Tax Authority Has Lists of People With European Bank Accounts

YERUSHALAYIM (Hamodia Staff) —

The Israel Tax Authority has stepped up its campaign against black capital with an information exchange program with banks in Europe, Globes says.

Tax Authority Director General Moshe Asher explained: “We are ‘shifting gears’ in our work methodology in our fight against black capital. Until now, we handled isolated requests for Israeli-held foreign accounts, but it was not effective. From now on, we are shifting to a mode of exchanging lists. We already received lists with names of many thousands of Israelis who have bank accounts with significant balances, primarily in Europe, and we will deal with them in the near future,” Asher said

“There are tens of billions of dollars’ worth of Israeli black capital abroad,” he told the annual conference of the Institute of Certified Public Accountants in Eilat on Monday.

Asher said the Tax Authority will need both more technology and more manpower.

“In the end, we will need to confront the taxpayer, and the taxpayer will not deal with a computer. At the end of the day, it will be Tax Authority employees who do this. We have hired workers, but we need many more. We will hire many more people, and I hope that, with them, we will reach areas that have been forgotten until now.”

In the meantime, Asher said, the Tax Authority has been exceeding collection goals for the Treasury.  “We brought in NIS 240 billion, when our collection target was NIS 234 billion. The target this year is NIS 250.3 billion,” he said.

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