The budget's austerity measures will target the dead, as well as the living. The 2013 Economic Arrangements bill, which will be submitted to the cabinet tomorrow, includes a Ministry of Finance request to abolish the arnona (local property tax) exemption on cemeteries. Every family will have to pay hundreds of shekels a year for their burial plots, beginning in 2014.
If the cabinet passes the proposal, Israelis will find themselves paying arnona on their families' graves in addition to their homes and businesses.
On the basis of arnona on commercial space, the Forum of Burial Societies estimates that each Israeli family will pay hundreds of shekels a year for each burial plot.
The arnona exemption on cemeteries was cancelled in 2003, but brought back by the Knesset in 2010, in the wake of the outcry when the Herzliya Municipality levied the tax on cemeteries in the city.
Under the new proposal, the arnona on plots in multi-tiered cemeteries will total scores of shekels a year, and the arnona of a couple will be levied as if a single grave. People who buy plots in advance will pay arnona on them beginning in 2014.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on May 12, 2013
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