I know we just had an entry, but I feel the need to rant (plus ça change?) so I am using the blog. My beef today is with the French tax system. We were very pleased to hear about the newly introduced rules for reduced Taxe Foncière and Taxe d’Habitation for those on tiny incomes, but all in all the experience of exploring it in more detail has left a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth.
First off, the Foncière. A sizeable reduction is available for those who earned very little the previous year. We thought for sure this would include us as our combined income last year wasn’t really enough to live on – we were relying on savings to keep afloat. However, it turns out that we earned too much to be considered – your bill needs to be at least double what you earned the last year! At least for us, our bill isn’t that high because we live in the countryside.
For Lee & Richard, with their large property in a town, their Foncière is over four times what we pay, and through no fault of their own, their income last year stands at a big fat 0. So, I told them about this reduction, getting their hopes up that they might get a sizable adjustment to their bill. After half a day spent queing and filling in bits of paper at the Angoulême tax office though, we learned that the arcane and illogical calculation used for this reduction means that Lee & Richard are faced with paying the full amount. The process uses the figure of 50% of your income to calculate the amount they will deduct from your bill. As 50% of 0 = 0, the reduction available to them was 0. This was too bloody daft to let slide, so in his case, we ended up submitting an amended tax return, claiming he had after all earned a small amount of money, and sent that off along with the claim form for the reduction. No idea what they will make of it, but fingers crossed it works out. They seem to like bits of paper at that office – maybe they’ll be pleased to receive so many extra ones from him this year.
For the other tax, the calculation is handled automatically by the tax office before you are billed. We were told what our bill would be for this year and calculated it had been reduced by a whopping and very welcome 75%. This info I too passed onto the boys. However, I got the bill today and it turns out that the reduction was in fact 35% and not 75%, as the lady in the tax office never mentioned that this did not include our TV licence fee which is part of the Habitation tax.
Now, ok – they don’t need to give any discounts at all, so I can’t really complain, but to go from thinking both our (not to mention Lee & Richard’s) bills would be greatly reduced, it is a bit galling to find that this isn’t quite the case. The foncière concession is really nothing more than a nasty joke that will apply to virtually no-one in France – and it penalises those who are hardest up too. What kind of tax relief scheme gives less support to those on the lowest incomes?? Worse, the only reason Lee’s return was 0 was that it took him all year to deal with all the bureaucracy associated with getting his permit to sell paint. Had that been sorted when it should have been, he would have been able to work. This is a fact that the lady in the tax office did not give a toss about, as she basically informed us.
Well, as with the other of life’s 2 certainties, essentially, there’s nothing you can do about it except take it on the chin – so we will (not that it’ll stop me moaning, mind you…).