Sometimes you just gotta love Shas. They have become experts at taking advantage of their political power for benefiting themselves, and in the process others.

Yesterday Shas submitted a law for voting, that passed the initial vote (and now has to pass the final votes), that would exempt batei medrash and the social halls of shuls from paying arnona.

Currently only shuls are exempt from paying arnona, but if they have social halls they are obligated to pay.

The proposed law came under fire from the opposition claiming that shuls are already exempt, so changing that to also exempt social halls and other offices fictitiously used as shuls is a cynical abuse of power to squeeze more money out of the people in the form of tax exemptions for what are ostensibly businesses and nothing to do with religion.