ONE OF THE MOST disturbing side effects of the growing acceptability of the anti-tax, anti-government movement has been the tendency of government to wink at tax cheats. The IRS has been the most notorious example of this, as it slashed its audit activity and ignored massive tax-dodge schemes through Republican and Democratic administrations.

But South Carolina Revenue Director Burnie Maybank has been an exception to that rule. Even as the top tax collector for our most anti-tax governor in generations, Mr. Maybank has been aggressive about making sure that, whatever the tax rate is, people pay the taxes the law requires them to pay.

It was Mr. Maybank, you might recall, who told legislators that if they gave him $10 million to replace auditors he had been forced to lay off, he would either collect $90 million more in unpaid taxes or else resign; he made the goal and then some. That gambit came on the heels of a move by Mr. Maybank to go after businesses that should be collecting state sales taxes on Internet purchases. (We didn’t think Mr. Maybank’s approach was the best one available, but at least he had the right goal in mind.)

Now Mr. Maybank is out front again, this time with an investigation started last year to crack down on abuse of state and federal tax breaks on land conservation easements. The tax break is designed to encourage the preservation of environmentally sensitive land; in return for a generous tax cut, landowners get to keep their land, and even sell it, but development is forever restricted. But state and federal tax officials have grown increasingly alarmed by appraisers, real estate developers and landowners who are gaming the system by inflating the value of the properties and donating easements on land that is neither environmentally sensitive nor publicly accessible — from residential backyards to exclusive golf courses.

Mr. Maybank’s probe, which dovetails with an IRS investigation, has so far identified 10 easements that he suspects are illegal, among them seven involving golf courses. As he told a U.S. Senate committee last month: “I do not believe the U.S. Congress ever intended to give huge charitable deductions for the preservation of a golf course in an exclusive, gated community.”

Some landowner groups, who have a peculiar opposition to voluntary decisions by other landowners to give up their development rights, have seized on the abuses to argue for shutting down the conservation easement program — an absurd notion. But the more common response by the anti-government crowd to tax crackdowns is to decry the government’s efforts to make people obey the law.

The simple fact of the matter is that when some people don’t pay their taxes, either the rest of us have to pay higher taxes, or else the government has to provide fewer services. We’re glad to see that the person in charge of collecting taxes for the state of South Carolina understands that.