Israeli Tax Authority Reportedly Used an Opaque Automated System to Issue a Fine, Declining to Explain or Disclose the Underlying Calculation

January 11, 2021

An Israeli farmer, Moshe Har Shemesh, faced a fine generated by an automated system operated by the Tax Authority. Officials were reportedly unable to clarify the basis for the fine. When the farmer sought access to the program or its source code, the authority allegedly declined, citing security concerns and the complexity of extracting guidelines embedded within the AI system. The case has since moved into legal proceedings, focusing on whether code and automated decision rules qualify as information subject to public disclosure.

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Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.670, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 2.10 — similarity 0.650, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 2.2 — similarity 0.649, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: israeli-tax-authority
Alleged developer: israeli-tax-authority
Alleged harmed parties: moshe-har-shemesh, israeli-people-having-tax-fines

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/137

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

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