Around the turn of the century, British left-wing tabloid, The Daily Mirror, had a very short-lived flirtation with serious journalism, signified by the change of its banner from red to black, and the use of words like ‘proletariat’ instead of ‘sex’.  One of the serious broadsheets ran an editorial a few days into the experiment stating that the Mirror had ‘gone from talking bollocks about trivial things, to talking bollocks about serious things’. As is being proven once again in the contest for the Democrat to challenge President Trump next year, a socialist message is much harder to formulate and get across than a conservative one.

When it comes to taxation, income taxation – in its modern guise – has socialist leanings (even in conservative societies). It is a progressive tax that seeks fairness with redistribution of income between the wealthiest and the poorest. As such, it is also a complex tax that is the Play-Doh of tax advisors who juggle, shape and interpret it. VAT, on the other hand, is a regressive tax that broadly comes in one-size-for-all, take it or leave it (and if you leave it –risk going to jail).

We were reminded of the primitivism of the specific Israeli incarnation of Value Added Tax last week, in a court decision in which the judge made very clear that, despite her desire for fairness, her hands were tied by a law that – though she would never have used the term – is an ass. And an expensive ass, at that.

Israel, like most countries operating a VAT system, does not insist on VAT being charged on exports or services to foreign residents. The reasoning is simple – to improve competitiveness with foreigners. Way back, the Israeli legislature saw fit to include an exception regarding services, ‘if the subject of the agreement is the provision of a service in practice to an Israeli resident in Israel’.  Fair dinkum. There was no justification for unfairly improving competitiveness with other Israelis.

But, not satisfied with their status as children of a lesser god,  VAT practitioners thought they could juggle and shape the Play Doh. What if the service was partially for a foreign resident and partially for an Israeli? If the amount were charged abroad, VAT would be an emphatic – and hardly fair – zero.

So, following a court decision around the time the Daily Mirror was making a fool of itself, the legislature tightened the wording to, ‘if the subject of the agreement is the provision of a service in practice, in addition to a foreign resident, to an Israeli resident in Israel’.

And that is why laws are far too important to be left in the hands of lawmakers.

The result was a car crash. The exporter was to be sacrificed on the altar of obsession – the car chase between the tax authorities and smart-arse tax avoiders, where collateral deaths were just an unfortunate statistic. As soon as there was any trace of an Israeli recipient of a service, the whole charge – lock, stock and barrel – was to attract VAT.

The latest case last week, in which the only good news for the appellant was that the judge limited costs, did allow for the possibility of negligible or subordinate services sneaking through. But, the rest of the news was grim.

What it all means is that, until such time as the legislature (which has been in suspended animation throughout 2019) hopefully listens to the judge and gets its act together, the reinvigorated VAT authorities are likely to be on the prowl for those charging  zero rate VAT without legal justification. Conservatives are, after all,  all about law and order.