Forty Years of Tax Law in Israel

Abstract

In order to determine what major developments have taken place in tax law in Israel over the last 40 years, it is first necessary to formulate criteria with which to estimate the importance or centrality of changes in tax legislation. The emphasis here is on legal developments (in legislation and case law) rather than on changes in the tax system and tax policy. In the field of taxation, legal, economic and social questions are, however, interlinked; and it is moreover, a legal tool — legislation — that determines the tax system and its composition of various tax bases.

Professionals' Contribution to the Legislative Process: Between Self, Client, and the Public

“…Since before Israeli independence and until quite recently, residents of Palestine and, later, Israel were subject to both a heavy tax burden (Morag 1967, 73–76, 79; Yoran 1990, 740–41; Yitzhaki 2005; Nissim 2005; Suary and Paserman 2005, 260–62) and a heavy burden of regulatory restrictions on transactions involving foreign parties, as well as on Israelis' holding foreign currency locally and holding assets of any type abroad (Barkai 2004, 81–82; Michaely 2004). Israelis holding of assets, capital and income, abroad required, until the late 1990s, a permit from the foreign currency control department at the Bank of Israel.…”