Belgium Exempts Holocaust Survivor Pensions From Taxes
Belgium Holocaust: After liberation, Belgian boys commemorate the victims of Nazi attacks. Image by getty images
(JTA) — Belgium’s Finance Ministry has exempted dozens of Dutch Holocaust survivors from penalties for not reporting special pensions they received from the Netherlands.
The New Flemish Alliance, the ruling party of the Belgian state of the Flemish Region, led a reform in federal tax regulations implemented this month that exempts the survivors living in Belgium from the heavy penalties imposed on them.
The penalties were imposed last year on recipients of a payment from the Netherlands known as WUV, which is given to some Holocaust survivors by the Dutch government’s Pensions and Benefits Council. In letters sent to WUV recipients living in Belgium, the Belgian tax authority demanded they pay back the WUV payments paid to them since 2013.
Hans Knoop, a well-known Dutch Jewish journalist living in Belgium, has lobbied the government with the survivors. Johan Klaps, a lawmaker for the New Flemish Alliance, helped push the exemption reform, Knoop told JTA, with the cooperation of Finance Minister Johan Van Overtveldt.
Elly Blik, a Holocaust survivor and WUV recipient who has been living in Belgium since the 1980s, said she was “deeply troubled by the penalties,” adding she was not aware of the need to report WUV payments to the Belgian tax authorities.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
