Over the past year, 3,000 requests for voluntary disclosure were filed revealing aggregate capital of NIS 10.3 billion. In view of this success, the Israel Tax Authority today announced the extension of the process published a year ago, after an agreement was reached with the Ministry of Justice.
The announcement did not surprise the market and its representatives, who expected the procedure to be extended, and there was therefore no panic when the expiry date of order was approaching in recent days.
The final date for filing a voluntary disclosure request according to the order has not yet been set, but will be published in the coming days.
In September 2014, the Tax Authority published a new voluntary disclosure procedure to replace the previous procedure. The purpose of the procedure is to encourage Israelis who have violated the law by not reporting their income and capital to go through a voluntary disclosure procedure, pay their legal taxes, and thereby avoid criminal proceedings.
The framework of the regulations include a number of orders designed to encourage and make entering the procedure easier. Among others, these include the possibility of filing an anonymous request and a request on a shortened track that saves on bureaucracy and forms in cases in which the unreported capital does not exceed NIS 2 million. and the taxable income resulting from it does not exceed NIS 500,000.
Under the new regulatory procedure, the taxpayer can disclose his assets, declare his unreported income, and pay the tax derived from it, provided that he meets the terms listed in the procedure. These include, among other things, a requirement that that request is being made in good faith, and that no Tax Authority examination or investigation of the person filing the request has begun.
The Tax Authority's announcement said that the same terms would apply to the extension period.
3,290 voluntary disclosure requests have been filed to date, 1,967 of which were on the anonymous track, 827 on the shortened track, and 496 on the ordinary track, involving an aggregate total of NIS 10.3 billion in capital entering the Tax Authority's regular reporting system.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on September 6, 2015
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2015