Taxing problem, but resistance will be futile

FANS of Star Trek will be familiar with the Borg: a race of ruthless, emotionless automatons who tour the galaxy in square space ships enslaving planets and converting their inhabitants into even more Borg.

Invading and enslaving is pretty much all the Borg do. They don’t have whist drives or an amateur theatre group. They arrive at a new planet, broadcast their jolly catchphrase — Resistance is Futile — and then set to work.

Resistance is Futile was the not-so-subtle subtext of last week’s announcements about the property tax. Queen of the Borg, Josephine Feehily of the Revenue Commissioners, laid out in blood-chilling tones how the new tax will be collected: We will send out the letter. You will pay.

If you refuse to pay, we will take it out of your bank account or your pension or your social welfare payments. Or a Borg drone will come to your house, get you in a full body hug and absorb the money from you. Even TDs who attempt not to pay will find that they can no longer operate as TDs because they won’t have a tax clearance cert.

Since then there have been a few mutterings about how mean and pitiless it all sounded and how, once again, the passive Irish are allowing themselves to be bullied into doing what the Government wants with barely a word of complaint.

Which is perhaps a wee bit unfair to the Revenue Commissioners. Their job, after all, is to collect tax and kick ass if they don’t get it — and Josephine Feehily’s terrifying performance last week showed us someone who is obviously capable of doing both.

At a time when there’s so much private-sector bitching about the supposedly cossetted public sector, wasn’t it heartening to see a public servant who is clearly worth whatever she’s paid? Anyway, there was good reason for her tough approach: it works. The Revenue has done its own research that shows that the polite, come-to-Jesus letter is nowhere near as effective as the pay-up-or-else letter. This time last year only half of us had paid the household charge. But was this out of a principled objection or because we were expected to go onto a website and volunteer to pay?

Of course, no one likes paying taxes, but we seem particularly allergic to it in this country. Perhaps tax still has some colonial associations. Or perhaps we’re just a nation of chancers. But a repeated Government failure to point out what specific services we get in return for those taxes only gives succour to those looking for an excuse not to cough up the shekels.

Then again, in the next few months we’ll find out just how many desperate families there are in this country that simply can’t afford to pay any more. Resistance might be futile, but it may happen anyway.