From what I can see it’s just the retraite du combattant et pensions militaire d’invalidité that are exempt from CSG/CRDS.
Some years ago the Inland Revenue decided that custom-printed photo albums should be subject to VAT at 20%, as in their view they were not “books”. So UK photographers had to cough up an extra 20% on the books they made for their clients, and of course pass on the extra cost.
Eventually a court decided that HMRC were wrong to change the status of custom photo albums, because as they are fully printed and bound by the album company they are clearly “books”, despite containing little or no text, just photographs. (as distinct from slip-in photo albums where you assemble them yourself).
I also had to argue the toss about this with my Portuguese album supplier post-Brexit, who wanted to charge me 23% Portuguese VAT after we left the EU.
Fortunately once I quoted chapter and verse to them on the UK VAT rates they relented!!
So you can beat the tax man sometimes!
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Hi George
Now nearly a year later and the DINR in Noisy have finally responded to say as I am a French Resident I am not entitled to the reimbursement of the difference between the 17.2% and the 7.5% (CSG and CRDS) on my Assurance Vie. This is completely contra to my understanding as I have an S1. How the *** Hell do I convince one French department that they are wrong . It’s probably not worth hiring a lawyer as the amount is only about 600 Euros.
Regards Nick
Hi Nick
I’m very sorry to hear this. You must be very frustrated.
As your formal claim has been rejected by the Non-Residents Service, I think you are now entitled to escalate your case to the Médiateur des Finances Publiques.
They are competent to handle social charges disputes, are free and confidential. You can access them through the Médiateur section on Impôts.gouv.fr or via post to the Regional Médiateur. Obviously you will need to explain to them exactly what has happened, who has rejected your case, together the documents you’ve already submitted (hopefully including the refund claim wording on the draft I posted some months back).
Please let us know how you get on, and good luck. By the way, I’m sure that any decent AI tool will draft you a nice letter in French to the Médiateur if you can’t face drafting one!
Hi George
It has not yet been totally rejected. The local impôt agreed that the claim was valid but said it did not handle it and referred us to the Non résidents service. When we spoke to our financial advisors who set up the Assurance Vie they said all of their other clients had successfully claimed it back from their local impôt.
We phoned the Non residents service and they said they thought it wasn’t valid. We explained that it was a result of Brexit and I had an S1 and they said they would look at it again. We have sent them a letter explaining the relevant statutes so hopefully they will look at it again.
Thank you for the Mediator’s information we will give that a go if it fails.
regards
Nick
Good here. DINR get back to us and to our local Impôt and told them it was their responsibility to pay us back the overpaid Charge Social. The local Impôt agreed but want an up to date S1 a problem as the S1 is not reissued, we got in touch with the DWP business services overseas who sent us a copy of the S1 but it had the same dates as the copy we had already sent. However I had explained it to her and she managed to send me one with a recent date on it.
Now he wants a letter from our bank to say they had not repaid the Social Charges. Our bank did not arrange the Assurance Vie so could not do that but we managed to get a letter from AV company to say although they take social charges they can’t repay them.
So now waiting for the next hurdle
Regards Nick
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