State must get Revenue in order

HOW often have we heard the Revenue Commissioners warn people who evade their legal tax obligations to the State that tomorrow is the deadline for regularising their affairs?

Usually, such edicts are accompanied by dire threats that the penalties for not coughing up the money would greatly exceed the tax that the people should have paid in the first place.

When it suits, however, the State invariably abandons the principle of legal entitlement. Whenever a question arises of the Revenue repaying money which it owes to taxpayers, cynical double-standards come into play.