At
the annual conference at the Herod's Hotel in Eilat, Israel
Tax Authority real estate taxes division head Shay Aharonovich at the
Israel Builders Association's
said : "Our
job is first of all to bring in money, and people forget this."
"We
are a conservative body, which knows what the real estate tax
revenues are, and we know that every exemption and break will reduce
revenues. We fought against the diamond merchants, but what can you
do when a merchant can get up and go to Belgium or India. But real
estate is a bit harder to take to another country. What can you do
when there is a NIS 40 billion deficit. A Ministry of Finance official
called and asked me how many apartments change hands and I told him,
30,000. So he immediately multiplied that by 3.5% to be collected
through the purchase tax, and the Ministry of Finance has found
another NIS 1 billion for the hole."
The
Tax Authority clarified, "Aharonivich mentioned one telephone
conversation, which was part of regular wide-ranging staff work
carried out at the Ministry of Finance and Tax Authority before
making a decision on the matter.
New
Ministry of Housing and Construction director general Shlomo
Ben-Eliahu said in response, "You don’t take money when the
market is hottest, from a place which automatically raises the price
of the product. In a second, you raise the price of apartments by
4.5%. The money shouldn’t be taken from a place that is on fire,
because you're adding fuel to the fire. Yes, you need money to cover
the deficit, but you're taking it from the wrong place."
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