Restaurant (illustrative)
Restaurant (illustrative)iStock

Supervisors from Israel's Tax Authority visited 92 businesses in Netanya, its industrial zone, Kfar Vitkin, and towns in the Hefer Valley, and found that a full 8% of businesses did not properly record their earnings.

At one restaurant in Netanya, supervisors discovered that since 2017, the restaurant did not record its sales and business transactions properly. When asked, the owner explained: "I didn't know that I had to keep details of every transaction, and my accountant didn't mention anything about it."

Entering a tobacco and hookah store, supervisors compared the credit card reports to the cash register's records, and found that some of the credit card transactions were not recorded in the cash register. There, the owner said: "There were seven credit card transactions that I didn't print out due to being overworked."

At an ice cream store where a supervisor made a test purchase several days before the mass operation, supervisors found that the test purchase had not been recorded. The owner said: "I'll prove to you with the cameras that I recorded the purchase."

The owner of a restaurant who did not record a test purchase from earlier the same day quickly explained that the fault was the waitress, telling the supervisors: "Let's ask the waitress why she didn't write it down."

The operation was conducted as part of a widescale crackdown by the Tax Authority on tax evaders and undeclared capital, and part of a policy to increase enforcement and improve deterrence.