The arrogant tone of Dave the tax gatherer won’t lead to reconciliation

Another time,’ began the Gospel reading last Sunday, ‘the tax gatherers and other bad characters were all crowding in to listen…’ Bible scholars will have spotted that our curate chose the New English version of the parable of the lost sheep, and that ‘tax gatherers and other bad characters’ is the modern rendering of ‘publicans and sinners’.

Another time,’ began the Gospel reading last Sunday, ‘the tax gatherers and other bad characters were all crowding in to listen…’ Bible scholars will have spotted that our curate chose the New English version of the parable of the lost sheep, and that ‘tax gatherers and other bad characters’ is the modern rendering of ‘publicans and sinners’. Publicani were the Roman imperial equivalent of ‘Dave’ Hartnett, the permanent secretary at HM Revenue and Customs who has been widely condemned as a bad character after a radio interview in which he denied that £2 billion of miscalculated tax, which will result in additional demands on 1.4 million citizens, constituted a cock-up that merited an apology. Instead he dismissed it as a ‘reconciliation’ — and was ordered by someone adjacent to George Osborne to declare himself ‘deeply sorry’, though this belated abasement did little to lower the heat.

The story highlights the need for all tax gatherers (including the keepers of HMRC’s online payment site) to modulate their tone in current fiscal circumstances. At a time when we’re all going to be paying more tax for less public service and feeling our after-tax income squeezed, officialdom needs to sound firm but regretful, like the headmaster who says, ‘This is going to hurt me as much as it hurts you.’ We know times are tough but we need your co-operation and we promise not to waste a penny of your taxes: that is the message that needs to come across.