When wage earners have the tax due to the government deducted down to the lowest cent without fail, it is only justifiable to expect a deep sense of outrage when the National Audit Office regularly reports of serious shortcomings in tax collection. Yet, in an island of contradictions and long-running controversies, sometimes even over trivial matters, hardly a ripple is raised.

Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee has just been told that the government is owed a staggering €3 billion in tax arrears, mostly in income tax, value added tax and Customs dues. Particularly shocking and scandalous is that the government has no chance of collecting most of the amount because it is probably statute-barred. The Auditor General told the committee the arrears date back decades. Which means that little or no action had been taken over the years to collect what was due to the exchequer. It appears that this glaring shortcoming has been accepted as the norm not just by most ordinary taxpayers but, apparently, even by the administration. So, as the situation stands today, the exchequer has lost €3 billion in arrears, a huge sum by any standard but, particularly, when considering the size of the government’s finances.

But what about the part of the amount that can still be legally retrieved? Why has it remained so? The prompt reply from the Auditor General, as reported in this newspaper, was: “Ask the departments.” And here lies the rub. The inference is that it remains uncollected mainly due to the departments’ lack of enforcement.

Why should this be the case when it can hardly be said that the departments are understaffed? Do the ministries not have officers in charge of tax collection? If there are lacunae in this aspect of the administration, should not the permanent secretaries step in to see to the problem in time? And if these too fail, should not the ministers intervene?

It would be wrong to generalise because there are most certainly units within the public service that operate efficiently in this regard. But, surely, the Auditor General would have not raised the matter at a Public Accounts Committee meeting had the situation not given cause for concern.

He raised another very important point, noting that the work carried out by his office would be useless unless the committee had the will to hold ministries to account and make them carry out the recommendations made by the Audit Office.

Again, the implication is that there are ministries that are not cooperating enough. This is simply not acceptable. Worse, if the Public Accounts Committee does not have the will to do what the Auditor General is expecting it to, who will bell the cat?

The committee’s main roles are to scrutinise and assess the financial administration of the public sector and to promote improvements where necessary, encourage the economic, efficient and effective utilisation of public sector resources and enhance the accountability of the executive government to Parliament and the public.

What is the use of having a Public Accounts Committee if it does not meet the expectations of the Audit Office and of the public? Every administration has so far wriggled out of this morass scot-free but, clearly, the charade ought to be checked once and for all.

This is a Times of Malta print editorial