The British have always been a supremely pragmatic people. It was thanks to a fickle king that they knocked religious hegemony on the head early on, and thanks to another misguided monarch that they got their revolution out of the way before the Rousseaus, Marxes and Engels of the world could fill the vacuum with an ideology. Indeed, it was the utterly pragmatic empiricist John Locke who tidied up the mess in the latter half of the seventeenth century.

It is, therefore, no surprise that – despite the cataclysmic events in Parliament surrounding Brexit – the British Government has been beavering away, preparing for the morning after (which, because Brexit is planned for the night of Friday March 29th, will be effectively Monday April Fools Day).

The big news from Davos last week was that Britain and Israel have confirmed ‘in principle’ a Free Trade Agreement similar to that enjoyed between the EU and Israel. With £10 billion of trade, that is eminently sensible for both parties. What received less coverage was the signing  a few days earlier of a protocol to the double taxation agreement between the two countries that dates back to 1962.

Protocols amend treaties. Hearing the words ‘protocol’, ‘tax’, ‘treaty’, ‘Israel’, ‘UK ” (not strictly a word) in the same sentence came as no surprise to my tax-attuned ear. What with all the OECD changes in respect of Base Earnings and Profit Shifting (BEPS) and the automatic exchange of information, protocols are the name of the day. The media reports (that all appeared to stem from the same press release) gave a few details of new provisions and mentioned the obvious. It was only when I downloaded and read the document (who, for heaven’s sake, ruins the party by reading primary sources these days?), that I realized the enormity of what had happened. Perfidious Albion, God bless her!

Israel and the UK initialed a new treaty to replace the 1962 one way back in 2009. I remember it well, because I was informally consulted just before initialling, and found a couple of boo-boos. In order for a treaty to take effect, each country needs to take it through whatever processes its domestic law requires – but the stages are identical: initialling, signing, ratifying. In the UK, following the signing,  an Order in Council is issued. That is a process where a Government representative rattles off the wording of a load of boring regulations while the Queen listens (yeh, sure!) and, in the case of a tax treaty or protocol, it goes to a delegated  legislation committee, where it is considered and then brought before Parliament. It can then be ratified.

The 2009 treaty hit a total snafu after initialling. The original 1962 treaty bore the wording: ‘the term “Israel” means the territory in which the Government of Israel
levy (sic) taxation’, and  ‘the terms “resident of the United Kingdom” and “resident of Israel” mean respectively any person who is resident in the United Kingdom for the
purposes of United Kingdom tax and any person who is resident in Israel for
the purposes of Israel tax’. It was widely understood that somebody in London (I hazard a guess, from the Foreign Office) decided that Israeli residents of Judea and Samaria aka the West Bank aka the Occupied Territories should not be included. That was never going to pass muster with  the Israeli Government, and both sides got back in their trenches for the next decade.

But, times change, and these days it might be cheekily argued that go-it-alone Britain needs Israel more than Israel needs Britain (although Britain is still a very-nice-to-have). And that treaty is seriously prehistoric. Meanwhile, as Professor Emeritus of Empire Building, Britain had to watch its step.

Then came the Eureka! moment. It was time to sign protocols with treaty partners. A month after  the UK’s High Commissioner in Cyprus signed with the Cypriots, a British government representative signed with the Israelis. But, there was a subtle difference. The Cypriot protocol ran to a familiar 3 pages; the Israeli protocol ran to an eye-boggling 19. The British and Israelis had effectively shoehorned the long-dormant new treaty into the Protocol, simply passing over the naughty bits.

The signatory for the British Government was one Mel Stride, Paymaster-General – a name and title which, together with the plot, could have come straight out of a John Le Carre novel.

All that now remains is for the Queen to cock a deaf’un, and for Parliament to be pre-occupied with Brexit. (Israel also needs to ratify).

As regards the new provisions, they can be easily found popping up all over the internet in the same form as they were initially announced.  What seems to have escaped the journalists’ attention is the long-awaited exemption on UK pensions received by Israeli residents (as opposed to the highly-specific exemption from withholding tax on interest and dividends to Israeli pension funds, which was included). New and potential expats, benefiting from a ten year tax exemption on foreign sourced income in Israel,  should be talking to their advisors.