As some of you know through circumstances such as lack of income and a man who doesn’t want to hang onto me unless he has another woman on the side for sex I have to leave my beloved France. Yesterday I received a horror in the post… l’avis des impots. Instead of paying €187 per month they want me to pay €747 for the rest of the year and then almost €400 each month during 2018. I don’t earn a cent more than I ever have, less in fact but I have my old aging house in NZ which I rent to my daughter and I pay tax on that income in NZ. Despite the double-taxation treaty between the two countries France includes my NZ income in with my very modest France income and this seems to have tipped me over some sort of limit. In reality it’s a matter of only €6000 income from NZ they include yet the result is horrific and I will be unable to pay.
What happens tax-wise when you leave France? France is not PAYE. I will not be earning money in France next year to pay these exorbitant sums and what happens the year after? i have no idea how much they would charge me for 2017income in 2019. What happens if the future taxes cannot be paid because I have left the country? What would happen if a miracle occured and I could come back to France one day - would I be slapped in jail or heavily fined for not paying taxes? What is the procedure for quitting France.
Feeling desperate and gutted. I’ve slogged my guts out here for peanuts, never paid for the hours I work and those I am paid for end up like this. I am not a wealthy property developer, just an aging woman who kept her old house as a bolt hole in case of dire straits (now).
Some of you have left France. Can you please tell me what happens with tax?
The first thing to find out is whether this is correct or whether they’ve made an error, which can happen, usually because you didn’t put figures in exactly the right boxes or occasionally because the computer had a brain fart. With DTAs the general rule is that all income is counted to arrive at your RFR, but then credit is given for any tax paid in another country so you don’t pay twice. If you declare as a single person the threshold before you pay tax is an RFR of 9 710, then between that and 26 818 you pay at 14%, and any income above 26 818 is at 30%. So if you are being charged around 4 800 pa that would represent a substantial income, well into the 30% bracket. Have you checked that the RFR is correct? And that they’ve applied the tax credit? And that a rogue figure hasn’t crept in somewhere? The tax office staff are usually very helpful and I’m sure they’ll be happy to go through it with you figure by figure to see it’s correct and if by chance it is, explain why it’s so different from previous years.
What happens is with unpaid tax is that it keeps growing because they keep adding late payment penalties to it. They probably won’t bother to collect if you leave France but if you come back it will be waiting for you. But hopefully it is all a mistake. If you only have 6k or so income from abroad and say 20k income in France, your tax shouldn’t be more than 15% of around 15k even without a credit, which if my maths are correct which usually they aren’t, is around 2 250€. Go the the tax office and ask them to explain.
Hi. Sorry to hear about your circumstances. Two things I know about are:
French taxes are calculated for the previous year so as I’m sure you are aware yes you do have to pay tax the year you leave (as you probably paid no tax the year you arrived).
Secondly 400€ a month sounds high. I don’t know your income or circumstances but that would relate to an income of at least 40,000 euros a year. As someone else mentioned there may well be an error, it would well be worth a visit to your local tax office “centre de finance publiques” with your details and revenues. They are very good usually and can help you check everything is correct.