I have paid arnona on the wrong floor area for years. Can I get the overpayment back from France?

A surveyor measures the Netanya flat before a sale and finds 84 square metres where the municipality has been billing 103 for eleven years. At roughly NIS 100 per square metre a year that is close to NIS 21,000 of arnona paid on floor space that does not exist. Getting it back is possible. Getting all eleven years back usually is not, and the reason has nothing to do with the owner living in France.

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Detailed Answer

The refund provision itself is straightforward. Section 6 of the Local Authorities (Interest and Linkage on Compulsory Payments) Law 5740-1980 obliges a local authority to return a compulsory payment paid in excess of what was due, and where the excess is not returned within thirty days of the payment it must be returned with linkage to the index. That is a statutory entitlement, not a discretionary gesture, and it applies to arnona as it applies to other municipal charges. What Section 6 does not do is decide whether the payment was excessive in the first place, and that question is answered somewhere else.

It is answered by the Local Authorities (Appeal on Determination of General Arnona) Law 5736-1976, which channels disputes about the assessment itself into an objection (hasaga) filed with the municipality's arnona manager within ninety days of receiving the payment demand, on four listed grounds. An assessment that went unchallenged in that window is treated as final for the year it covered, which is why municipalities routinely refuse retrospective refunds running back over many years and invite the owner to object to the current year instead. Israeli courts have been willing to look past that where the error is one of objective fact rather than judgment, and a certified surveyor's measurement showing the billed area never existed is the strongest version of that argument. Classification disputes, whether a unit is residential or commercial, whether a storeroom counts, sit at the other end and are much harder to reopen. The general seven year limitation period under Section 5 of the Prescription Law 5718-1958 sets the outer boundary in any event.

Non-residents accumulate these errors more than anyone else, for a mundane reason. The demand goes to the property address, the tenant or the neighbour throws it away, and nobody ever compares the billed area against the flat. By the time an owner in Paris looks at it, ten objection windows have closed. Three steps make the difference. Commission a licensed Israeli surveyor's measurement report before writing anything to the municipality, because a letter without a measurement is an opinion. File the objection for the current year inside the ninety days to stop the loss going forward, whatever happens to the past. Then negotiate the retrospective element separately, in writing, against the surveyor's report. Change the billing address to your Israeli lawyer at the same time, or the same thing happens again. The mechanics of the objection itself, the four statutory grounds and the appeal route are set out in our answer on challenging an Israeli arnona assessment from abroad.

In Practice: Section 6 of the Local Authorities (Interest and Linkage on Compulsory Payments) Law 5740-1980 requires the local authority to refund an excess payment, with linkage where it was not returned within 30 days of payment. Recovery of past years still runs through the objection regime, and Section 3 of the Local Authorities (Appeal on Determination of General Arnona) Law 5736-1976 allows only 90 days from receipt of the demand to file with the arnona manager, who must reply within 60 days or the objection is deemed accepted. A licensed surveyor's measurement report costs NIS 1,500 to NIS 3,000, a 19 square metre overstatement on a big city residential rate is close to NIS 1,900 a year, and a negotiated retrospective credit typically covers 1 to 3 years and takes 3 to 8 months to agree.

When to Consult a Lawyer

• The overpayment arises from a measurement rather than a classification, because that is the version of the argument that has a genuine prospect of reaching back beyond the current year and it needs to be documented before the municipality is approached.
• The municipality offers a credit against future arnona instead of a refund, since a credit is worth much less to an owner planning to sell and the Section 6 entitlement is to repayment.
• You are selling and the arnona account is also in arrears, given that the clearance certificate needed to register the transfer will be withheld until the balance is settled, and the refund claim is far weaker once you have paid to get the certificate.

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Speak With an Israeli Attorney

We commission the survey, file the objection inside the ninety days so the loss stops running, and pursue the retrospective refund with linkage under Section 6 while your billing address is redirected to us rather than to an empty flat.

Contact us for a confidential initial consultation.