The State Comptroller’s report has dedicated an extensive chapter to “holes in the data” in the real estate sector, including an enormous amount of missing and incorrect information in the Israel Tax Authority’s databases.
The State Comptroller found that over 900,000 apartments – about half of the homes listed in the Land Registry – do not appear in the Tax Authority’s real estate database. Hundreds of thousands of pieces of data entered into the Tax Authority’s database, such as the year the property was built, the number of floors in the building and the area of the apartment are incorrect, and there are significant gaps and contradictory information between the Tax Authority’s real estate database and the “government real estate website.”
The result, according to State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman, affects the reliability, quality and usefulness of the information that reaches the public, and its ability to compare housing prices as a basis for making a decision regarding a new purchase, impedes the ability to collect correct taxes, and sometimes even violates the rights of citizens to exercise their rights vis-à-vis the state.
“Incorrect tax calculation”
Until recently, the Israel Tax Authority could not obtain, among other things, information about Israelis who inherited properties or built houses on land they owned, since this was not a tax event that required reporting. As “Globes” first revealed, only during 2024 did the Tax Authority start demanding and receiving lists from the Land Registry on tens of thousands of property owners in Israel, with the intention of cross-referencing the information it has with these lists.
The Tax Authority’s aim was to identify Israelis who rent out properties and conceal their income. In practice, according to the State Comptroller, “The incompleteness of the Tax Authority’s real estate database creates difficulty in relying on it as a real estate database. In addition, a lack of complete information could lead to incorrect tax calculations, errors in the status of citizens’ assets, and difficulty in locating assets and property owners.”
The State Comptroller also found that hundreds of thousands of pieces of data entered into the Tax Authority’s database – such as the year the property was built, the number of floors in the building, and the size of the apartment – are incorrect. In addition, due to the dependence of the housing price index published by the Central Bureau of Statistics on data reported to the Tax Authority, the provision of various benefits from contractors, and in particular financing deals have not been taken into account in real time.
The State Comptroller notes in the report that the fact that incorrect data can be entered into the database “harms the quality, reliability and integrity of the database and the indices published by the Central Bureau of Statistics. This leads, among other things, to harm to taxpayers by the various systems in the Tax Authority, and the ability of citizens and various government bodies to use the information.”
Among other things, the State Comptroller found that in at least 53,963 transactions for apartments, the year of construction recorded was incorrect or unknown. This is approximately 4.2% of the deals reported in this type of housing. It was also found that there are 452,678 transactions for apartments in which the number of floors in the building reported for real estate tax is zero and is in fact incorrect.
In 80,556 transactions, when the same property was sold at least once more, a difference of at least 20 square meters was found in the size of the apartment reported. Deficiencies were also found regarding the registration of the number of apartments in the building – there are 578,561 transactions for homes in which the number of apartments in the building reported for real estate taxation is zero. Additional incorrect data was also found in the entry of the values “apartment address” and “number of rooms”.
“Right hand does not know what the left hand is doing”
The State Comptroller also found gaps in the information contained in two government databases on real estate: the “Real Estate Database”, managed by the Tax Authority, and the “Government Real Estate Website”, managed by the Israel Mapping Center (MAPI), which is subordinate to the Ministry of Housing.
The State Comptroller found that the two government websites produce significantly different results, including a different number of transactions, different transactions, and an inconsistent presentation, in a way that could mislead the public. When it comes to making decisions based on the official information, the comptroller says, “The right hand does not know what the left hand is doing.”
Tax Authority Response</b. The Tax Authority said, “The Authority’s data is based on the taxpayer’s declaration and it is not possible to prevent them from reporting as they wish based on the data in their possession, but only to warn of a case in which the report appears unusual. There was already an alert for an unusual report today and the Authority will examine the possibility of integrating additional alert systems. It should be taken into account that not every file is examined, and not every piece of data in the components directly and significantly affects the value of the transaction, and therefore, even in a case that is examined, not all data on the characteristics of the property is necessarily examined.
“With properties that are recorded in the Land Registry and do not appear in the Property Registry, the Authority says that “a reporting obligation cannot be applied to operations that do not constitute a sale. However, the Tax Authority has been working for some time to receive data from the Land Registry/Inheritance Registry and other bodies and integrate them into the Tax Authority’s systems, but this is a technically and operationally complex issue that requires a lot of time and resources.”
Regarding the handling of requests for assessment corrections, “The Tax Authority accepts the auditor’s comment that the time for handling requests for assessment corrections should be shortened and is working on the issue.”
Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on October 21, 2025.
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