It’s easy to bash the Tax Department. The anti-government mood that has gripped the nation in recent years has persuaded some people that paying taxes is akin to being fleeced by Bernard Madoff.

On the other hand, we have the oft-cited quotation from Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who said, “I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.” Civilization is what we get when we pay for schools, roads, water systems, pollution controls, hospitals, research institutions, and protection from crime, not to mention symphony orchestras, libraries, museums, theaters and opera houses. Thus, when we hear complaints about the state Tax Department, we may conclude that the problem is obdurate bureaucrats issuing edicts in arbitrary fashion. Or maybe the problem is whiny taxpayers unwilling to do their part for civilization.

It would seem the complaints we have heard recently fall short of either extreme. As the Legislature considers a response to recent problems that have cropped up recently, it ought to heed the words of Sen. Ann Cummings, who said, “I don’t think we want to breed disrespect for the Tax Department, and I don’t think we want people to think they can come to the Legislature and overrule the Tax Department.” At the same time, the Tax Department’s practices and policies need to be examined to protect taxpayers from patterns of behavior that are not fair. Some problems have cropped up because the law is vague.

This appears to be the case with The Gables, a residence for the elderly in Rutland Town that received a bill in December for $350,000 for back meals taxes. The law exempts homes for the aged from the meals tax, but for some reason the Tax Department found that The Gables did not fall into that category. When the interpretation of English language by the executive branch departs so widely from ordinary language, it falls to the Legislature to sort things out.

In other instances, the Tax Department appears to have levied back taxes against businesses because of changes in interpretation of the law that took place many years ago that were never enforced until now. It is a dilemma for the Tax Department: If it is to correct lax enforcement of the past, it is going to have to start collecting money that went uncollected before. So which is worse: the failure to collect taxes in the past or imposing them now?

The Tax Department hired 16 new auditors in 2009 to beef up revenue collections. In fact, it benefits everyone if the department works aggressively to make sure everyone who owes money pays it. In Washington one of the failings of the administration of President George W. Bush was the underfunding of the Internal Revenue Service, which weakened the agency’s ability to collect taxes, allowing scofflaws off the hook and forcing up the tax bills of everyone else. It was all part of the Republican anti-government philosophy that resembles an anything-goes American version of Greece.

So getting 16 additional auditors on the job ought to help ensure that everyone in Vermont is paying his or her fair share. But as the Tax Department gets more strict about enforcing the tax law, a variety of businesses have found themselves exposed to unexpected tax liabilities.

These include the business that found it had to pay a meals tax on the labor it hired to work at events. It includes taxes on a New York ad agency that transmitted graphic designs to Vermont electronically. It includes fuel taxes for home businesses. There are others.

It’s hard for a business to accept the need to pay taxes it didn’t know it owed when the Tax Department itself didn’t know the taxes were owed. Maybe the role of the Legislature is not to create loopholes for unhappy businesses but to hold the Tax Department accountable if it has failed to notify taxpayers or enforce collections in a timely manner. After all, taxes are not bad. If we are going to be grown-ups about it, we don’t whine. But nor do we like to roll over when treated unfairly.