Israel Tax Authority Restricts Public Access to Real Estate Transaction Data

The Israel Tax Authority has implemented new, stringent requirements for accessing official data on real estate transactions, previously available on its website. As of recently, users must register with a username and password, which are contingent upon providing sensitive personal information including credit card details, parent's ID number, work grant claim numbers, and tax form data. The official justification for this measure is to protect the website from numerous hacking attempts and AI-driven attacks.

However, critics argue that a significant portion of these "hacks" are actually research efforts aimed at understanding Israel's housing market, which was the original purpose for making the database public. The Tax Authority's real estate transaction website is considered the most crucial source for information on the Israeli property market, as it compiles most legally reported transactions. Prior to 2010, this data was not publicly accessible until a court order, following a petition by economists Dr. Efrat Tolkovsky and Professor Danny Ben-Shahar, mandated its disclosure under the Freedom of Information Law.

Even after becoming public, the system was outdated, limiting searches to 150 transactions at a time and frequently malfunctioning. Commercial entities then developed user-friendly platforms to present this data more effectively. The 150-transaction limit originated from a 2003 regulation signed by then-Finance Minister Silvan Shalom, following a petition to the High Court by the Appraisers Association.

While the Tax Authority claims the new measures are for security, concerns are rising about the impact on researchers, academics, and the public's ability to track market trends. Lawyer Rotem Zilber, founder of an AI platform for property valuation, stated that the restrictions hinder his company's ability to gather data and that simply releasing all information would be a more straightforward solution to server load issues. Dr. Efrat Tolkovsky, director of the Akro Institute, expressed concern that these unilateral changes, made without consulting researchers, could damage public discourse on the housing market, citing her institute's price index, which relies heavily on the Tax Authority's data, as an example.

Past reports from the State Comptroller have also highlighted significant issues with the data's quality and reliability. Comptroller Matanyahu Engelman reported last year that over 900,000 apartments, about half of those registered in the Land Registry, are missing from the Tax Authority's database. Furthermore, hundreds of thousands of data points, such as construction year, number of floors, and apartment size, were found to be incorrect. These inaccuracies, the Comptroller warned, impair citizens' ability to compare housing prices, affect tax collection, and potentially harm citizens' rights.