Sales tax

Hubby re-opened up his small renovations business last year after struggling through various low salaried jobs, which didn't offer any perks whatsoever and hard work for $1000 a month didn't quite make ends meet. He figured he could face the corrupt bureacracy again for trying to make more than he could on a salary. So he goes into the sales tax office - he had to pay off old sales tax in 2000 when he tried to close the previous business. They tacked on thousands of dollars in penalties, but when I had social workers write to them that this is totally unfair, they said to pay them in 12 installments a few hundred dollars a month. It was an agreement for us to pay them in 12 installments. Of course, at the time it was a heavy burden on us. Then my high tech job in 2001 folded and we hadn't gotten paid for 4 months. I walked into the Sales Tax office and said - even though this is Hubby's debt, my salary certainly assists with this payment. The fact that I'm having trouble right now paying you hundreds of dollars a month because I'm unemployed - please take that into consideration. The head of the office there said it was fine. We hadn't paid them anything in 4 months then lowered the payments by a smaller amount. Eventually, we paid them everything in full, but didn't go EXACTLY according to the agreement because of our circumstances. We kept on getting these penalty notices even afterwards, would walk into the office and they'd say, ignore it, we have to take it off the computer, which they never did.

So Hubby re-opens his business and for that you have to have a CLEAN slate in sales tax. They say they see a penalty amount for a few thousand dollars. He walks into the office and they say, they have to take it off the computer, it's a mistake. He's allowed to register his business with Sales Tax. Now we get a notice - We broke the original agreement and all the penalties are back. It's going to court. The accountant says no lawyer will help in this case. The accountant wrote them a letter reinforming them that I had been at the time unemployed with no salary or unemployment for 4 months and didn't have much of a choice to break the agreement, but it was with their permission. They didn't give much of a fuck. Which is why people in business are constantly telling us to work off the books. The government assumes you work off the books anyway - so they shoot themselves in their short feet and force you to either leave the country, work in black or suffer the consequences of this craziness. Why can't people who want to work honestly, not be able to?

I see that a few thousand North American immigrants recently came to Israel to live through Nefesh B'Nefesh, an organization with heavy Christian funding. Hubby says - "Poor suckers. Are they in for a fucking surprise. This government does nothing but fuck you."

So it's not only the Palestinians that get screwed, you see. They get screwed alot worse, of course, but this is pretty bad for us too. I guess if we knew someone that knew someone that had a relative in this office - we'd see how quickly the penalties would be cleared. The only "protexia" we have in this world - is God - and perhaps my daughter working in the police force - that would be for parking tickets only though. That's the way the Israeli world works and has been working since its inception.