Apologies if you’ve already considered this.. at your rdv with France Services, I wonder if it might be worth asking them/ the Impôts.whether the factor(s) that may, possibly have given rise to a potential social charges issue in 2023 and 2024, might also be present both in 2025 (which clearly you can’t have filed the return yet) and indeed the current year, 2026?
I have briefly considered that this might not be the end of it, but am reluctant to muddy the waters at the moment especially as, although my spoken French is good, I do have trouble these days keeping up with rapid speech (due to hearing and ageing) and as almost the last Englishman here I don’t know any bi-lingual friends.
I will be very careful this year and maybe take a paper version to the local tax office for confirmation before declaring.
Thank you for bringing me up to date on that point.
Just to say thanks for your deleted response - no need to delete it, I did say it was a suspicion of mine, these things tax wise are generally a debate which hopefully arrives at a consensus, some more rapidly than others, screenshots / tax bulletins do help weigh the result more.
And @George1 ‘s screenshot just seems to deepen @David_Spardo ‘s mystery cases coz now we know he could have claimed 2 parts for the ‘impot error in your favour’ 2023 year, perhaps that might also have been a reason for an alleged error - that the impot ‘corrected’ his 1 part back to two?
That is of course though quite separate to the 24 and 25 years mystery. Sorry David, hope you don’t mind too much us puzzling over your tax affairs 
. Again, best wishes for tomorrow!
OK, had the rdv with France Services and not really much further forward, If anything he seemed less switched on to the situation than the AS person over a week ago.
However, he did not think it was not genuine (mainly because the letters look so official) but he understood even less about it than me. He did try to phone both Bethune woman, after at first checking on line that there was indeed an office there, and also a different number on that site. Neither number was answered.
He thinks that I should sign the document in spite of agreeing that the mistake in the amounts were strange but then said that I should go to the local tax office next Monday or Tuesday mornings when there are sans rdv sessions and at least offer to pay the figure, apparently, demanded but to them in monthly instalments. If they agree, presumably after checking, it will prove that the whole thing isn’t a scam.
I think the best course is to tell Bethune what I intend to do, without signing anything beforehand, and then go to Nontron and follow his suggestion.
If it is a scam hopefully that will see them off, if not well than of course I am willing to pay after not doing so for so long (16 years) remembering what excellent service I have had, and continue to have, from the health service at very little cost to myself.
Watch this space next week. 
Sounds excellent advice to me!
best of luck 
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A long interview at the tax office yesterday during which the lady rang a colleague, maybe Bethune Lady, I don’t know, and then advised me not to sign or pay anything to anybody until a letter arrives telling me what to do. Not sure if that is good news or bad, but she did, I think, look up all my records going back years and seemed to be countering my assertion that I have always declared UK income and always paid whatever has been asked of me.
As I know full well that, up until 2010, I have always received a demand and paid it every November this is a little worrying. Worrying too that she seemed to have been infected with Bethune Lady’s assumption that I do not think I ought to pay towards French Social Services because I am paying UK ones. Nothing can be further from the truth as I have worked here from the moment I arrived and been straight into the French system and out of the UK one.
Anyway, just a matter of waiting now to see what the post brings, but at least I have been assured that it isn’t a scam. She also wrote down for me which boxes to use at the next declaration 1AM and 8TX, so a slight deviation from Bethune’s advice but still not the same as my original form.
But I still can’t see how they have got things so catastrophically wrong in saying that I have never declared UK sourced income. I know that I have for certain because until 2010 I paid every year and how could they have known what to charge me if I hadn’t declared. Also, if I had never declared, why the hell did I take so much time and effort each year working out an acceptable exchange rate? The whole thing is totally bizarre
and all I can do is hope that it will be sorted soon.
Three things on a lighter note, although it wasn’t freezing in the tax office the lady was wearing her outdoor coat and a scarf. 
The desk between us was massive and there was a plastic screen across the middle, not good for someone whose keeping up abilities in French is diminishing with each day that passes and whose hearing abilities are matching it at the same rate. Each time she spoke I dramatically leant as far forward as I could with both hands forcing my ears, equally dramatically, towards her.
I joked with her about 2 signs in English, both on the entry door and on our desk screen, ‘Reception is only in French’, and I asked her did she have a lot of Anglos in here expecting to be able to speak English? She nodded in a very tired fashion. 
I abstained from mentioning that in England you can be interviewed in Urdu if need be and many other languages as well for all I know. 
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Seems we were all on the same wavelength in advising you NOT to sign anything…
Hopefully, someone will make sense out of all this and fingers-crossed you won’t have to pay much if anything.
Years ago when helping friends I got to know someone who worked at the Nontron Tax Office. Lovely lady, very patient and kind. Sadly, she retired and the staff are much reduced and not (all) made from the same gentle cloth as she was.
Hi David, thanks for coming back to us. Boxes 1AM and 8TX are absoulutely the right ones for UK pension income taxable by France. It’s the ones I, and just about everyone else uses.
If you have declared the UK pension income in other boxes (we don’t know which boxes you have been using) then yes, the Impot will say you haven’t declared the UK pension income as UK pension income but as something else (i.e. whatever boxes you have put it in). Sorry to be a downer!
The bright side might be that depending on what boxes you did put it in, you may not have any more tax to pay, and maybe less due to the 10% pension abatement, though as noted, you can’t pay less that zero!
Though there is a possibility that if whatever boxes you have declared in do not feed into the social charges calculation which 1AM does, then you might not have been paying these on that UK pension income when you should have…
Yes 1AM does ring a bell with me but that doesn’t alter the fact that the form that I was sent did not have an 8TX on it at all. I wish I had kept a paper copy of the online forms I did use, so that I could see exactly what I did do, but I had other things on my mind in those 2 years, my wife’s final and fatal illness.
Before that I used to keep records of everything and will definitely do so this year. I do not want to go through all this nonsense again.
Yes, that’s definitely me bottom right, no idea who the bloke in the main picture is so it must have been after my time there because it was such a small company that I knew everyone in the place. Also the Green Flame was certainly not in the line up then either.
No idea how that happened, this post is in a different thread. 
I’m so sorry David, I made a mistake about box 8TX when I said you use with box 1AM. I mixed box 8TX up with box 8TK which is used for UK (foreign) government pensions (NB, UK state pension is NOT a gov pension).
Whilst checking back on my screenshots of the online returns, I have found a screenshot of box 8TX, I’ll post it later tomorrow after I’ve thought about it, as there no rush while you wait for your letter and it’s late now!
Cheers.
Your anecdotes never fail to brighten my day David. I hope you get all this sorted soon.
If it’s any consolation, quite a few retirees here in Strasbourg are reeling from their latest encounter with the tax office. Until a recent Conseil d’Etat ruling, frontaliers and former staff of international organisations who had a French pension in addition to their foreign-source pension benefited from an arrangement whereby the prélèvements sociaux on their foreign pension was capped (plafonné) at the amount of the French pension.
Last year this rule changed. The pensioners concerned were aware of the change and accepted that in future they would be liable to a lot more CSG/CRDS on their foreign pensions.
What they did not anticipate, however, was that the tax office would apply the new rule retroactively, going back 3 years.
One of my friends came back after Christmas to find a bill for
almost €30 000. Their accountant appealed it but to no avail.
Oh that really does make me feel better @Helenochka , not, but Bethune Lady told me specifically that they can’t by law go back before 2023, which is why they are only chasing me for 2024 and 2025.
Just for clarity, I don’t have any UK pensions that are exempted for French contributions. Only 1 company, one private (Pru, very small) and OAP. So no complications of that sort and I have always declared all 3 of them.
@larkswood12 The Tax Lady not only told me firmly 1AM and 8TX, and I have it in writing from her hand, Very strange, do they know what they are doing?
Your experience David is a good reminder to have copies of everything sent. We cannot assume once the button is pressed or the form is in the envelope that all will be well. Much better to be discussing something was in the wrong box rather than it wasn’t there at all.
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Yes and no. So, box 1AM is where you declare your UK pensions you mentioned. Box 8TX is where one declares a disability pension, the amount of which is calculated to liable to social charges at the 3.8% rate.
You do not have a UK disability pension - so 8TX is a red herring, doesn’t apply. (Of course an impot official could ‘decide’ one of your pensions is a disability pension and allocate it so.) But they’d be wrong!
Here’s the screenshot I found, and a google translation (you don’t know how long it too me to figure out how to do that…)
Also -
As you file online you have a record of what you put in which boxes for each year available in your space - it has been documented on the forum how to do that, I’ve done it also, from memory you look in your documents for the specific forms - 2042, 2047 etc, rather than the ‘Avis’ statement. If it’s not very obvious, let me know and I’ll try and log to see how I did it before, or maybe someone with a better memory can remind us?
Hope all that helps.
Thank you but I think I will go back to what I did before this all blew up, that is copy everything and print it off, even simply save it but if you have a file marked Tax, they aren’t too hard to find.
BTW one of my wife’s pensions was a local authority one and she also received a disability one, so the former should not have been declared and the latter, all on its own in 8TX apparently, assuming I could have found it. 
No probs. For local authority pension it is declared in 1AL, and 8TK (that’s what I got mixed up with 8TX). One is supposed to declare them, it is added to your worldwide revenues and a credit ‘equal to the amount of French tax’ is given. No social security charges are due on the UK LG pension (I think!), however with an S1, no social charges are due anyway.. So not much difference to the tax bill anyway, if any.
I presume the disability pension was a UK one, so the impot should know there is an S1 in place, or should be, as it is an exportable benefit. But maybe the double tax treaty says they are not exempt from social charges if there is an S1, but I don’t recall seeing that in the treaty.
The promised letter arrived yesterday, all 8 foolscap pages of it. And it is from Bethune Lady, so it was her indeed that Tax Lady got in touch with on the phone. Her phone must have a restricted receiver so she only gets calls from internal tax people, despite it being published on her letter heading with the advice to contact her direct.
Anyway, have only had time for a quick scan through with simultaneous translation and at first glance it seems to be a rehash of all the email nonsense over the last few weeks. So today I am going to translate it all and print it off so I can follow exactly what they expect me to do. Not a thrilling prospect. BTW, one thing that did stand out was that I think she contradicted Tax Lady in her recommendation of box codes. How the hell can I be expected to follow the rules if they can’t agree between themselves what to do? Especially as the written note to me was done by Tax Lady as she put down the receiver from Bethune Lady.
There is a large penitentiary near Vivonne, just to the south of Poitiers on the N10. My next communication on here may come from there. 
Sorry you’re having to deal with all this nonsense David. Our tax office is the same. Different information depending on who you talk to. It’s very stressful.