A lot of outrage has been sparked by the stories recently published by on companies that fail to pass on their employees' pension contributions to Government.

This is surprising. The scale of the problem has long been known and Auditor General Larry Dennis has long criticised Government ? well before 1998, when the Progressive Labour Party came to power ? for failing to actively pursue the thieves ? yes, thieves ? who collect the deductions and keep them.

The only thing that has changed is that the situation is getting worse, not better.

In more recent years, he has named and shamed those who commit these acts, and he is right to do so.

In the last year, there has been some progress on the issue. Attorney General Larry Mussenden and Finance Minister Paula Cox formed a task force to cut the arrears and pursue those who fail to either pay taxes or to pass on deductions.

Still, at the time of writing, about $10 million worth of pension money still has not been paid.

This newspaper thinks it is important to distinguish between the failure to pay taxes, such as payroll tax and land tax, and the failure to pass on deductions, nit only for the Contributory Pension Fund, but also for private pension funds that all companies are mandated to have and and for health insurance.

The difference is this. Taxes are owed by the company to Government. Deductions do not belong to the company, but to the employee and it is the employer's obligation to pass them on. The company is only a channel. When the money is not passed on but kept by the employer, it is theft, because the money was never the employer's to start with.

For that reason, Government and the criminal justice system need to treat this issue separately.

As this newspaper has said before, employers who fail to pass on deductions should be ruled as unfit to run a company and should be barred from any such role at least until they made good on the arrears.

In addition, the penalties for failing to pay the deductions have to be increased.

The current fines ? on the rare occasions anyone ends up in court ? are negligible, and while it is understood people can be fined $250 for each occasion a deduction has not been paid, a search of records suggests $250 is the maximum fine levied. As this newspaper has said before, that is not a deterrent, it is an invitation to steal.

Further, the time has come to send those people who steal from their employees to prison. After all, isn't this much worse than stealing a loaf of bread?

In his reports, Mr. Dennis has said of the tax arrears: "These deficiencies and attitudes have already bred a culture in Bermuda wherein businesses and others view the payment of amounts owing to Government as optional, avoidable or evadable."

He is right and that is an indictment on this community.