Traffic jam of the owners in front of the tax services, overwhelmed staff, furious unions… it gets stuck on all floors.
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Traffic jam of the owners in front of the tax services, overwhelmed staff, furious unions… it gets stuck on all floors. Blame it on the abolition of the housing tax on main residences which came into force this year. To enable State services to identify and precisely list the exempt premises, an obligation to declare assets was put in place on 1er January 2023. On the tax site, the owner must now indicate for each of his properties what his situation is: is the building inhabited, empty, occupied by a possible tenant whose identity must be disclosed. The people concerned had until June 30 to make their statements, but given the influx of cases in the home stretch, the date was postponed to July 31. Which doesn’t solve the underlying problem.
Questioning of the owners on the real intentions of the Ministry of Economy and Finance; poor government communication: the campaign Managing my real estate is turning into a fiasco and the unions are fed up. The staff of the Directorate General of Public Finances (DGFIP) speak of a number of telephone and physical contacts never seen at this time of the year. 94,000 calls were recorded on Friday June 16 alone.
Some very aggressive taxpayers
The administrative hierarchy seems outdated, yet the flaws will have to be corrected. The dematerialization of declarations is not suitable for taxpayers who continue to request paper copies; no acknowledgment of receipt is sent to declarants who therefore do not know if their file has been correctly processed, hence the calls for standards that explode; not to mention reminders and threats of fines that make some taxpayers very aggressive at the counters.
The Director General of Public Finance does not hide it: in reality, it is a question of resetting the files in order to be able to tax second homes more effectively. Jérôme Fournel recognizes a cumbersome implementation but promises an optimal and efficient system once all the problems have been resolved.