Arnona Payments

We have been renting our current apartment for a number of years. Before we moved in, the apartment was being used by the Iriya as a gan and was registered as such at the Iriya. After some time when I realized that we had not received any Arnona bills, I asked the baal dira about it on at least 2 separate occasions. I was told not to worry about it and that they were taking care of it.

Recently they approached us and told us that they would be going to the Iriya to register the Arnona under our name. They had me sign a chozeh stating that we began renting here this year, which is not true. If I understood correctly, their thinking was as follows: They were getting a discount on Arnona so long as the Iriya thought that a gan was operating in the apartment, so they simply did not register us at the Arnona office when we moved in. Also, they were saving us having to pay a mnumber of years of Arnona. I should have asked sheilohs at the time, but did not, so this is the situation.

Some of my questions are:

a) Do we have an obligation to inform the Iriya that we moved in long before this year? If we do , it could result in the Iriya taking legal action against us and the baal dira.

b) Assuming we do not have to inform them, how would we view the years we lived here without paying Arnona, even though we benefited from services such as trash removal? Were we stealing from the Iriya?

Answer:

It is not permitted to make false declarations to the municipality (though there are some who think differently), and it was wrong to declare that you moved in now.

However, post factum, there does not seem much that you can do, and you were trusting the owner of the apartment, so (apart from the false declaration) it was not your fault.

It is true that you were living in the city without paying your due taxes, but this was the homeowner’s doing and not yours, and you don’t have to pay it in retrospect.

Best wishes.