Israeli Knesset Gives Preliminary Okay to Bill Giving Tax Breaks to Settlements

Treasury opposes the bill that would make West Bank settlements eligible for tax breaks based on the security threats they face on the grounds that they can’t be solved by tax breaks.

Zvi Zrahiya
Jul 28, 2016

West Bank settlements will be eligible for tax breaks based on the security threats they face, if a bill approved by the Knesset in preliminary reading on Wednesday becomes law.
The Knesset vote took place after the Ministerial Committee for Legislation held a special session on Wednesday morning to approve the bill, which was sponsored by MK Bezalel Smotrich (Habayit Hayehudi).

The ministerial committee also decided that by August 11, when the cabinet is due to start discussing the state budget for 2017-18, the finance and defense ministries should draft uniform criteria for granting tax breaks to residents of towns facing security threats.

Today, security threats to the settlements are ranked on a different scale to the one used for towns near the Gaza and Lebanon borders.

Once the new criteria are in place and the settlements have been ranked in accordance with them, it will be possible to determine which are eligible for tax breaks. Security will not be the only criterion, however; it will simply be one more factor added to the existing criteria.

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