The Knesset will vote on the budget this week, Gafni is blocking the passage of parts of it on time

The Knesset will vote this week to approve the amended 2024 budget in second and third reading, and it is still unclear whether some of the measures promoted by the Ministry of Finance within the budget will be implemented.

Since some of the tax increases and budget cuts require individual approval by the Finance Committee, voting on the budget without these parts could increase the deficit beyond what is allowed by law, and therefore require new cuts. The head of the budget department at the Treasury, Yogev Gerdos, demanded that the finance committee be convened before the vote in the plenum, but committee chairman Moshe Gafni (Torah Judaism) does not intend to do so.

For example, the imposition of the carbon tax, the obligation to report rental income, the cancellation of the tax exemption on duty-free cigarettes and the cuts in the government program for the Arab society (550) will not be approved until the vote on the budget, next Wednesday and Thursday.

According to MK Vladimir Bliak (Yesh Atid), Gafni is preventing votes that the Treasury wants to hold, as a response to the Treasury’s refusal to implement in the budget the application of the ‘New Horizon’ reform in the ultra-Orthodox private education networks. According to the Treasury, the transfer of the necessary funds for this purpose, 590 million shekels, is conditional on the regulation of supervision Regarding the reports of the working hours and salary of the teachers in the networks, in accordance with the standard in the public education system, the Ministry of Finance says that it is not possible to commit to the payment of these funds before the matter is settled.

Some of the decrees in the budget proposal have already been approved separately, as required: freezing the amount of recovery fees and transferring the payment of one day of recovery fees from each employee to the state coffers; Freezing part of the National Insurance benefit payments; increasing the collection for the National Insurance; and imposing an additional tax on the banks for two years.