A number of weeks ago, the Ministerial Committee for
Administration and Organization decided to establish new
regulations which will levy taxes on businesses operating in
structures which haven't received building and occupancy
permits.
According to an article in Globes, the committee asked
the Finance Minister to establish new regulations within the
framework of the income tax law. According to these new
regulations, expenses for rentals, losses, renovations and
the like incurred by businesses which operate in illegal
buildings will not be recognized for tax purposes. Since the
appearance of that article, kibbutz businessmen have been
pressuring various government ministers to cancel that
decision of the ministerial committee.
The proposed decision in the ministerial committee was made
by Religious Affairs Minister Yitzchak Cohen, and was
approved by a majority. Cohen said that this decision imposes
sanctions on business owners in the kibbutzim and in various
other places, many of whom desecrate Shabbos publicly. While
fully justified on their own merit, these new regulations
will also adversely affect all those Shabbos desecraters, if
not directly, then indirectly.
The new regulations will make it uneconomic to operate
businesses in illegal buildings -- among them businesses
which in kibbutzim such as Gaash, Shefayim, Batzra, Bilu and
hundreds of other places -- where business are located in
structures built on land zoned for agricultural use, where
the various planning committees never approved the change in
the use of the land. These businesses have no permits to
operate in such buildings, and their owners will have
increased tax expenses due to the illegal operations.
A letter sent by director of the Israel Land Administration
Avi Drexler to Minister Chaim Ramon, who wrote Drexler in
response to the appeals of commercial bodies to him,
indicates that there are many such illegal buildings on
agricultural land. "This is an economic process which will be
more effective than demands to vacate and destroy these non-
agricultural structures built on land zoned for agricultural
use," Drexler writes.
