....
- I can't answer you what people thought, I can answer you that to the best of my knowledge, there has been no special discussion on the subject of tax in respect of these transactions as of the date of reporting to the company " (page 27, lines 20-23, page 28, lines 1-19, page 29, lines 14-15)
- Mr. Friedman's testimony was not refuted in his cross-examination, despite the fact that he was repeatedly asked by the respondent's counsel questions about the "reporting party" and his failure to testify before the committee:
"Q: You write, from the 4th line of the affidavit, "that entity did not relate to the special provisions, the characteristics of the transaction", etc., I claim that a serious company like "Ashdar" reads all the documents in depth and formulates its position on what the transaction is, and certainly it is assisted by a law firm like the Firon firm, and therefore I expected that the party, the same party, not you, would come and explain to me what he thought, Why didn't he come to testify?
A: Usually when there is such an issue that is special, then this issue also comes up to me in the discussion together with the same people who deal with it, since it did not come to me at that time, I know that there was no special issue that was discussed.
Q: Okay. So in other words, basically what you're telling me is that the reporting entity, the same deputy directors general you talked about earlier, read the documents in depth, consulted with a law firm that accompanies you in transactions with the Israel Land Authority,
A: I didn't say...
Q: And they didn't think it was something different that excluded your intervention and changed the reporting.
A: I didn't say that. I didn't say that. I don't know if they read in depth or not, I know the result – they didn't bring it to me that there is some special issue here that is different from regular ILA tenders that need to report this transaction in a different way." (page 30, lines 8-23, page 31, lines 1-2)
- Ultimately, I do not believe that Mr. Friedman is not the relevant witness from the appellant's point of view for the purpose of testifying about the legal error that occurred on the part of the appellant when submitting the self-assessment. I also do not believe that the appellant should be regarded as having refrained from testifying on her behalf as having refrained from testifying in any other relevant witness on her behalf.
Mr. Friedman is the appellant's CEO, the most senior position holder in Ashdar, who declared and even testified that if a question had arisen regarding the reporting and taxation of the "Buyer's Price" tenders, this matter would have been brought before him, and the very fact that no discussion was held before him and no tax question was presented to him regarding the reporting to the Respondent in connection with the "Buyer's Price" tenders, by the CFO or by someone in the Firon Law Firm – the result was that a report was made as if it were a case In a regular ILA tender, it was reported that a "right in the land" had been purchased.
- After examining the parties' arguments, and since When I found a logical explanation in Mr. Friedman's testimony, I do not believe that there was a flaw in the failure of Ashdar's CFO to decide the question of the existence of a legal "error" as a ground for requesting to amend the assessment.
I do not believe that the failure to bring her to testify exercises the presumption established in the case law, that if the CFO had come to testify, her testimony would have served the appellant's obligation.