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| Swann's haul crowns 'dream' year England's Graeme Swann admits 2009 has been a 'dream' for him after sealing an innings win for England against South Africa. news.bbc.co.uk |
Liechtenstein deal means rich can still dodge thousands of pounds in tax Wealthy savers to benefit from HMRC deal with LiechtensteinWealthy savers who use offshore bank accounts could dodge thousands of pounds in unpaid tax despite missing a tax amnesty deadline if they shift their money to Liechtenstein, according to a firm of accountants .PKF said rich savers who failed to meet Monday's deadline could still declare their offshore accounts to the tax authorities and escape heavy penalties if they switched to the tiny land-locked tax haven after it negotiated an exclusive deal with Revenue & Customs (HMRC).Bankers and other wealthy individuals with accounts in tax havens such as Switzerland, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda could escape paying taxes due on savings dating back decades.In 2008, HMRC set a deadline of 4 January for British savers to declare previously hidden offshore accounts. An investigation by tax officials revealed thousands of secret accounts, many in the offshore subsidiaries of UK high street banks.HMRC said it would limit penalty charges to 10% of the total unpaid tax bill over 20 years if savers came clean.It is understood only 10% of the hoped-for 100,000 taxpayers came forward by the deadline, though accountants PwC said they expected nearer 13,000. HMRC officials said around 1,100 came forward on Monday to benefit from the penalty waiver. Officials said a 100% penalty would apply to all unpaid offshore tax bills from this week.PKF said any offshore account holders who switched their savings to Liechtenstein could continue to enjoy the 10% tax penalty until 2015 and the added benefit of a 10-year tax bill. Tax expert John Cassidy said the special deal negotiated by Liechtenstein put it ahead of other tax havens as the place to declare previously secret accounts especially for those ."For many people with accounts in Switzerland it is a short hop to Liechtenstein. For some people who were concerned about the tax bill from declaring accounts going back 20 years, the 10 year limit is attractive. Also Liechtenstein has retained the 10% penalty ceiling until 2015.Cassidy said: "Where an individual had £1m of funds deposited overseas at the start of the tax year 1990/91 and it earned interest at a steady 5%, the tax and interest and penalty charges owed to HMRC under the Revenue's disclosure agreement would be around £967,000. The equivalent under the Liechtenstein disclosure facility would be just £493,000, a massive difference of £473,000. The savings may be even more marked if the original capital in the account had not been taxed or inheritance tax remain outstanding.Tax avoidanceTaxLiechtensteinSavingsCayman IslandsBermudaPhillip Inmanguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Miep Gies obituary She helped hide Anne Frank from the Nazis, and saved the girl's diary for posterityMiep Gies, who has died aged 100, wrote towards the end of her life: "I am not a hero. I stand at the end of the long, long line of good Dutch people who did what I did – and much more." She was, however, the material from which the truest, most decent, most steadfast heroes are made. She found, and at great personal risk, preserved the diary of Anne Frank for posterity in 1944 after the girl and her family were caught in hiding by Germans.More than that she was, earlier, the friend who looked after the Frank family in their now world-famous Amsterdam annexe. She shopped for them, watched out for them, cheered them up and gave the adolescent Anne her first – and only – pair of high-heeled shoes. Without Miep, the family's two years in hiding would have been impossible.After their capture, she tried to buy the people of the annexe back from Gestapo officers, only to be called "schweinehund" and thrown out. When Anne's father, Otto, returned from the camps as the Franks' only survivor, he lived as one of her family for some years.In the 1950s, as the diary began to win a reputation, Miep was one of a wide range of people investigated on suspicion that she had betrayed the Franks to the Nazis. Otto stopped the investigation with a sentence: "If you suspect Miep, you suspect me."She was the last human link with the concealed but intense life in the secret building on the Prinsengracht canal, now known as the Anne Frank House, which attracts about a million visitors a year.Like the Franks, who were German Jews, Gies was not Dutch. She was born Hermine Santruschitz, in Vienna, Austria. But, because her body became wasted through undernourishment during the first world war, she was sent with other Austrian workers' children to be revitalised in the Netherlands. She took to Holland, reached the top of her Dutch language class within months and was happy when her stay was prolonged. By agreement with her natural parents, she was adopted by a middle-class Dutch family, the Nieuwenburgs, while keeping her Austrian citizenship – it was the Nieuwenburgs who nicknamed her Miep.As an adolescent, she read Baruch Spinoza and Isaac Beeckman, kept a diary and – like Anne – had "a deep longing for an understanding of life". In 1933, she answered a newspaper advert for a job in Otto Frank's firm, which sold pectin, for home jam-making. After a few weeks on jam-making duties, she was given an office job, dealing with customer complaints. In 1941, after the German occupation of Holland, Miep became a Dutch citizen by marrying Jan Gies, a social worker. The Frank family provided their wedding breakfast and Anne, then 12, gave them a silver plate.In June 1942, Anne's elder sister, Margot, was sent papers ordering her to report for forced labour in Germany. The Franks, with others, went into hiding in the annexe with a concealed entrance accessible from Otto's office. Jan, active in the Dutch resistance, got them forged ration cards. Miep, with 10 mouths to feed in a time of increasing scarcity, did so by cultivating relationships with black-market shopkeepers.Her memoir, Anne Frank Remembered (1982), gives a unique glimpse of Anne's intentness as a writer. Interrupting her at work without meaning to, Miep saw "a look on her face I'd never seen before – of dark concentration, as if she had a throbbing headache. The look pierced me and I was speechless. She was suddenly another person, writing at the table. It was as if I had interrupted an intimate moment in a very, very private friendship."On 4 August 1944, the police came. Miep heard the sound of the fugitives' feet as they were led down the annexe staircase like "beaten dogs". According to her book, the investigating German officer was about to arrest Miep as an accomplice when she noticed his Viennese accent. She mentioned the link, and after some thought he said, "From personal sympathy ... from me personally, you can stay. But God help you if you run away. Then we take your husband." Later, Miep retrieved Anne's clothbound diary and shawl. In June 1945, Otto returned alone from Auschwitz. Margot and Anne had died in the Belsen concentration camp of typhoid weeks before the liberation.Each year, on 4 August, Miep and her husband would stay silently at home, marking the day of the family's arrest. Only when the diary was published in 1947 could Miep bring herself to read it. She realised that if she had known its contents before liberation she would have had to destroy it. It gave too many people away. In 1950, when she had a son, Miep used Anne's shawl to keep her baby warm.During the Victory in Europe commemoration in 1995, Miep came to London for a joint Jewish and Christian memorial service for Anne Frank mounted at St Paul's Cathedral by the Anne Frank Educational Trust. She said the diary had done much good, but she still wished daily that the family had survived instead. "A human being is more than a book." She possessed a straightforward, unshakeable sense of her human duties and carried them out whatever the rigours and the fear.Miep and Jan continued to live in Amsterdam until Jan's death in 1993. On her 100th birthday she asked that the many "unnamed heroes" who helped Dutch Jews to escape deportation and death should be remembered: "I would like to name one, my husband Jan. He was a resistance man who said nothing but did a lot. People like him existed in thousands but were never heard."She is survived by her son, Paul, and three grandchildren.• Miep Gies, secretary and resistance worker, born 15 February 1909; died 11 January 2010Second world warJohn Ezardguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Militants Launch Coordinated Attack on Afghan Capital Taliban gunmen and suicide bombers unleash a ferocious attack on the Afghancapital in what may be an ominous sign for President Hamid Karzai's newreconciliation plan feedproxy.google.com |
Ethiopian jet crashes off Beirut An Ethiopian Airlines plane carrying 90 people crashes into the sea off Beirut in flames just after take-off in bad weather. news.bbc.co.uk |