Bayit Yehudi MK asks Finance Minister Lapid to postpone VAT hikes to avoid desecrating the Shabbat.
By LAHAV HARKOVBayit Yehudi MK Nisan Slomiansky 370(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
The upcoming value-added tax increase must be postponed to avoid desecrating Shabbat, Knesset Finance Committee chairman Nissan Slomiansky (Bayit Yehudi) wrote in a letter to Finance Minister Yair Lapid on Thursday.The 1-percentage point increase, raising the VAT to 18%, is scheduled to go into effect at midnight on May 31, a Friday night.According to law, products must be re-labeled and their prices digitally updated as soon as the VAT changes. If the measure is not postponed, the change will require people to violate Shabbat by changing prices on Friday night.“Shabbat is the official day of rest in the State of Israel and the holiest day of the week for the Jewish People,” Slomiansky wrote to Lapid.“Any change in taxation requires the trade world to update prices immediately.”To comply with that law, stores will have to employ workers on Shabbat to make the changes, as will gas stations that normally only have self-service on Saturdays, the Bayit Yehudi MK added.“I ask you to delay the date of increasing VAT in order to prevent desecrating Shabbat and harming workers’ freedom,” he concluded.
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