Blue and White boycott the vote but did not torpedo it.
By GIL HOFFMANHead of the Knesset Finance Committee, Moshe Gafni, at the vote for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's request for tax refunds, June 23, 2020(photo credit: KNESSET SPOKESPERSON'S OFFICE)
In a stormy meeting, the Knesset Finance Committee voted 8 to 5 on Tuesday afternoon to approve Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request for nine years of tax refunds on expenses for his work as prime minister at his private home in Caesarea that were paid by the state.The coalition succeeded in passing the proposal, despite Blue and White MKs boycotting the meeting, because Blue and White had given Likud one of its places on the committee in the coalition agreement. Blue and White has two MKs on the committee, but they chose not to come vote against the proposal.Coalition chairman Miki Zohar (Likud) told the committee that the taxes Netanyahu was asked to pay were unprecedented, unfair and would leave the prime minister “financially handicapped.” He said the prime minister was being “persecuted.”“Does it seem sensible to you that the prime minister of Israel, who has the most complex job in the Middle East and maybe the world – will only make NIS 17,000 a month after taxes?” Zohar asked.Opposition MKs said they spoke to MKs in Blue and White, who told them privately that they were too ashamed to vote for the allocation of hundreds of thousands of shekels to Netanyahu. But they also could not violate coalition discipline by voting against the proposal.Yesh Atid MK Mickey Levy, a former Jerusalem police chief, asked for a summons for Blue and White leader Benny Gantz and members of his party.Prime Minister’s Office interim director-general Ronen Peretz told the committee that the rules for funding the prime minister’s official and private residences had been set in 1982 and since then, no prime minister was asked to return taxes on expenses.“It doesn’t matter if the expenses were NIS 100 or 1 million,” he said. “This was the rule, and it hasn’t changed.”A Tax Authority representative told the committee that former prime ministers Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon did not pay taxes on expenses received from the state for their private residences, because they never asked the state to pay for any of their expenses.In 2017, the Likud passed a bill formally making the prime minister exempt from paying taxes on expenses for his work at his private residence. At the time, the Tax Authority said they would not ask for past expenses retroactively. When the Tax Authority asked for the money anyway, Netanyahu asked the Finance Committee to amend the law.
The tax refunds were formally requested by Peretz from the Finance Committee to repay the money for services and benefits, excluding paychecks and pension, in the time between January 1, 2009, and December 31, 2017.The committee had been set to vote later Tuesday on a proposal to fund the office of Alternate Prime Minister, which is currently held by Gantz and is set to be Netanyahu’s role when they switch roles in November 2021, according to the coalition agreement. But the vote was pushed off until next week, apparently at Blue and White’s request.Gantz has asked Finance Committee head Moshe Gafni to not take several of the benefits tied to his post, but the coalition agreement and laws would have to be changed for that concession.Channel 12 reported that Blue and White will oppose adding any additional benefits to the Prime Minister’s Office and is “ready to instigate a coalition crisis” on the matter.Opposition leader Yair Lapid responded to Tuesday’s vote by saying that it had proven false Gantz’s justification for joining the government.“Today it was proven that you cannot fight against corruption from inside,” Lapid said. “If you are inside, you are part of it.”
