So are you protesting or simply evading tax?

MY household charge has been paid. I did it ages ago. Remember when they were talking about the pathetic uptake, the 2 per cent compliance rate? Well, that was me.

It’s not that I was falling over myself to pay it — it’s more that I’ve always had a slightly head- girlish attitude towards bills. If I don’t pay them when they land, I worry that I will forget them completely and find myself paying more as a result. Mastercard must absolutely hate me.

I paid the charge, in case you’re wondering, in the same way as I pay all my taxes and charges — with a certain amount of sighing, complaining and finally, a begrudging acceptance that if this country is to get back on its feet, it needs more money to do so.

In the case of the household charge, though, my unhappiness was compounded by a real sense that this is a desperately unfair tax, levied at the same rate on millionaires and paupers, on Bono and on families devastated by unemployment and debt. I paid it in the belief that it is a rotten tax, hastily dreamt up and barely thought through.

But now I find myself wondering about all the people who haven’t paid it.

That’s about three- quarters of those eligible, at the time of writing. Clearly, with just days remaining until the deadline for registration, a huge number of people plan not to pay.

Which is absolutely fine by me. If people are refusing to pay either because they genuinely can’t afford to or because they are making a statement of protest at a lousy, unfair tax, then I have no problem with that. I might even say that they are braver than me.

But here’s the thing: I suspect that there are an awful lot of people out there who are refusing to pay the household charge simply because they think they can get away with it.

They may well be right — but ask yourself, is simple, old-fashioned tax evasion really the same as political protest?

Surely, one of the biggest problems we face as a society is our almost innate desire to avoid tax. For what it’s worth, I don’t believe it’s entirely our own fault: 800 years of colonialism will do that for a small nation. Avoiding our financial commitments is practically part of our DNA.

Who among us has agreed to pay a tradesman cash in order to get a reduced price? I know I have. Which of us, in claiming receipts, hasn’t come across a blank taxi receipt and filled it in for a more expensive journey than usual? (Sadly, I no longer have that facility). If you got an extra tenner from an ATM machine (admittedly, it’s unlikely), would you give it back to the bank?

Put our taxation habits under the I SEE that four of Ireland’s leading bakers have been raided in connection with allegations of pricefixing in the industry. Presumably, detectives merely wanted to ascertain where they keep their dough. microscope and suddenly, it doesn’t seem a massive stretch from the man clearing gutters for cash to the property developer shoving notes in an envelope for a politician. The point is that it is this culture of breaking the rules and forever trying to pull a fast one — whatever its genesis — that has caused so many of the problems our economy now faces.

Problems that currently need to be resolved by, for example, the imposition of a household charge.

OF course, it’s far from perfect — in fact, it’s hard to imagine a more imperfect system — but it has been f oisted upon us simply because of the catastrophic economic c l i mat e caused, in part, by the very bad habits that so many people are now exhibiting in avoiding the same charge. And so the circle of corruption continues.

Don’t get me wrong: I am not for one i nstant advising people to pay the household charge. I just think that if you have made a conscious decision to avoid paying it, you need to be very clear and honest about your reasons for not doing so. Poverty and protest are excellent reasons to avoid paying tax — but simple, old-fashioned evasion never is.

Either way, you can be sure there will be consequences — not just on the private pocket and the public purse, but on the cycle of corruption that keeps this country on its knees.