As emerges from case law and legal literature, The exemption from betterment tax for a qualifying apartment is intended to make it easier for someone who sells an apartment that was purchased not for investment purposes, but for his personal and private use. The granting of the exemption to a qualifying apartment "is based on the principle that the family's residential apartment is a private property, purchased and available for the personal use of its owner, and is not an investment property, and therefore no tax should be imposed on the betterment at the time of its sale(Yitzhak Hadari, Real Estate Taxation - Residential Apartment, Vol. 1, Part Two, p. 503 (Third Edition, 2014); See also: Hebrew Matter, at p. 599). A similar purpose is the exemption factor for a single apartment, which leads to a reduction in the purchase tax only in cases where, in a material way, it is not the purchase of a second apartment, and the purchase is made for residential purposes.
In accordance with the logic underlying the granting of exemptions to a single apartment and to a qualifying apartment, the case law enumerates two purposes for the fact that spouses should be treated as one family unit for the purpose of these exemptions. This is what is written in this context in the matter of Shlomi:
"The purpose of these two sections (which deal with exemptions for a single apartment and a qualifying apartment - H.M.) has been discussed at length in the judgments in the Ivri case and in the Flam case... This is a twofold purpose: on the one hand, the sections are intended to prevent illegitimate tax planning, in which a number of apartments used by the family unit are registered in the names of different family members in order to maximize the number of exemptions from betterment tax that the family unit as a whole can receive when the time comes. This purpose was referred to in a Hebrew matter as a "negative purpose." On the other hand, the law seeks to enable the family unit, as a whole, to fulfill its desires and needs (as opposed to those of any of the individuals who make up the family unit separately), based on the assumption that the proceeds from the sale of the residential apartment are used in most cases to purchase another residential apartment for the family unit as a whole. This purpose was referred to in Hebrew as a "positive purpose." It can be seen that we are dealing to a large extent on both sides of the same coin." (ibid., at paragraph 47; see also: Hebrew and Flam case; for more information, see: The Exemption for Residential Apartments, at pp. 93-95).