After a long night of intensive discussions in the cabinet, in a joint effort with the Tourism Minister Dr. Uzi Landau, the Tourism Ministry Director-General Amir HaLevi, the Prime Minister’s Office and the Finance Ministry, the decision was taken not to impose VAT on tourism services.
During the last two weeks, there has been a struggle against levying VAT on tourism services from several different quarters, including, among others, in the Knesset Finance Committee where the committee chairman, Professor Avishai Braverman called on the Finance Minister to re-assess his decision in light of economic studies done on the matter and presented to the committee that clearly showed that imposing VAT was not a worthwhile move for the economy. In addition, Tourism Minister Dr. Uzi Landau met last week with the heads of various municipalities and local councils in the north of the country and recruited them to the struggle.
Tourism Ministry representatives continued to meet with Finance Ministry representatives over the last week in order to explain the magnitude of the immediate and long-term damage that would be created, if VAT were to be levied on tourism services.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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3 Responses
This was a no brainer. The irony is that we have a finance minister who is a fool so we breathe a sigh of relief even when an obviously correct decision is reached
Actually this is a dumb idea. Tourists, almost by definition, are wealthy (poor people don’t engage in international tourism). Tourists motivated by religion or ethnicty will come regardless. The group affected by price are the sorts who go to Eliat and Tel Aviv (especially the special sort doing things we can’t talk about on YWN, for which Tel Aviv is infamous) – so why encourage that sort.
lapid is a big fool. He was going to tax vegetables and back down and now not to tax the tourist. He just shoots and than thinks