The importance of Geoffrey Walker’s paper is that it shows the price we are paying as a nation for government’s failure to keep its tax demands within reasonable bounds. It is bad enough that escalating taxation is undermining enterprise, penalising initiative and destroying the will to work. When we add to this the corrosive effects it is having on the fundamental principles of the rule of law, and on the moral relationship between the state and its citizens, the case for fundamental reform becomes even more compelling.