Three Things to Check When Calculating Your Property Tax
Did you know that the tax authorities are going to refund 1.8 billion euros to taxpayers due to calculation errors in property tax?
As all homeowners have noticed, property taxes have risen sharply this year. The assessed rental value—which serves as the basis for calculating local taxes—rose by 7.1% this year, following an average increase of 3.4% in 2022. Some cities have gone even further by passing particularly steep increases in their local tax rates. This is the case in Paris, where Mayor Anne Hidalgo did not hesitate to raise the property tax rate for Parisians by 51.9%, as well as in Grenoble, where Eric Piolle, the mayor from Europe Écologie–Les Verts (EELV), raised the property tax by 24.4%.
Not to mention calculation errors! A report by the National Assembly’s Finance Committee estimates that, for 2023, the tax authorities will issue property tax refunds totaling 1.8 billion euros to individual homeowners. The most common error? Miscalculations in the square footage of an annex that is included in the main living area. These inaccuracies drive up the bill and force the General Directorate of Public Finance to issue a refund of the overpayment to the homeowner.
The report indicates that nearly three-quarters of these tax refunds stem from appeals filed by taxpayers with the tax authorities. According to the General Directorate of Public Finance (DGFiP), about half of these adjustments are due to errors in allocation. According to the report, these errors stem from delays in the registration of real estate transfers by the land registry services (SPF).
These processing times lengthened during the health crisis and remain long even today, the report notes. To address this, the National Assembly’s Finance Committee adopted an amendment proposed by Representative Christine Pires Beaune, the report’s author, aimed at making the reduction in the number of property tax assessment errors a new performance goal for the Local Tax Refunds and Rebates program.
