Take action now to sort out tax mistakes
If you made a mistake or forgot to mention something in your online income declaration this year you have just a few days left to rectify this simply via your online account.
This comes as one reader has also been in touch with a timely reminder about how important it is to query your tax bill if you think the tax office (as opposed to yourself) may have got something wrong.
The Corriger ma déclaration service is still open via your online account at impots.gouv.fr up until the end of the day on Tuesday (December 18).
It allows you to go back into your declaration and submit it again – if necessary a new avis d’imposition tax statement will be sent to you a few weeks later. If something has changed there might be more tax to be paid or a refund may be due.
Experience suggests the process works smoothly and you should not hesitate to make use of it. However it is not possible from a tablet or smartphone.
Meanwhile one reader told us how he took time off to go to the tax office in person after receiving a tax demand that was many times larger than expected.
He said he had initially assumed that the tax office does not make mistakes and had ‘sleepless nights’ over how to pay the bill.
The official he met initially said the figures looked correct, but agreed to check the summary against the original tax return in their files.
“When he came back he said that there had been a big mistake.Someone had entered my wife’s income twice into the system. He explained that ‘we have a lot of young people working for us, entering figures into the computer and they make mistakes’. He insinuated that they weren’t always very accurate.
“He recalculated the tax due and it came to a much smaller sum, amounting to a saving equivalent of our annual fuel bill."
He added: “It’s an important lesson always to doubt and ask. If we hadn’t spoken French and hadn’t had the time to follow it up, we’d probably have paid up quietly and never known.”
Note that it is also possible to contact your tax office directly via the private messaging service in your online space (or write a formal letter, making a réclamation, though you are likely to wait longer for a response). However for an important matter it might help, and be quicker, to visit in person as our reader did.
