However, since That the respondent did not retract his preliminary arguments regarding the amendment of the assessment as raised in his summaries, we have no choice but to address these arguments and decide them.
- A review of the respondent's decision in the application to amend the assessment (Appendix C to the statement of appeal and Appendix 5 to Mr. Barak's affidavit) shows that the respondent was of the opinion that the requests for amendment do not disclose grounds under Article 85 to the law. The respondent ruled in his decision that the amendment application does not contain an argument with respect to any of the grounds in section 85 and therefore it should be rejected – see section 12 of the Respondent's decision.
However, this determination of the respondent in his decision does not reflect the correct factual situation.
The facts must, therefore, be put to the test: the appellant filed the motions for amendments to the self-assessments, while explicitly claiming therein a cause for amendment in accordance with section 85(a)(3) of the Real Estate Taxation Law due to a legal error.
- The respondent's witness, Mr. Roni Barak, claimed in his affidavit (see paragraph 12, paragraph 20, section 29 and section 43) that the appellant did not bother to indicate in the motions to amend the assessment which of the subsections listed In section 85 The law is based on the request to amend the assessment.
Not only is this argument, as stated above, factually incorrect, and therefore must be rejected, but no real explanation was given in the framework of Mr. Barak's affidavit as to why he was the one who submitted the affidavit on behalf of the respondent, when the person who gave the decision in the motions to amend the assessment was Ms. Eti Ziv, Deputy Director of Land Taxation in Haifa (see the last page of the respondent's decision, Appendix A to the appeal, page 142 of the appendices to the appeal, a page that for some reason was omitted from Mr. Barak's affidavit).