Bercy preferred to postpone the deadline for a month in the face of the fiasco. Individuals seem to have the greatest difficulty in completing the new declaration of occupation of real estate, for which the deadline was set for June 30, before being postponed to July 31 by the tax service. About 34 million owners are affected in France. But only 60% of them have so far managed to complete the procedure online. According to information from RTL, tax call centers were overwhelmed with more than 90,000 calls a day, not counting physical appointments. L’Express gives you the keys to understanding how to make your declaration.
Why and where to declare the occupation of one’s property?
The purpose of this reporting obligation, put in place at the beginning of January, is to apply the tax on vacant housing, but also to identify which properties are still concerned by the housing tax: this is completely abolished for main residences by August, but maintained for secondary residences. A procedure little different from what taxpayers already know, argues Bercy. “The site will go to the end smoothly and without difficulty. There is no technical hiccup, it is a new declarative procedure which will not be repeated next year but carried out with proven tools. At the time of sampling at the source, we were already announcing an industrial disaster, but that did not correspond to reality”, thus explained to Echoes Jerome Fournelthe Director General of Public Finance (DGFIP).
The declaration of a property is done online on the site “Impots.gouv.fr” and via the “Manage my real estate (GMBI)” service from your personal or professional space. People who do not have internet or have difficulty with computer tools can go to their public finance center or at Maison France service, or contact a public finance agent on 0.809.401.401 (free service + cost of a call).
How to make your declaration?
Once in the interface, each room in your possession is presented separately in the form of a box on the dashboard. For each property, the nature of the space, its area (its actual area calculated from wall to wall, and not the living area) and its location are indicated. The description of the accommodation is visible when you click on “consult”.
Your part of the job is to report the occupancy of each of these dwellings. To do this, click on the blue frame “Declaration of occupation” to open a new window. You will then have to click on “Declare”, then “Start the declaration”. It is then possible to select or modify the type of occupancy of the property according to five options: owner occupying as a main residence, owner occupying as a secondary residence, vacant property (unfurnished and unoccupied), occupied free of charge, and praised.
In the case of rented accommodation, you are asked to specify the nature of the rental: bare rental (empty furniture), furnished rental, social housing rental, 1948 law rental, seasonal rental, or rental for professional use. It is also necessary to declare the identity of the occupants, as well as the “amount of the theoretical monthly rent excluding charges”, and to specify whether the rent is capped.
You can then add premises to be attached to your accommodation (such as a garage, parking lot or cellar) by checking the corresponding boxes in a list that is offered to you. Once all these elements have been completed, you will have access to a summary table of your declaration. To confirm it, click on the blue box “Validate and send”.
In case of administrative error
When you arrive on the “manage my properties” interface, it is possible that certain information presented by the tax authorities concerning your accommodation in each box is incorrect: wrong surface area, nature of the space, etc. To correct any errors , it is necessary to write to the administration via the secure messaging available on your personal space “Impots.gouv.fr“, by selecting the theme “I have a question about the description of my property”. Once the administration has been contacted and even in the event of no response, you must still make your declaration before July 31st.
This declaration must be made each year before July 31, under penalty of a fine of 150 euros. If the occupancy situation of the property has not changed from one year to the next, you will have nothing to declare the following year.