a very interesting talk with MKs Sheli Yachimovitch (Labor) and Moshe Gafni (UTJ) about legislation, haredim and hilonim working together, and some behind the scenes secrets from the finance committee...

Today's Facebook Status of the Day goes to Sheli Yachimovitch, writing about the recent announcement of Idan Ofer's decision to move to London. Idan Ofer is the wealthiest person in Israel.





Translation:
Hi, this is Sheli.
Why, why are you abandoning us, Idan Ofer?
The richest Israeli in the world is moving to England.
It is difficult for him here.
It did not help that he is the richest person in our small country.
It did not help that we gave our Dead Sea to his family business, in exchange for minor payments.
The billions he made, and the billions in tax benefits that we gave him, did not help.
It did not help that he was given for a bowl of lentils control over the shipping industry of the country.
It did not help that the doors of the politicians were always open to him to hear what he suffers through.
It did not help that the new Finance Minister is completely similar to his predecessors, and nobody will prevent his partying from continuing.
It did not help that Israel is the one country in the West that does not take inheritance tax from the gigantic inheritance that was placed in his lap.
So why, why are you abandoning us, Idan Ofer?
Maybe it is the high cost of living that broke you? The price of cottage cheese at the makolet in Arsuf? The planned increase for university tuition? Or maybe it has become clear that even as you got more and more and more, you can still take more and more and more.
Listen, his tax advisers said to him, in London they made it even easier. Especially when you are a billionaire in London, and people are even more generous with foreign billionaires.
In London they made a special status for non-citizen residents, that basically exempts them from paying taxes on income and on capital gains.
You wont believe it, his advisers said, after all that you milked form the State - you can now pay your country even less taxes.
And then he agreed that the time had come to change his environment ad move to London, because after all if one is going to live like a billionaire at least the television should be worthwhile television!

The ending is a little weak, but for most of it Yachimovitch is very sharp in her criticism of Ofer, though she is wrong. Idan Ofer is a free man, living in a free country. He has no obligation to stay, and if Israel does not continue to give him incentive to leave, he has the right to leave. Perhaps it is morally wrong on his part, perhaps he comes off as greedy, but that is his decision. The State was wrong for not making all the benefits given to him conditional on his continued presence for x number of years, or some other condition that would have guaranteed his staying in Israel  Or Israel could have offered him even more benefits.

It is a free world and he can live wherever he wants. He, and his family, earned his money through mostly hard work, and Israel gave him benefits because Israel was gaining from it as well. He doesn't owe anybody anything. It is a big loss to Israel, and if everything Sheli says he benefited from is true Israel comes out looking like a freier to the highest degree, but maybe Israel will learn for the future to make such benefits offered to the wealthy to be conditional or to structure them in a way that Israel will continue to benefit.

Yishai makes 'hottest guys in Israeli politics' list

-- Jpost

this made me chuckle. The irony of a gay magazine selecting Eli Yishai as one of the hottest guys is just too much. Another strange thing about this is Labor leader Shelly Yachimovitch, a female, making the list as well.

Tell me, how should all those idiots who paid their taxes on time feel? What are they supposed to think now? People kept the law, they paid their taxes to the Tax Authority, whether it was individuals or businesses - what are they supposed to think? That they were suckers? they were idiots? That one day the Finance Minister would come along and change the law to benefit those who did not pay and waited it out for the right time?

  -- MK Shelly Yachimovitch, regarding the Finance Ministers decision to wipe out some backtaxes owed by the huge conglomerates..


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MK Shelly Yachimovitch's speech saying "you are out of your minds"

Yachimovitch is great. It is unfortunate that the party she heads is the Labor party...


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