Language is notoriously ambiguous, especially when it comes to official documents. A hundred years ago, the traitor Sir Roger Casement was hanged on a comma in the English Treason Act of 1351. Just this week, I had a long discussion around an exceptionally poorly worded clause in the Israel Income Tax Ordinance, the various interpretations…
Mass hysteria is not a concept normally associated with the local tax community, but the hype in recent months around an impending change in partnership tax law is having its effect. The situation is analogous to a hot air balloon, into which hot air continues to be injected until, eventually, the balloon leaves the ground…
If I had to admit to my biggest professional failure over a long career, it would be ‘telling it like it is’. Not for me the, ‘Oh my God! I don’t believe you did that, and if you don’t use my very expensive services, you may be heading for prison,’ when the true risk of…
‘But he was always good to his mother,’ has been applied to more gangsters from the golden age of crime than history suggests is reasonable. ‘But he has always paid taxes,’ may not have applied to Al Capone, but it is the defense heard over the years for many upright non-taxpaying immigrants to Israel, who…
In Plato’s Republic, Socrates is presented with the cynical argument that the appearance of justice is more important than the reality of it, an idea taken up two millennia later by Machiavelli in The Prince. The General Court of the European Union’s rejection yesterday of the EU Commission’s claim that Ireland had given illegal state…
For the last three and a half months I have felt like the protagonist in Monty Python’s ‘The Day Nothing Happened’. As the real world has been fighting to keep its COVID-19 head above water, the tax world has been treading water. A recent Israeli court case that surfaced last week, however, jolted the rose-tinted…
Last Sunday, the High Court clipped the wig of a first-class judge - and the tax community in general - in a landmark decision overturning a lower court’s ruling. It reminded me of the reaction I received from a tax authority official to an article I wrote at the turn of the century for a…
Years ago, before Millennials stalked the earth, I received a call from the Israeli tax authorities. ‘When is your client going to approach us regarding the capital gains tax on their transaction?’ I was duly impressed by the fact the inspector had read that morning’s paper and put two and two together, and was…
On New Year’s Eve, a man’s thoughts turn to the year that has just flown by. On the eve of a new decade, a man’s thoughts turn to the decades of his life that are lost. What has happened since I sat glued to my grandparents’ gogglebox at five to midnight on Hogmanay in…
Chanukah and Christmas – which coincide this year - are both, in their distinct ways, about miracles that took place within theoretical walking distance of where I am now sitting. Another miracle that took place last week would have needed the car – the Lod District Court ruled against the Israel Tax Authority (ITA)…
Tax Break 