Sunday, February 01, 2009
2/01/2009 02:06:00 PM | 
Posted by
JoeSettler
In Israel there is a law, if you own a TV set (working or not) you must pay a TV tax. This is a tax directly collected by the Broadcast Authority. And if you don't have a TV, then you don't have to pay this tax.
Rumor has it that the Broadcast Authority has TV Tax Men that go around to houses to see if there is really a TV there or not. But no one has ever actually seen one.
As JoeSettler readers know, we don't have a TV.
For years we have been trying to get the Broadcast Authority to stop sending us threatening mails, because we certainly had no intention of paying this tax.
We've sent faxes. We've even gone down to their Jerusalem offices.
But to no avail. They even started sending us more letters after we visited them. Even a nasty lawyers letter (to which I called up the lawyer and started screaming at them).
Last week we met the mythical TV Tax Man.
He actually knocked on our door. And we were so glad to see him. Finally we would finish with these nasty and annoying letters.
We invited him in to search our residence, but he declined. He asked us some questions, and tried to trick us into answering that we still have the old broken TV set (as then you would have to pay the tax). But to his obvious disappointment, we simply don't have it in our home anymore.
And that was it. He left, and now we'll see if the letters stop.
But what was simply interesting was that after decades of hearing there is such a person, we finally got to meet one in person.
Now how many people can say that?
Rumor has it that the Broadcast Authority has TV Tax Men that go around to houses to see if there is really a TV there or not. But no one has ever actually seen one.
As JoeSettler readers know, we don't have a TV.
For years we have been trying to get the Broadcast Authority to stop sending us threatening mails, because we certainly had no intention of paying this tax.
We've sent faxes. We've even gone down to their Jerusalem offices.
But to no avail. They even started sending us more letters after we visited them. Even a nasty lawyers letter (to which I called up the lawyer and started screaming at them).
Last week we met the mythical TV Tax Man.
He actually knocked on our door. And we were so glad to see him. Finally we would finish with these nasty and annoying letters.
We invited him in to search our residence, but he declined. He asked us some questions, and tried to trick us into answering that we still have the old broken TV set (as then you would have to pay the tax). But to his obvious disappointment, we simply don't have it in our home anymore.
And that was it. He left, and now we'll see if the letters stop.
But what was simply interesting was that after decades of hearing there is such a person, we finally got to meet one in person.
Now how many people can say that?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
3 comments:
so, did the TV Tax Man look unusual in any way, or did he look like just another regular guy?
neat. I am waiting for our similar encounter.
I'm finding more and more people who have no interest in tv though - since you can get all the good shows online anyway.
Gosh, Joe, you went through all that effort to try to convince the TVTax people you don't have a TV? I'm {amazed/astonished/impressed/or somthing}.
I got their notices once or twice after a change of address. I waded through the sternly-worded large-font sometimes-bolded main body ("You'd better pay up IF YOU KNOW WHAT'S GOOD FOR YOU" or words to that effect) and decided to simply relate to the miniscule print at the end: "Oh, by the way, if you don't have a TV, just pretend you never received this notice from us." So I did just that, and never got pestered by them at all.
Post a Comment