Several years ago I wrote a newspaper article about a fresh addition to the Israeli Income Tax Ordinance that included four subparagraphs. Or, at least, there should have been four subparagraphs. The fact that there were only three made the whole thing toothless. My tongue-in-cheek piece suggested a scenario where the Knesset Finance Committee was…
Tales from the Crypto
Kurt Vonnegut famously said: 'True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country'. The G20 summit in Buenos Aires earlier this month spawned a myriad online articles about the international taxation of cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin etc). Intrigued by the efforts of my 'classmates' (most of them…
Wakey-wakey!
It is the morning of the Maths exam that will decide which, if any, university awaits the candidate. He/she suddenly realizes that he/she hasn't even started learning the syllabus. How many of us have periodically woken in a cold sweat from that nightmare in the course of our adult lives? I sometimes feel that, especially…
Bad Cumpany
If, like me, you have been wondering for decades what the European Parliament is there for, wonder no more. Following a recent vote, the august institution is considering setting up an investigations unit to tackle two humongous European fraud schemes named improbably 'cum-cum' and 'cum-ex'. The first warning that something was afoot came in 1992,…
Tax Break 