Online bug hits taxpayers

SOME taxpayers who opted to get their tax statement online have been hit by a bug on the service impôts website – which could have meant they had access to another person’s details.

Two million people have opted for a paperless tax statement and received emails telling them they could access the website to check their finances. After going online, some discovered the details they were accessing were not theirs.

Once discovered, tax staff switched off the ability for certain taxpayers to view their statements online and they will now receive paper statements.

Those affected are mostly first-time taxpayers, people who have just changed address or where their family situation had changed.

The finance ministry at Bercy said it had switched off the online system as a “precautionary measure”.