Speaker of the Knesset MK Dalia Itzik is seeking to thwart the 2008 economics arrangements bill because it requires housewives to pay health tax.  Analysts say that removal of the tax is unlikely to meet Knesset approval. 

Housewives are categorized as women who do not work outside the home; 440,000 women have been registered as housewives by the National Insurance Institute (NII) for longer than one year.  However, 275,000 women have been issued temporary status as housewives, making the fair levying of the tax difficult to achieve.

According to the NII, 70 percent of registered housewives are in the bottom financial half of the population.