MK Shelly Yacimovich (Labor) proclaims, “The reform in the use value of company cars is a direct assault on the middle class, whose members work like dogs for long hours as they juggle like crazy between work and their children.” She made the comment in a position paper sent to the Israel Forum of Chief Finance Officers, which is leading the fight against the company car reform.
Yacimovich objection to the reform comes in the wake of objections by Minister of Transport Shaul Mofaz and Minister of Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman.
Yacimovich said that the middle class included people who “are trying to honorably earn a living for their families, pay heavy taxes, and whose job security is constantly being eroded. In every normal country, the middle class is the bulwark of the economy and society, but it is being crushed in Israel.”
Yacimovich claims that the company car reform is taking away an important and essential economic benefit for families. “Naturally, in utopia, it would be possible to talk about purported equality, which the Ministry of Finance has suddenly remembered, and in whose name it is seeking to grab from the people what others do not get. But we don’t live in utopia, and in today’s reality, when the labor market is less stable and more aggressive, groups of workers who still have a little power must adhere to the slogan - liberated land will not be returned.
“Anyone who is jealous of high-tech workers and every worker who still has a little dignity and rights, ought to know that hurting them will not better his condition, but worsen it.”
The CFO Forum hopes that widespread opposition to the company car reform in the public, government and Knesset will kill the Ministry of Finance’s plan to raise taxes by raising the use value of company cars.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on May 9, 2007
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2007