Penalties and corrections

You should declare your income and pay any due tax on time as lateness incurs penalties. 

If you fail to declare on time but do declare without being chased up then you incur a fine of 10%. The fine is 20% if the tax office has to write a warning letter (mise en demeure) and you declare within 30 days of receiving this.

There is a penalty of 40% if you do not declare within 30 days or an automatic 80% (with no need for mise en demeure) where the tax office discovers undeclared work income or income from an illegal activity. Interest at 0.2% per month is also due.

In addition, if you do not declare within at least a month of a mise en demeure (formal warning) you may be subject to imposition d’office, where the tax office taxes you on (usually high) theoretical incomes.

If you are billed for lateness or error, tax offices may, at their discretion, annul any fines and interest or reduce them, if you write or talk to them with an apology and explanation. This is called remise gracieuse. It may be given if the tax office agrees there were factors that were exceptional or out of your control.

However, the droit à l’erreur (‘right to be wrong’) does not cover penalties for making your whole declaration late.

Corriger mon impôt - corrections

As explained in chapter 3 (First questions) and chapter 4 (Declaring online), it is fairly straightforward to make changes if you submitted an online declaration on time but then realised something was not right, such as an incorrect income figure or something that you forgot to declare. 

In this case the tax office will only apply interest at a reduced rate on sums that were declared late, rather than the 10% general lateness penalty. This interest accrues monthly, starting from July 1, so making a correction quickly minimises the risk.

If you declared online you can make as many corrections as you like until the deadline has passed. You can go back into your declaration and make a change, and information you already declared should be visible and not all need entering again. However, you may still need to click through to the end of all relevant sections and then click at the end to complete the declaration again. 

After the deadline date this may not be possible. In this case, it is suggested that you send an online message to your tax office if you realise there was a mistake.

However, after your avis d’impôt tax statement is issued in summer, a specific corrections service will open again in your online space during August and is usually open until mid-December. A new avis will be sent if the correction results in changes.

The online correction service can also be used by people who made an ‘automatic’ declaration this year but then realised they had forgotten something new that should have been added.

The tax service used to state that errors relating to your family situation, such as a marriage, divorce, Pacs or death of a spouse in the relevant tax year, could not be corrected this way and required submission of a corrective paper declaration. The current information is that it is possible, but not if there are ‘several’ such changes in the year.

Remember: you have right to be (a little) wrong

Tax inspectors have traditionally been lenient towards mistakes made in good faith.

A 2018 law formalised this with an official droit à l’erreur – the right to make a mistake, which applies to dealings of the public with many official bodies.

The principle is that members of the public should be able to make a mistake in declarations to official bodies if it is the first time they have made such a mistake and it is in good faith.

Whether you notice the problem and declare it spontaneously or it is found by the body while making checks, you should have the right to sort it out. The tax service will aim to help you understand where you went wrong, as opposed to punishing you.

It does not apply if you have committed fraud or have been caught out doing the same thing before but it would be up to the body to prove you were not in

good faith.

It also does not apply in general to making your (whole) declaration late or paying your tax late (without obtaining permission) but it can, for example, apply to forgetting to declare a certain kind of income or getting an amount slightly wrong.

Generally, penalty fines and tax increases (majorations) will only be applied where the droit à l’erreur does not apply, however any extra tax payable is still due and it is possible there could be interest applied pro rata at 0.2%/month for lateness (0.1% if you owned up spontaneously).

As part of the droit à l’erreur the online declaration now has extra alerts about typical mistakes to watch out for dependent on what sections you choose to complete.

Some issues to watch out for include:

Failing to declare income from abroad

Forgetting to declare the existence of foreign bank accountsc If you are a UK or EU/EEA/Swiss resident or an S1 holder in France

Failing to select a box to claim a social charges reductionIncorrect calculations when claiming a tax credit for childcare expenses. For example, this should not include the children’s meals and other aid received towards the childcare (eg. from the Caf family benefits body) should be deducted



With unfurnished rental income, forgetting the difference between micro foncier and the régime réel. You cannot use the box for the former if the income is more than €15,000 year.

Forgetting to declare income earned by young people attached to your tax household

Not selecting the option to have investment income subject to the tax bands rather than the flat tax where the former would be more favourable in your situationFailing to correctly claim expenses linked to maintaining autonomy in older age or in the case of disability.

Declaring the wrong amount from investment withdrawals. For example with assurance vie withdrawals it is only the gain part that is declared (revenu imposable) not the part that is return of your capital. French providers will send information about the correct figure in around March to April. It may also have been pre-filled by the tax office but you should check. Similarly, sums that have already had French social charges taken off at source should be declared as such to make sure they are not charged again (this should usually have been prefilled but again you should check).

There is an official website with more information on the droit à l’erreur and examples of other mistakes, both in tax and other common admin tasks at: tinyurl.com/droit-err.