Financial update France – April 2024

April is an important month of the year as, not only is it the end and beginning of the UK tax year but it is also the beginning of the French tax season.

If you are impatient to start declaring your income for 2023 then the tax forms should be available in the next week or so (at the time of writing no official date has been given) but whether you decide to get started in April or wait until May it is important to know the deadlines for submitting the forms.

If this is your first year submitting your tax return you will need to do a paper declaration by the 20th May 2024 (date to be confirmed). Which means that you need to collect the paper forms from the tax office and fill out the information by hand.

The other dates for the online tax declaration service are:

I shall be tackling our tax return in the April school holidays so in my next Ezine I shall be addressing any issues that I have noticed and be giving you all my tips for filing your 2023 income tax declaration.

Do you remember the fun you had last year doing the occupied properties declaration? Well, the good news is that you don’t have to do it every year! You only need to do another one if there are any changes to the occupancy of your properties. Whilst the declaration does have to be done online,18% of property owners did not do a declaration last year and the tax authorities shall be issuing a new paper declaration for those who are unable to do their declaration online.

Did you know that students do not pay taxe d’habitation on their student accommodation (CROUS)? However, a ministerial response in January (no 7826 of 09.01.2024) has clarified that this exemption also applies to students who are still included on their parents’ tax returns but who live away from their parents in private student accommodation or who flat share.

As from 1st April many benefits, including family allowance, disability allowance and RSA, will increase by 4.6%, as a measure to mitigate the effects of inflation.

Those of you who do furnished rental were quite alarmed by the French government’s “faux pas” in the 2024 finance bill which lowered the micro threshold to €15,000 and the abatement to 30% thus forcing those who were over this limit to go into the costs (regime reel) based system. As expected, this has now been rectified and landlords can use the former thresholds (€77,700 micro-BIC with a 50% abatement for costs – https://bofip.impots.gouv.fr/bofip/3610-PGP.html/identifiant%3DBOI-BIC-CHAMP-40-20-20240214). Hopefully all the organisation will have got the memo but if you do have any problems please do refer to the link above. As always, if I hear anything further on this I will let you know.

There are three pillars to the French pension scheme, the basic social security pension, the complementaire points based system and the private PERs. I strongly advise anyone who has worked in France to create their profiles on the www.info-retraite.fr website and to regularly consult this website especially when you are getting closer to retirement age. I noticed on my own account that whilst I had accumulated points as a salaried worker, since starting my business in 2017 I had not received any further points nor had I been asked to contribute to receive them. This has now all been cleared up by a decision of the Council of State on 9th February 2024 (no 471203) which nullified a decree that provided that auto-entrepreneurs under the micro-BNC regime and micro-social regime that pay a set rate of social contributions of 21.1% do not acquire points under the complementaire retirement scheme. A new law should be published soon rectifying this as from 1st June. This will however imply that the rate of social charges will increase.

If you have any questions on your finances or taxes in France please do get in touch and I would be happy to arrange a phone call or meeting to discuss your concerns.