For the Ministry of the Economy and Finance, this is a response to the abolition in 2023 of the housing tax on main residences, causing a complication in the identification of potential households eligible for this help.
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Objective: fight against energy poverty. The Ministry of the Economy announced, Monday May 6, the upcoming opening of an online counter intended to receive complaints concerning the energy check. Low-income households who have not received this aid, distributed since 2018, and who consider themselves eligible, will now be able to “a request on a dedicated portal, which will be open from July to December”according to Bercy, which specifies that the application form will be available on the site chequeenergie.gouv.fr.
The energy check, the annual amount of which varies between 48 and 277 euros, helps low-income households pay their energy bills (electricity, gas, heat, wood or fuel heating, LPG) and certain renovation work. energy.
Around 5.6 million beneficiaries were affected by the campaign to automatically send energy checks for the year 2024, which ended on April 25.
A change in the method of calculating the amount of aid
The amount of the energy check is calculated according to the reference tax income and the composition of the household. For this last criterion, the administration usually based itself on housing tax declarations. However, the housing tax on main residences was abolished in 2023, which complicated the identification of potential eligible households.
Thus, at the start of the year, several family associations (CLCV, Afoc, Rural Families, Cnafal, UFC, Unaf) expressed their fears of seeing a million beneficiaries excluded from the system “while they meet the criteria to obtain it”.
“This deletion no longer makes it possible to automatically establish a new list of energy check beneficiaries for 2024”, confirmed the Ministry of the Economy and Finance, for whom this portal should allow “households who are eligible for the energy check based on their situation in 2022 (income and household composition), but were not eligible for their situation in 2021, to request the energy check.”
“This concerns, for example, young people entering working life (first-time filers), households who experienced a drop in income between 2021 and 2022 or households who had a birth in 2022”added Bercy.