The next time you get pestered to pay the climate change levy or some other environmental tax, you could remind the friendly local tax inspector about what HM Revenue & Customs is doing to combat environmental problems.

HMRC’s latest sustainable development report is out, and makes for some grim reading. A series of targets are listed, many of them ‘not met’. ‘Reduce carbon emissions by 12.5% by 2010-11: not on course, but work ongoing.’ ‘Increase energy efficiency by 15% by 2010-11: not on course, but work ongoing,’ the report says.

HMRC’s waste management is a particularly poor area, where it hasn’t even calculated its waste, let alone reduced it by its stated target. It also wants a strategy for ‘sustainable procurement’, whatever that might be (is it sustaining EDS’s fortunes perhaps?) Needless to say, it hasn’t been achieved.

OK, so some of its targets have been reached, but that’s not the point. The tax inspectors are not going to allow you to pay just a bit of the tax now are they?