These purposes are intrinsically connected to the principled approach that guides the essence of exemptions for a qualifying apartment and a single apartment. As mentioned, the logic underlying the aforementioned exemptions is to satisfy the wishes of the family unit, in a manner that will ease the tax burden in transactions that are intended for residential purposes and not for investment.
(The emphases, here and below, are not in the original)
The Honorable Justice Grosskopf also noted the matter - in this way, in paragraph 9 of the Blank case:
It seems that the logic behind the family unit rule today lies in the fact that the main social purpose of the exemption from payment of betterment tax in respect of the sale of a qualifying residential apartment and the relief of payment of purchase tax in respect of the purchase of a single residential apartment is to facilitate the purchase of the first residential apartment that will be used for the taxpayer's residence, and to reduce the costs of moving from one residential apartment owned by the taxpayer to another residential apartment purchased under it (see ...). Given that the family usually lives in a single residential unit, the aforesaid purpose ostensibly justifies limiting the granting of the exemption and relief to only one apartment, with the exception of those exceptional cases in which the couple permanently resides separately (and indeed, as stated, this is one of the exceptions to the entire family unit).
- Indeed, there is no dispute that the Israeli legislature, in contrast to other legislators who sat on this bench, does not condition the application of the concessions to a single apartment, on the fact that it is an apartment in which the buyer (or seller) himself lives. However, this fact does not reflect the adoption of a lenient approach - which is intended to provide a solution to a situation in which a person owns a single apartment, which he prefers to rent, and in rent to find a solution to his housing requirements. This does not change the purpose of the concessions set out in the law - the clear purpose of which is aimed at the social reason that concerns the human need to have a roof over one's head - and not to purely economic investments. Economic investments are, of course, good and welcome, but there is no justification for preferring the tax method - one over the other.
- As the case law clarified, the legislative purpose of the presumption of the family unit is made up of two components: a negative purpose and a positive purpose. The negative purpose is intended to prevent tax planning.
I do not believe that the case here is tax planning. There is no indication of this, and in fact no respondent raised a claim in this regard. If the negative purpose was the sole purpose of the presumption of the family unit, there would be no room to apply this presumption in the case here.