Tax authority has demanded from 150 self-employed to return the compensation they got for losses

In recent weeks, the tax authority has approached about 150 self-employed people who have received compensation for losses since the outbreak of the corona crisis - and demanded that they return the money they received. According to a senior PA official, it turns out that dozens of self-employed people demanded the funds based on losses incurred by them this year compared to last year. However, an examination carried out by the Tax Authority revealed that some of them did not receive the grants or were overpaid, as their losses were lower than the conditions eligible for the grant.
In a small number of cases, it turned out that some self-employed people earned even more this year than in 2019, as a source in the tax authority noted. "No one wants a situation to arise in which grants will be paid to those who do not deserve them. We approached those self-employed with great sensitivity and asked them to return money given to them even though they did not deserve it," the source told the tax authority. "It is better for a self-employed person to return NIS 200,000 now than for a much higher amount in six months or a year, which will bear interest and linkage."
The Tax Authority also created an option on the Authority's website for those who noticed that they received money beyond what they received from it, even if by mistake - to return the money in a simple operation, without any interest or fines, to the Tax Authority.
It is estimated that at the end of the reckoning it will turn out that a few hundred self-employed people, at most, have received grants in higher amounts than they deserve and will have to return them to the state coffers. Self-employed people will have 90 days to return the money they received beyond what they deserve.
The president of the independent organizations, Adv. Roi Cohen, said in response to the demand for reimbursement of fixed expenses that "this is an illusory and shameful demand, which is really inconceivable. The state is still in closure, tens of thousands of businesses are closed, the self-employed are out of work, business owners see before their eyes living enterprises collapsing, without a horizon and without hope, and the tax authority issues a demand for refunds with foreclosure fines? Are they crazy? Where is the compassion and logic of this inflated government? "
A spokeswoman for the tax authority responded that "the tax authority sent decision letters in cases where the treatment ended. These are several dozen cases where a refund is required for overpaid advances or a refund for advances paid for applications rejected due to non-compliance with the eligibility conditions set by law. The State Comptroller demands a refund where there is no entitlement to grants. "
This week, the State Comptroller stated in a detailed report on the Tax Authority's activities during the Corona crisis that the grants in the first and second rounds were given without examining the recipients' statement of a 25% decrease in their business turnover compared to the same period in 2019. The auditor added that in this situation there may have been among the recipients of the grants those whose rate of decline in their business turnover was in fact less than 25% compared to the corresponding period in 2019, and therefore they were not entitled to the grant they received at all.
In addition, the auditor stated that the criteria for receiving the published grants had a number of distortions, which affected the possibility of some independent groups and businesses receiving the stipulated grants. These include the 104.5 thousand controlling shareholders who were "forgotten" in the first round and also businesses that lost in 2018, a year in which the state of the business had to be compared during the Corona crisis in 2020.