חוק לשינוי סדרי עדיפויות לאומיים (תיקוני חקיקה להשגת יעדי התקציב לשנים 2013 ו-2014) (תיקון), התשע"ד-2013Law to Change National Budget Priorities (legislative amendments to Achieve Budget Targets for the Years 2013 and 2014) (Amendment), 2013 · automatic translation · suggest a correction

What the sponsors propose

The bill cancels Section 40(23) of the Law for Changing National Priorities, 2013, which set an increase in income tax rates on individuals starting from the beginning of 2014, and amends accordingly the commencement provision in Section 42(b)(5) of the Law. According to the sponsors, updated assessments by the Ministry of Finance showed that interest expenses in the 2014 budget would be lower than planned by approximately 2 billion NIS, and that the reserve for complying with the expenditure limit could be reduced by approximately 1.3 billion NIS. According to the explanatory notes, this would enable the government to meet the 2014 deficit ceiling even without raising income tax rates, and in order to ease the tax burden on residents of the State of Israel, it is proposed to cancel the planned increase, in accordance with Government Decision No. 1014 of 8 December 2013.

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An automatic summary of the explanatory notes written by the bill's sponsors. These are their arguments, not an official Knesset summary. · The bill on the Knesset website

Sponsors

Israel Eichler, Amnon Cohen

What was said in the plenum

The bill cancels the income tax increase that was set to take effect on 1 January 2014, following the discovery of revenue surpluses in the state treasury, and funds this by cutting ministries' budgetary reserves and saving on the interest budget. The debate between the sides centered on whether cancelling the tax increase constitutes responsible economic policy that benefits the broader public, or whether it is an unfair, populist move that mainly benefits high earners at the expense of the weak and the welfare systems.

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An automatic summary of the plenum transcripts: the debate on the bill at every reading it was voted on. Arguments are given as the speakers made them; this is not an assessment. The list of speakers comes from the transcript, without a model. Transcripts of the sittings: 1, 2

Reservations to the second reading

3 reservations were filed: proposed changes to the text the committee brought to the second and third reading.

The reservations were intended to change the income tax brackets for individuals, alternatively to raise the VAT rate, to allocate a separate annual budget for fighting poverty and reducing gaps in education, and to cancel the tax changes set for 2014, which were described as mistaken.

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By faction

• Labor opposition · 3 reservations · 15 members
• United Torah Judaism opposition · 3 reservations · 7 members
• Meretz opposition · 3 reservations · 6 members
• Shas opposition · 3 reservations · 10 members

A joint reservation counts for every faction whose members filed it. 1 proposer was not matched to a member: listed under the groups, not counted by faction.

Asked to speak: Mohammad Barakeh (Hadash), Hanna Swaid (Hadash), Dov Khenin (Hadash), Afou Agbaria (Hadash)

Proposers and reservation numbers are extracted automatically from the committee version, and the count is checked against the numbers printed in it. The descriptions are an automatic summary. Committee version for the second and third reading (PDF)