Zeal of the authorities, error in the declaration? A strange letter has arrived in the mailboxes of several thousand families in recent weeks. On the envelope, the name of the child in the household, minor. In the envelope, a housing tax. An anomaly widely reported on social networks, which made parents jump to the ceiling. “We are on industrial processes, 39 million tax households, 24 million owners, 4 million housing tax notices on second homes issued each year and this type of error can be encountered,” explained the General Directorate of Public Finances at BFMTV.
The tax administration offers the beginnings of an explanation. “It happens, if an owner has declared all the members of a family on the declaration of occupants of residential premises, that the information system issues the notice in the name of a child, by mistake.” A justification taken up on France info this Thursday, November 23 by Bruno Le Maire. According to him, this bug can be explained as follows: “Taxpayers in general put the names of their children in the declaration. There was undoubtedly an excess of good will on their part” (…) This is not not a bug of the platform but it is indeed a bug because the declarations arrived by mistake”.
Thus the Minister of Finance staunchly maintains that the platform is not in question: “There are certainly errors that have been made but they are not those of the platform”. Bruno Le Maire wanted to downplay the scale of the problem, which affected “a few thousand out of several million declarations”, he recalls. Let families be reassured: “The correction will be automatic. The General Directorate of Public Finances will take care of it. Taxpayers do not have to do anything. When there is an error, it is the administration that must correct it , that will be the case,” the minister insisted.
No, children will not have to pay housing taxes. Parents must report the error to the tax service via their secure messaging service or by calling 0809.401.401. Since January 1, the French are no longer subject to housing tax on their main residence. However, they are required to pay it for their second home if they have one.
