FORUM

Hello everybody

We completed the sale of our French house on 22nd August 2016 and have received the proceeds of sale.

Today we have received the usual yearly Tax Foncieres - a sum of 532 euros which will come out of our french account on 27th October.

Do we have to pay this? Surely all bills are now the responsibility of the new owners?

We have asked our Notaire to clarify and the answer is about as clear as mud.

Any advice gratefully received.

Stephanie

it goes by who owned it on 1 Jan 2016 - presumably you. And similarly for the taxe d'habitation. It's conceivable that the final accounting at the time of the acte authentique made some allowance for it in your favour, but in any event it's your obligation so far as the fisc is concerned.

martyn94 wrote:it goes by who owned it on 1 Jan 2016 - presumably you. And similarly for the taxe d'habitation. It's conceivable that the final accounting at the time of the acte authentique made some allowance for it in your favour, but in any event it's your obligation so far as the fisc is concerned.

So, the French pay everything in arrears by nearly 12 months? How typical. And there were we thinking we didn't have to pay out anything more!

Here's a little more about it.
http://anglophone-direct.com/taxe-habit ... -fonciere/

datingdiva wrote:

martyn94 wrote:it goes by who owned it on 1 Jan 2016 - presumably you. And similarly for the taxe d'habitation. It's conceivable that the final accounting at the time of the acte authentique made some allowance for it in your favour, but in any event it's your obligation so far as the fisc is concerned.

So, the French pay everything in arrears by nearly 12 months? How typical. And there were we thinking we didn't have to pay out anything more!

And presumably it worked in your favour in the year you bought. It's laid out, not even in very small print, on the back of your bill. I've had thirty-odd of them down the years: I guess you had a few, depending how long you owned here. If you didn't bother to know how it works, it wasn't for want of opportunity.. But then again, the sneaky bastards have the gall to tell you about it in French. How typical.

I didn't have the papers with me for my own recentish purchase, so I didn't state the matter categorically in my first post. But i recalled having to compensate my vendor, via the notaire, for "my share' of the taxe fonciere for the year I bought (it was only a fortnight to the end of the year, so it didn't register particularly).

A little research suggests that this is pretty much universal, see e.g. here

http://www.pap.fr/conseils/achat-vente/ ... -paie-quoi

In the result, the vendor pays the whole taxe fonciere for the year of the sale, but is compensated by the purchaser, pro-rata, for the period from the sale to the end of the year.

Perhaps the "clear as mud" explanation from dating diva's notaire was trying to explain about that.

Somewhere in the "completion statement" for the sale - the one about the money - there should be a credit to datingdiva for around €200 on account of taxe fanciere.

If that was done,I don't see they have anything to complain about.

Incidentally, taxe d'habitation is not generally split in this way, so datingdiva cops the lot.