Knesset passes law exempting Olympic medals from taxes - The Jerusalem Post

If an Israeli wins the Jewish state's first ever medal at the Winter Olympics in Beijing, it will be even more valuable, after the Knesset plenum passed into law late Monday a bill that will exempt Olympic medals from income taxes.

The new law will be retroactive, which is very rare for Knesset legislation. That means it will apply to the 14 Israelis who won medals at last summer's Olympics in Tokyo.

"This tax exemption is our way of thanking these athletes who represented Israel with pride and stood on the podium wearing blue and white," Knesset Finance Committee chairman Alex Kushnir (Yisrael Beytenu) said. "They shouldn't have to pay taxes for representing Israel and winning medals."

In a rare example of cooperation between the coalition and opposition, the bill was co-sponsored by coalition MKs Yossi Shain of Yisrael Beytenu and Simon Davidson of Yesh Atid and by opposition MKs Yariv Levin and Ofir Katz of the Likud.

The law will also apply to medals won in the paralympics. In the Knesset Finance Committee, the bill was widened to also include the international and European championships in any sport.

Until now, Olympic medal winners paid anywhere from 35 to 50% of their winnings to the State of Israel in income taxes. Davidson, who is a career athlete, said passing the law "made history," while Shain said he was happy that a glitch in the system had been corrected.

"This is an important day for Israeli sports and national morale," Katz said. "We changed the absurd situation in which these athletes worked hard to represent the state, and the state took their money away from them."

source: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/sports/article-695842

Your content is great. However, if any of the content contained herein violates any rights of yours, including those of copyright, please contact us immediately by e-mail at media[@]kissrpr.com.