Tax Authority postponed until October the deadline for repaying back aid grants illegally received

The tax authority has not yet begun taking enforcement action to return aid grants to businesses that illegally received the money during the Corona crisis. Following pressure from the self-employed, the tax authority postponed for two months, until October 2021, the deadline for repaying the debt, through an arrangement for the distribution of interest-free payments.
As part of the corona grants, billions of shekels were paid to businesses based on their statement. In retrospect, it became clear that these were not eligible for the grants because the extent of the damage to the business did not meet the threshold of 25% or 40%, as stipulated in the conditions of admission. Now, the tax authority is supposed to collect the funds back, after the truth data on the extent of the damage has been obtained in the system.
At this point the tax authority began to take debtor enforcement measures for another type of grant - the grants for fixed expenses. In these grants the debt created is smaller. Out of about NIS 12 billion, NIS 800 million was illegally paid in these grants, and the tax authority has so far collected about NIS 200 million.
The Tax Authority is expected to collect additional large sums paid for no reason to businesses for another grant, business assistance grants amounting to about NIS 25 billion during the crisis. The tax authority does not yet know the exact amount paid to business owners who were not entitled to it, but it is estimated that it is billions of shekels.
In recent weeks, the tax authority has launched a system that allows any business owner to enter the personal website and find out if he has an open debt to the authority. At the same time, an SMS message was sent, with a recommendation to the business owners to check if they do have a debt to the tax authority. In addition, the Authority proposed an arrangement for the repayment of the debt for 18 payments with indexation only and without interest until the end of August 2021.
This activity of the tax authority is still voluntary and does not include enforcement measures. Despite this, many business owners have protested that the authority is collecting the grants from them, especially now that there is a fear of imposing another closure.
Following pressure from them, the director of the Tax Authority, Eran Yaakov, decided to postpone the implementation of the 18 payments arrangement for two months, ie until the end of October 2021. However, the last payment date will remain in December 2022, meaning the number of payments decreases as the execution of the arrangement is delayed.
In discussions on the issue in groups on Facebook, Deputy Minister Avir Kara (right), a former representative of the Shulmanim, pledged that the tax authority would also "not pursue" business owners whose harm was only slightly below the statutory threshold.
On the other hand, officials in the authority make it clear that there is no such promise and it is not possible to legally guarantee that the debt will not be collected from these business owners. However, when enforcement measures are taken they will be done after a hierarchy, according to which the debt will first be collected only from businesses that were not harmed at all, and only then will there be collection from businesses with relatively minor harm.