No tax on holocaust compensation
The British Government has announced it will no longer tax the compensation that Holocaust victims and their heirs receive from Swiss banks holding their war era accounts.
The Guardian reports about 1 000 people in the UK will benefit from the decision to exempt the payments from income tax, capital gains tax and inheritance tax. Many Jewish people deposited money in Swiss bank accounts to prevent it from being seized by the Nazis. These have been dormant since the end of Word War II. Under British tax law, compensation paid for dormant bank accounts is normally treated as interest and so taxed. Death duties can also be charged on UK bank account balances. Full report in The Guardian