Tax authorities in Israel

[Stan Goodman]

On Friday 27 May 2011 at 00:11:26 (GMT+2) Dotan Cohen 
<dotancohen at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2011/5/26 Uri Even-Chen <uri at speedy.net>:
> > Hi people,
> > I recently had to pay taxes to the tax authorities in Israel
> > (income tax). I think it's amazing that the tax authorities
> > website supports only MSIE. I called their support and asked, they
> > said they don't support Google Chrome or Firefox - only MSIE. I'm
> > using Google Chrome and Firefox with all other websites, including
> > my bank, but only with the tax authorities website I have to use
> > MSIE. I have a bug/virus in MSIE and it took me more than an hour
> > and I tried at least 6 times with 2 computers and 3 people on
> > their support until I could pay my taxes. Shame on them! Maybe the
> > Israeli Internet association should do something about it (revoke
> > their .gov domain!)...
> 
> I encourage you to write to them and ask. If the site requires any
> particular proprietary software to work then it certainly is not a
> website. Simply tranfering information via tcp/ip on port 80 does not
> make the communication a website.

My point, perhaps not very clearly made, was that the tax authorites are 
almost surely unaware that they are discriminating against all who 
happen to use a specific (non-standard) browser (although users of 
Firefox, and even Opera, are required to pay tax). More accurately, they 
have employed a web designer who learned to code for the web from a 
Microsoft-sponsored course designed specifically to force that 
discrimination. The people in the tax authority do not have the time or 
interest to redo their site, and the web designer has been indoctrinated 
by MS and will only laugh. That is why the Comptroller is the ONLY one 
who can do anything about  this kind of thing,  and in fact, that is in 
his job description; that's what he is there for, because what the tax 
authority is doing is illegal, plain and simple, besides being gauche.

-- 
Stan Goodman
Qiryat Tiv'on
Israel