Tax collection is government's oldest profession – the essential bedrock of public services.

Recorded history itself begins with wedge-shaped incisions on clay tablets detailing monies and crops owing to Mesopotamian potentates. But, in all the past four millennia, the ordeal of our own poor taxman, Dave Hartnett, must be unique. It's simply uncivilised and shouldn't happen to a permanent secretary for tax, or should it?