Depriving minors of the benefit violates their right to receive the tax relief that every citizen is entitled to for the purchase of his only apartment. Moreover, the respondent's approach will prevent the appellants from even enjoying this benefit in the future when they reach adulthood, because when they purchase an (additional) apartment in adulthood, it will be considered by the respondent as their second apartment. There is no justification for such an outcome.
- The respondent's approach, which sees these apartments as part of the family unit, creates an absolute and irrefutable presumption in the case of minors. There is no justification for such an approach, as it discriminates against minors.
- The appellants note that contrary to what he said, the respondent's position is inconsistent with the Executive Order 6/2011, which recognizes the possibility that minors will be excluded from the custody of the family unit in certain cases, such as when the purchase of the apartment is from compensation or inheritance funds, in which there is a separation of property. Since the respondent recognized this possibility in principle, there is no justification in the circumstances here not to apply it to the appellants.
- The appellants are of the opinion that there is no room to adopt the majority opinion in the judgments in the Ibn Ezra case and in the Hagag case.
According to the appellants, the Ibn Ezra judgment, which also dealt with a gift from a father, was ruled before the judgment was given in the Shlomi case, in which it was held that it was possible to deviate from the presumption of the family unit, in the event that property separation was proven. In light of this, we should not learn from this judgment.
The judgment in the Hagag case was given after the judgment in the Shlomi case, but in the Hagag case, it was apparently the case of apartments that were purchased with the financing of the family unit - the parents of the minors, and thus there is a material difference from the case here - in which the purchase is financed by the grandfather, who is not part of the family unit - as defined by the legislature.
- The appellants add that the respondent deviated from his oral statement at the hearing on May 22, 2025, according to which "we have no dispute that in the case here the source of the money is from the grandfather" (p. 2, line 11). When in the summaries submitted by him (at para. 50), it was suddenly claimed: "There is no way to ascertain that the funds transferred from Mr. Shahaf's account are external to the relevant family unit" - and thus the respondent expanded the front, in an unacceptable manner.
- Before presenting the respondent's arguments, I would like to remove from the chapter any doubt on the matter mentioned in the previous section - the last of the appellants' arguments, which I will accept in full.
The respondent's argument in section 50 - as if it had not been proven that it was Mr. Shahaf's money - was argued in weak language and half-heartedly, and it would have been better if it had not come up at all.