The tax amnesty announced by the Minister of Finance has yet again caused another public controversy with many arguing that the decision breaches fiscal morality. Through the amnesty, the government aims to collect at least part of the €600 million in overdue tax arrears owed by taxpayers who have defaulted on their payments over the last 60 years.

The logic that a tax amnesty encourages cunning taxpayers to avoid paying tax that is due and wait until an amnesty is granted is easy to understand. So is the sense of anger of those who judge such a measure as going against all principles of fairness. It may seem that those who abide by the law and pay their taxes when due incur a higher cost than those who fail to honour their fiscal obligations.

Some, like the Minister of Finance, argue that one has to be pragmatic and try to untangle this complex long-standing fiscal problem by smoothing out the legal issues through a negotiated settlement. Any money flowing into the government's coffers as a result of such an amnesty should ease the pressure on public finances and avert further taxes that would otherwise be necessary.

Tax amnesties are not necessarily fiscally immoral. They can sometimes lead to easing the burden of general taxation, even if it is acknowledged that such amnesties often appear to be unfair to law-abiding citizens. However, the introduction of such amnesties has to be supported by sufficient information to help people understand the government's justification of such a decision.

Many consider that the latest tax amnesty was not sufficiently supported by such information. For instance, what type of taxpayers have actually defaulted? Is it mainly small businesses, large businesses, self-employed professional people or foreign companies?

Is the amount due undisputed by those who have defaulted or is a large part of it merely claims made by the Inland Revenue Department based on their assessment of self-employed taxpayers' income or profits?

What legal measures has the Inland Revenue Department taken over the years to recover this money? How many cases were taken to court and why are some cases not referred to the courts? Are there any legal weaknesses in the Inland Revenue Department's stand that prevent it from proceeding legally against individual taxpayers?

Is the timing of this amnesty appropriate, considering that in the present difficult economic situation even those defaulters who would like to take up the offer made may, in fact, not have the cash flow available to pay their dues in one lump sum? Had the answers to these and other questions been pre-empted by a well-argued justification for this amnesty, there could have been less bad feeling for this measure on the part of the big majority who are law-abiding.

At a time when one expects to see further reductions in state subsidies, it is more than understandable that ordinary people feel this is the price they have to pay for the government's inability to collect the tax due to it.

No government that believes in fiscal morality can risk alienating public opinion by introducing schemes that appear to favour the dishonest or the cunning at the expense of the honest and law-abiding. The Minister of Finance has no doubt been inspired by economic pragmatism when he announced this scheme.

So one expects that, in the coming weeks, the government would publish all the information that led it to take this controversial fiscal measure.