State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman is urging the Finance Ministry to review how budget changes are handled in coming state budgets, with the goal of reducing the number and scale of transfers and bringing them forward when possible. He said this would strengthen הכנסת oversight and improve how ministries manage and execute the budget. His remarks come as petitions have recently been filed to the High Court of Justice, including by opposition lawmakers, seeking to stop frequent budget transfers that are sometimes rushed to the Knesset Finance Committee only hours before discussion.
The report focuses on transfers made at the end of 2024. In December alone, 77 budget transfers were approved at the Finance Ministry’s request, totaling 30.4 billion shekels, compared with 18.4 billion shekels in December 2017. The largest single addition was 4 billion shekels for the Education Ministry, approved just one day before the end of the fiscal year. Englman said the transfers amounted to 5.95% of the state budget’s spending limit, about 35 billion shekels. He also noted that December approvals included 10.8 billion shekels in unused budget surpluses, or 33% of all such surpluses approved during the year, even though government procedure says they should be transferred by mid-March.
The report adds that 69% of the requests to transfer surpluses from the previous year, 110 out of 160, were approved in the final month of 2024. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich submitted 19 more requests in the last six days of December, while 67 requests were already before the committee, and 55 were discussed between December 26 and 31. Englman warned that end-of-year submissions can prevent budgets from being implemented during the year and may lead to ministry spending before committee approval, which could bypass the Budget Law and be unlawful. He said the Finance Ministry must act in line with the law and the Finance Committee’s procedures, while budget officials should intensify monitoring of programs that deviate from earlier estimates.
In a separate section, the comptroller reviewed the first stage of the Tax Authority’s Israel Invoices system, created to fight fake invoices. Since January 1, 2024, the system has issued approval numbers for invoices above 25,000 shekels, a threshold lowered to 5,000 shekels on June 1. By December 18, 2025, about 15 million invoices had been processed worth 763 billion shekels, and invoices worth 42 billion shekels, or 5.5% of the total value, were rejected. Englman said the review found structural and control weaknesses that could still help criminals issue fake invoices and claim input tax unlawfully. He ordered the Tax Authority to close all loopholes, reassess security and controls, and use stronger withholding-tax tools to quickly reduce the incentive to use fake invoices.
