[etni] Red tape, rising costs threaten book donor project

Red tape, rising costs threaten book donor project
Haaretz - April 18, 2008
A grassroots effort to supply Israeli schools with used English-language books shipped from the U.S. is in danger of shutting down, as rising shipping prices coupled with what volunteers describe as a Byzantine bureaucracy that slaps on a prohibitive VAT on imported books, has driven down donations by 85%.
The U.S.-based Books for Israel Project has shipped some 75 tons of used reading books for teens and pre-teens to 200 schools across Israel since 2002. Titles range from Harry Potter to the Boxcar Children series. The Education Ministry, meanwhile, has no budget for purchasing English-language books for local schools, a spokesperson said. "As a teacher, I can say this is a wonderful program," said Myrna Silverberg, the Israel coordinator for the project and an English teacher near Netanya. "We wouldn't have an English library without Books for Israel. Basically, you have a situation where we in Israel need the books and people in America want to send them, but all these problems have gotten in the way."
One of the most pressing issues at this point is the VAT that schools must pay upon arrival of the boxes, all of them donated. Though used and clearly marked as 'not for resale' Israel slaps the 15.5 percent tax on the imports, and schools often lack a budget to pay what sometimes becomes a bill of several hundred shekels to release the books from customs. 

(To read the whole article, go to -
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/976160.html  )



-----------------------------------------------
** Etni homepage - www.etni.org **
** for help - ask@xxxxxxxx **
** to post to this list - etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx **
-----------------------------------------------

Other related posts: