Falafel store (illustrative)
Falafel store (illustrative)iStock

A Tax Authority observation of a Jerusalem falafel stand revealed that the stand's owner entered each purchase into the cash register as being worth one shekel.

"I don't have anything to say, I did something stupid and I'm sorry, I ask you to forgive me," he told the supervisors.

A similar observation of a textile store on the outskirts of Jerusalem revealed that some of the checks received were not reported in the receipt book.

"I need to find it, for sure I wrote it down," the owner told the supervisors.

In another incident, a lab's credit card output revealed that 18,150 NIS worth of income was not reported.

"Apparently things weren't recorded, [but] only in the past few days," the owner said.

"I didn't manage to write it down yet, and the second check was just a security check," the owner of a laser cutting factory said when the supervisors found checks worth 12,222 NIS which had not been recorded.

"They certainly were recorded but I guess as cash instead of credit card payments," said the management of a Jerusalem hotel discovered as failing to report some of April 2019's credit card transactions. "We will check with the accountant."

"It looks like it was forgotten, I don't exactly remember how she paid - whether with cash or via bank transfer, I'll write a receipt now," the owner of a welding shop told supervisors who found records of filled orders worth 15,660 NIS for which receipts had not been written.

Similar incidents occurred during a Tax Authority inspection of 110 commercial, professional, and service-oriented businesses in the greater Jerusalem, revealing that 9% of businesses do not accurately report their income.

The incidents were discovered during a widescale operation carried out by the Tax Authority in an effort to crack down on tax evasion and undeclared capital and improve enforcement and deterrence.