsletter. But you’ve all provided me with enough money to keep going, to pay for my rent, and to continue working in an exceptionally tough time for Canadians. There’s also an insane diversity of audience members who read this publication– I’m happy to tell you that the diverse backgrounds of people and the fun characters who follow this work is amazing, and I hope that it never stops being such a strange little coalition.

This little publication has the possibility of growing rapidly. The most important thing for me is that I grow rapidly while simultaneously maintaining our ethics, and values. I wouldn’t have grown like this without being open and transparent. Much of our style is inherited from The Rover, who, frankly, are the reason I exist today. And so, in another effort to copy them, I am showing you exactly how much I made last year, and how I made it. 

How much did I make

Last year on Substack I made $30,820.12, and I was paid $6435.90 in freelancing fees from the various publications I work with.

I had around $7500 of “subcontractors” (amount I paid to people working with me). I also paid another $13,241.04 in business expenses (I could claim about half that to Revenu Quebec). Add in a few more expenses, and another $7000 in expenses beyond that last year.

The calculation in Quebec is a bit weird– the Federal government said my taxable income was $9730, but Quebec said it was more.

I owed nothing to the Federal government.

I owed $1349.66 in taxes to the Quebec government. Obviously, since I pay taxes at the end of every year, I do not get a tax return.

The money I make on the website is split fairly equally between monthly supporters ($5 a month) and yearly supporters. 

As of March 2026, there are around 800 active paying subscribers, although switching from substack to the new website means I lost about 60 of them through uncontrollable circumstances. It will take a while to rebuild these supporters, equalling about $500 per month. 

The largest individual contributors to the support are the $50 yearly plan and the $5 monthly plan, which together account for nearly 83% of my total revenue. The rest are the other plans. The fact that I have so many paying the lowest tier is an example of how far I can go when dividing costs among many of us– instead of relying on a single donor for huge sums of money, I’m relying on all of you and this combined effort, where no one is taking too much of a burden, is able to help me float along.

Substack was taking up to 20 per cent of every transaction– specifically if you were giving $5 a month, I was getting about $4 from that. For those who paid annual fees, Substack took about 15 per cent. Now, I’m getting  $4.88 per $5 paid. This means that your support is going much further. 88 cents more per month from 800 people adds up! A bit.

The churn rates (people unsubscribing) are fairly low, and that blows my mind. In August last year, I had thousands of people sign up. I am a realist. I am expecting many of those same people to unsubscribe this year in August– a lot of them may have only wanted to support me for a short period of time, people's financial situations may have changed, some people may feel they didn't get their money's worth, etc... all reasons are viable.

My calculations, based on economic trends and average churn rates, is that 50 per cent of them will unsubscribe. I will lose $6000 dollars from my annual income from that, therefore.

The current amount of people paying for the publication is unlikely to be maintained long term, since it is higher than the average publication. Most publications have between 5-10 per cent of their total free subscribers as paying subscribers. I have about 17 per cent. This reflects something deeply special, I think. It's also unrealistic to expect it to continue. There will most likely be a return to the mean. That's normal, but it'll be tough!

In order to keep going, I have to be quite vigilant about my production, and continue to maintain my work throughout it all, as well as continuing to try finding new sources of revenue from every direction.

As per usual, instead of seeking corporate income, I will continue grassroots fundraising. Hopefully, we will grow through the forthcoming work.

Onward

We’ve released so much lately. An analysis of the current state of the NDP, an investigation into the data behind future pandemics, we’ve bounced off the Rover by carrying forward with their reporting on the EMSB, we’ve reported on the Legault government and this Saturday I released our report on the state of policing in Montreal. I have several reports coming out with freelancers in the next few weeks, because I want to work with more people.

Upcoming reports include a historical breakdown of the obsessive nature of deficits in Canadian governments, a piece about the sovereignty impacts of petrol reliance, I’ve been working with the Walrus on two pieces (both are in the editing phase, they don’t work on the breakneck pace that I do because they’re normal), work with Briarpatch, and more! It’s all made possible by this support. 

As I go forward, I plan to continue growing and proving to everyone that we’re the best publication around. I want to do the most hardcore work, with the most effective product. I hope I can grow in reputation, and constantly keep our ear to the ground, stay humble, listen to feedback and stay strangely diverse. 

One of the most interesting parts of my work is that I don’t really have a single thing I write about; I think I write about money a lot but that’s why On the Trail is our name. Meanwhile, I’m greatly interested by a broad variety of things– all domestically focused. If you want to help us grow and keep going, there are multiple paths: First, obviously, you can sign up as a paid subscriber. 

But more than that, you can share with your friends, and tell those close to you to subscribe. If you’re an activist organization, or political organization, share our work with your subscribers. If you’re another news organization, share our work with your subscribers. This publication has a list of people I recommend, which is bound to grow! When anyone signs up, they are recommended to other newsletters. Help me grow with that!

I’m committed to what’s in my ethics disclosure, which is now available in both French and English, and I’m committed to staying humble. I make mistakes, and I have character flaws. But that’s why people support us. I will continue being transparent, because I believe in something at On the Trail. And hopefully as time goes on, I will be able to become big enough to affect greater change. For now, that’s it. I hope you liked our transparency report, and if you want to help, please do! Thank you as always.

Isaac Peltz