How an elderly man defeated the municipality in a municipal-tax dispute

Every year, property owners and tenants face burdensome demands from local authorities for municipal property tax on properties and apartments within their jurisdiction. On the face of it, municipal tax payments are prescribed by law, with clear criteria governing the discounts and exemptions to which taxpayers are entitled.
Yet tenants and property owners occasionally encounter absurd situations that illustrate just how important it is to check property-tax assessments rather than accept a bill as a final assessment that cannot be changed. The authorities’ demands are complex, and assessment errors can sometimes add up to considerable annual amounts.
The Haifa District Court, sitting as an Administrative Affairs Court before Deputy President Judge Avraham Elyakim, recently considered such a case: Salomon v. Municipal Tax Director of Haifa Municipality, Administrative Appeal 32270-06-16. Haifa Municipality demanded municipal tax from an 80-year-old man who had lived as a protected tenant in a basement apartment in the city in the 1970s.
The elderly man appealed to the court, arguing that he had left the apartment 38 years earlier but was nevertheless required to pay municipal tax and had spent recent years defending himself against ongoing collection proceedings. The municipality argued that he had legally held the apartment from 1999 to the present, even though he had not physically been there for decades.
All his challenges to the municipal assessments for 2011–2015 were dismissed, as were his appeals to the municipal Appeals Committee that hears property-tax assessment appeals. He therefore brought proceedings in court against the municipality’s Municipal Tax Director.
The District Court allowed the appeal and criticized the local authority’s conduct. The decision stated: “The authority’s conduct showed no compassion for someone who was its resident 38 years ago and who, now at the age of eighty, found himself in courtrooms crying out that he has no rights in a property in Haifa.”
The author is an attorney and architect and a partner in the Planning and Construction Department at E. Shiloh & Co. The author did not represent a party in the case discussed in this column.
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