The green envelope of the Tax Authority (photo by shutterstock)
At the hearing held last night (Monday) at the Committee on State Audit Affairs on the subject of “public service at the Tax Authority”, the chairman of the committee, MK Miki Levy (Yesh Atid), asked the representatives of the Tax Authority to advance the proposal presented at the hearing by the Chamber of Insurance Agents that would allow for the first time Also for the insurance agents to represent their clients before the Tax Authority, for the purpose of improving and making the service accessible to the public and easing the burden that exists in the offices of the Tax Authority and on the MPL website for public inquiries.
Alon Dor, chairman of the pension committee at the Insurance Agents Chamber, addressed the problems that arose in the State Comptroller’s report on the subject and offered a solution: “Most of the problems that arise from the report are those of the employees and their pensioners, who often do not have a representative, and we propose the insurance agents as representatives for the employee population. There is a problem in the State of Israel that tax benefits are not distributed, you have to know how to ask for them and fill out forms and people don’t know.”
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“We need to respond to the people, return money to the people, all that is needed is a small amendment to the Income Tax Ordinance and we can start working. There is no doubt that the integration of hundreds of pension insurance agents as representatives will enable improvement and accessibility of the service to the public with an emphasis on the salaried, retired and pensioner populations and will allow them to: exhaust their rights , to pay less tax, receive tax refunds, as well as receive service anywhere, at flexible hours, in a variety of languages, including personal service for those who have difficulty using the Internet.”
In response to his words, the Chairman of the State Audit Committee, MK Miki Levy (Yesh Atid), expressed support for the proposal of the Insurance Agents Chamber and asked the Tax Authority to advance: “What he (Alon Dor, Chairman of the Pension Committee at the Insurance Agents Chamber) said is a proposal It is very interesting that you will contribute to the citizens of the State of Israel and especially to the wage earners, most of whom do not know what to do.” In response to the argument of the representatives of the Tax Authority at the hearing that wage earners already have legal representatives (accountants and tax consultants), MK Levy replied that: “If I take how many wage earners there are in the State of Israel, Only those who encounter a difficult problem go to a representative – most of them do not have a representative.”
In the position paper submitted by the Bureau to the Committee (MCA), it is claimed that although the insurance agents specialize in handling many issues in the field of taxation, the gaps of which are shown in the auditor’s reports, their status as representatives before the Tax Authority has not been regulated and they are not authorized by law to deal with issues related to their clients before the Tax Authority. In light of the discrepancies presented in the report in 2015 and in the follow-up reports in the Bureau, we wish to state that the pension insurance agents, members of the ‘Association of Insurance Agents in Israel’, will be recognized by the legislator as representatives and thus will help the public and the Tax Authority to provide a quick and efficient response to the discrepancies.
In the same paper, the Bureau actually praises the Tax Authority for the fact that it is evident from the reports that the Tax Authority is making a lot of efforts in this area and indeed there is a substantial improvement in service, however due to the Authority’s many areas of practice, which were expanded during the Corona period (in the years 2020-2021) when it received responsibility regarding the implementation of government policy and responsibility for the grants, and because new challenges emerge all the time such as technological progress, a substantial gap remains.
Among the gaps in service to the citizen that came up in the reports: reception hours that are not satisfactory, reception hours are not adapted to “working people”, with an emphasis on the population of employees who have to be absent from work to get to the authority’s offices. Online service is through the MPL website/Izor Ish And the appointment system actually harms a part of the public who wants to receive a service, but does not use the Internet, including adults and people who avoid it for religious reasons.
Almost all the related forms and information are in Hebrew, it is difficult to receive service and even understand rights for those who do not know Hebrew, including Arabic and Russian speakers, with an emphasis on older people, but not only. Tax collection from more tenants – the amount of excess tax paid by tenants who worked in two or more places in the same tax year amounts to hundreds of millions. Disparities in the exercise of pensioners’ rights.
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