The National Bookkeeping Unit at the Tax Authority recently conducted several audits in the northern and Sharon regions, to examine the level of compliance with bookkeeping instructions, income recording, and the law to reduce the use of cash.
As part of the operations, 161 businesses were inspected, of which 93 businesses did not record revenue. In addition, numerous cases of violations of the Cash Reduction Law were discovered.
The operations were conducted, among other things, in Tiberias, Karmiel, the Golan Heights, Afula, Nazareth and the surrounding area, Netanya, Haifa, and other localities in the area.
As part of the activity, audit purchases and preliminary observations were carried out and businesses from a variety of fields of activity were examined. In an operation conducted in Haifa and the surrounding area, audits were carried out in the markets and found failure to record income in most stalls, conduct that was not in accordance with instructions, use of unapproved bookkeeping exemptions, and violations of the Cash Reduction Law.
In one of the cases, as part of an audit in Taiba, a wholesaler who advertised his business through the TikTok app was examined and found to have failed to report revenues amounting to tens of thousands of shekels.
In the operation in the Sakhnin area and surrounding areas, 90% of the inspections found failure to record income and/or failure to maintain books. For example, at a butcher shop in Araba, the inspectors made an inspection purchase several days before the operation. On the day of the operation, the inspectors came to the butcher shop again and discovered that the business owner had not recorded the purchase made earlier in the system.
In response, the business owner claimed: "You didn't buy from me, I just opened the business today.""
In another case, a clothing store in the area made a test purchase that was not recorded in the business's books, and the business owner claimed in response: "I'm new to this and I don't understand it.".
In another case, inspectors arrived at a garage in the Golan Heights and discovered that revenue totaling 136,000 shekels received from various customers had not been recorded. When the business owner was asked about the unrecorded revenue, he claimed: "There are debts to the business...""
In an operation conducted in Netanya and the surrounding area, more than 601% of the businesses examined did not record income received, including through bank transfers, payment apps, and cash.
The National Bookkeeping Unit will continue to operate everywhere and at all times to enforce the provisions of the law on an ongoing basis and in operations as part of the Tax Authority's extensive activity against black money and tax evaders.
This is within the framework of the policy of increasing enforcement activity to improve and maintain deterrence, which aims to bring about truthful reporting and true tax collection, thereby increasing equality in the burden among citizens.
