Errors in the collection in 2023 of several taxes linked to real estate, such as the housing tax on second homes, cost the State 1.3 billion euros, calculated the Court of Auditors in a report published this Thursday, January 23.
In 2023, after the housing tax on the main residence was abolished, owners were invited to check the occupancy status of their properties on a state application, “Manage my real estate” (GMBI) , to possibly pay certain remaining taxes, such as the housing tax on second homes or the tax on vacant housing.
But “the technical deployment” of this application “took place in particularly difficult conditions, since more than a million taxpayers were wrongly imposed the housing tax or the tax on vacant housing” , noted the Court of Auditors. This forced the administration to “agree to very significant reductions, amounting to more than 1.3 billion euros”, calculated the Court of Auditors. However, if these taxes are collected by the State mainly for the benefit of local authorities, it is the State alone which bears the cost of these reliefs.
“Taxpayers’ misunderstanding”
This loss represented 34% of the product of the three taxes concerned, – the housing tax on second homes, the housing tax on vacant housing and the tax on vacant housing -, in 2023.
The Court of Auditors attributes these hiccups during the declaration campaign in particular to “taxpayers’ misunderstanding of what was being asked of them.” Many owners did not understand why they had to complete a declaration on an application when the housing tax on the main residence had been abolished, explains the Court of Auditors.
Despite several postponements of the campaign end date, only 73.1% of owners had correctly provided their information at the end of the campaign.
“In a very difficult financial context for public finances, all efforts must be made to ensure that a loss of such magnitude does not recur in 2024,” writes the Court of Auditors in its report. Developed over more than five years before being launched, the GMBI application also “suffered from inadequate governance and management which led to a significant budgetary drift”, noted the Court of Auditors. The system cost at least 56.4 million euros, from its development to its deployment.