Share prices by more than 5 percent on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange on Sunday, amid speculation that the controversial capital gains tax would never be implemented.
The sharp gains occurred after Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Finance Minister Avraham Shohat had an angry exchange at Sunday’s weekly Cabinet meeting.
Rabin reportedly attacked Shohat for saying last week that the capital gains tax, which officially went into effect Jan. 1, would not be implemented immediately due to the state of the stock market.
Shouting “I can’t take this anymore,” Rabin reportedly banged the table with a copy of the Hebrew daily Ma’ariv, which quoted Shohat as calling the tax “impossible to implement.”
Passage of the tax late last year was a personal battle for Shohat, who, in the final weeks preceding its scheduled implementation, encountered resistance from Labor colleagues concerned that a stock tax would further erode party popularity.
Rabin backed the tax, but only after a tense period during which he was rumored to be waffling on the issue.
Meanwhile, opposition parties criticized the government for not canceling the tax. Likud Knesset member Dan Tichon called recent efforts to amend the tax “a gimmick” and said the government should repeal the tax instead of looking for ways to improve it.
Knesset member Eliezer Sandberg of the right-wing Tsomet Party said a decisive government would recognize that it had made a mistake and repeal the law.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
