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taxe-dhabitation-reduced

Posted: Tue 11 Jul 2017 10:29
by kenny
Will this change affect foreign owners of holiday home in France

Thanks




http://anglophone-direct.com/taxe-dhabitation-reduced/

Posted: Tue 11 Jul 2017 11:51
by Nigel
Are they saying that 80% of French residents earn less than 20000€ per annum...ie less than 40000€ per couple or have I missed something

Posted: Tue 11 Jul 2017 15:53
by martyn94
Nigel wrote:Are they saying that 80% of French residents earn less than 20000€ per annum...ie less than 40000€ per couple or have I missed something
Does that seem so strange to you? The SMIC, working full time, gets you a bit shy of €18,000 gross, and I know lots of people who get that or very litttle more. Add in the under-18s, students, retired, one-earner couples, sick and handicapped, part-timers, un- or under-employed, and it doesn't seem too strange to me.

On a more technical level, these exemptions are based on your "revenu fiscal de reference" (ie from your tax computation), and I think that allows a few deductions from gross income. I tried, very briefly, to find a recent percentile distribution. I'm sure it exists but I ran out of energy. But nothing I did find made me think that the bulk of French people have much higher incomes than this (leaving aside a few odds and sods made "on the black").

Incidentally, I would bet that non-French-residents are out of luck, if it works anything like the existing exemptions: first because they won't have a recognised level of income for French purposes, and second because it won't apply to residences sécondaires in any event.

Posted: Tue 11 Jul 2017 18:05
by Allan
This sounds a bit like one of Corbyn's bright ideas. Taking away taxes from the masses and imposing the bill onto the few.

If the majority makes no contribution to local costs then I wonder on what basis they will vote in local elections.

Posted: Tue 11 Jul 2017 21:57
by martyn94
Allan wrote:This sounds a bit like one of Corbyn's bright ideas. Taking away taxes from the masses and imposing the bill onto the few.

If the majority makes no contribution to local costs then I wonder on what basis they will vote in local elections.
It seems to me like one of those mad French exceptions. Even if you don't pay taxe d'habitation, you suffer the taxe foncière, directly or indirectly, in much the same amount. And the amounts differ to staggering degrees on superficially similar properties. In Normandy, for me, it's pocket money. Down here, it's high though I don't entirely resent it: the commune works hard. In Paris, of all places, it's very modest.

And nobody seems to give much of a damn. Yet Maggie Thatcher ruined herself over a system of local govt finance in the UK which was objectively much less mad.

Which is part of an answer to Allan: god knows what influences people in local elections here, but I doubt whether it's much to do with the taxe d'habitation.

Posted: Wed 12 Jul 2017 12:21
by Kate
Kenny, as far as I understand it, as the Taxe d'Hab applies to everyone, the new ruling should apply too. Let's wait and see. :lol:

Posted: Wed 12 Jul 2017 13:36
by martyn94
Kate wrote:Kenny, as far as I understand it, as the Taxe d'Hab applies to everyone, the new ruling should apply too. Let's wait and see. :lol:
I don't mean to be wilfully discouraging, but this is not a new relief but an extension to one which already exists at lower income levels. And that works in the two ways I described: it operates by reference to the French-law "revenu fiscal de reference", and it only applies to primary residences.

So by all means wait and see, but don't hold your breath as you do so.

Posted: Wed 12 Jul 2017 16:17
by tia
Second home owners will pay the same as they always have as their bill is not income based

Posted: Wed 12 Jul 2017 18:23
by Sue
If you are a foreigner with a second home and don't submit a tax return here, Impots won't know your income so I am assuming in this instance nothing changes for a foreigner with a second home.

Posted: Wed 12 Jul 2017 19:01
by martyn94
Sue wrote:If you are a foreigner with a second home and don't submit a tax return here, Impots won't know your income so I am assuming in this instance nothing changes for a foreigner with a second home.
So I think we're all agreed, but even better we're almost certainly right. Why on earth would second-home owners (like me) expect a give-away from French taxpayers (also like me, but mostly much worse off)?

Posted: Sat 15 Jul 2017 13:52
by Phip3
During the election campaign I szeem to remember Macron saying something about reducing Taxe Foncière .Since the election nothing.

Posted: Sat 15 Jul 2017 19:11
by martyn94
Phip3 wrote:During the election campaign I szeem to remember Macron saying something about reducing Taxe Foncière .Since the election nothing.
Where do you look for your news? I think Macron's commitments were in relation to taxe d'habitation rather than taxe foncière. They are not very different, but they are still different, and paid (sometimes) by different people.

There has been endless conflicting speculation, and conflicting statemements by Ministers, about when or if anything will be done about taxe d'habitation. But apparently either next year or the year after. And copiously reported. I always just read Le Monde, if you can cope with the French,

Listening not looking

Posted: Sat 15 Jul 2017 22:07
by Phip3
Cheeky wee bisom . I'm fairly sure I heard this during one of his election speeches. I'm sure he said taxe foncière rather than taxe d'habitation and although I thought that he was talking about the need to reduce it, I could have mis-heard this bit. I do tend to listen to the TV while doing something else rather than actually watching it. And as I've just said he mentioned the need to reduce it rather than a commitment to reduce it.

Le Monde on line : a lot of the time you have to pay if you want to read the whole article. I don't buy it but do buy Le Canard

Re: Listening not looking

Posted: Sun 16 Jul 2017 13:56
by martyn94
Phip3 wrote:Cheeky wee bisom . I'm fairly sure I heard this during one of his election speeches. I'm sure he said taxe foncière rather than taxe d'habitation and although I thought that he was talking about the need to reduce it, I could have mis-heard this bit. I do tend to listen to the TV while doing something else rather than actually watching it. And as I've just said he mentioned the need to reduce it rather than a commitment to reduce it.

Le Monde on line : a lot of the time you have to pay if you want to read the whole article. I don't buy it but do buy Le Canard


I grovel, since you evidently did mean taxe foncière rather than taxe d'habitation (people do sometimes confuse them). I didn't hear that TV programme that you did, and a quick google search reveals nothing connecting Macron to taxe foncière (though lots on taxe d'habitation, obviously, and ISF, and what seems to be a wholly fake news story saying he would charge income tax on imputed rents of owner-occupiers (loyers fictifs) - an excellent idea but quite impossible).

If he can do even the tax changes he is committed to, and bring the deficit back to within 3% and falling, I wouldn't expect much slack left over for the ones he isn't committed to.

Though god knows: his tax policies seem to be a bit random.

I find that Le Monde gives me most of the stories I want for nothing, or at least a sufficient taste of them: their pay-wall seems designed for their core audience of schoolteachers.

Posted: Tue 18 Jul 2017 11:40
by Santiago
The revenue that is used is the household revenue after allowances, divided by the number of parts. So a family of 5 on 50 000€ will be likely to pay no Tax Hab but a single person earning 40 000€ will probably not.

The changes sound nice but Macron is doing it to prevent individual communes from setting high tax habs to fill their own pockets rather than give everyone a tax break. He has promised to fund the communes from social contributions so lets wait until we see how those are going to go up before we rejoice.

Posted: Tue 18 Jul 2017 13:19
by martyn94
Santiago wrote:The revenue that is used is the household revenue after allowances, divided by the number of parts. So a family of 5 on 50 000€ will be likely to pay no Tax Hab but a single person earning 40 000€ will probably not.

The changes sound nice but Macron is doing it to prevent individual communes from setting high tax habs to fill their own pockets rather than give everyone a tax break. He has promised to fund the communes from social contributions so lets wait until we see how those are going to go up before we rejoice.
He's said that CSG will go up by 1.7%, but be more than compensated for by reductions in other social security contributions for people of working age. And the existing reduced CSG rate for low incomes will continue. So it's rich old parasites like me that will cop it. Which is probably right and good: better in any event than the Tory model in the UK, where you buy off the old folk and screw everyone else (he said, through gritted teeth).

Posted: Wed 13 Sep 2017 17:22
by Owens88
Some of the comments above correctly separate Taxe d'habitation from Taxe Fonciere but imply that I is possible to pay only one of these. We pay both. Are we incorrect?

Posted: Wed 13 Sep 2017 19:59
by martyn94
Owens88 wrote:Some of the comments above correctly separate Taxe d'habitation from Taxe Fonciere but imply that I is possible to pay only one of these. We pay both. Are we incorrect?
If you are an owner-occupier, the starting point is that you pay both. If you rent, you pay the taxe d'hab and your landlord pays the taxe foncière (though no doubt it has an impact on the rent you pay). If your income is (very) low, you can be exempted from taxe d'hab, and M Macron is proposing that the income threshold for that should be increased significantly, though by annual stages. I don't know of any way by which owners can be let off taxe foncière.

Posted: Wed 13 Sep 2017 21:30
by Florence
Over 75s on a limited income don´t pay either taxes.

Posted: Thu 14 Sep 2017 10:24
by martyn94
Florence wrote:Over 75s on a limited income don´t pay either taxes.
I knew I should have checked: there are always exceptions to anything in the world of tax, particularly in France. An exemption for over-75s must have seemed cheap when it was first introduced, but the chickens will be coming home to roost over the next few decades. I wish you joy if you are entitled to it, but I don't quite see why I should help pay for it. At least until 2027, if I'm spared, at which point it will become right and good.

Posted: Thu 14 Sep 2017 16:14
by Owens88
Thanks Martyn