Have you completed your tax return and are you now anticipating difficulties in settling your tax balance in September? You have three possibilities.
Are you facing occasional financial difficulties, due to inflation, job loss or family concerns? The automatic debit of the 2023 tax balance programmed for the September 25 on your bank account is likely to aggravate your difficulties? First of all, be aware, as the Directorate General of Public Finances (DGFiP) specifies, that all balance above 300 euros will be subject to a payment spread four times, from september to december.
If this automatic spread is not enough to deal with your current financial problems, it is in your interest to prevent the tax authorities by going ahead with a late payment. Because any payment made after the deadline indicated on your notice causes a 10% tax increaseto which may be added late payment interest, or even other penalties.
If you want to wait receipt of your 2023 tax notice, the distribution will be staggered from the end of July to the end of August. Until then, you can identify the most suitable solution to avoid reacting in catastrophe.
2023 tax notice: when will you receive it?
1 Request a payment deadline
The first solution is to ask for a payment deadline. To do this, on impots.gouv.fr, you must log in to your personal spacethen go to your secure messaging. L, click writeThen I have a problem concerning the payment of my taxes and finally I have difficulty paying.
You then have to specify the tax concerned and the tax year, then select the notice that you will not be able to honor in time. Then let yourself be guided: you will have to detail the reason for your difficulties (birth, dismissal, separation, accident, etc.), and provide information on your current expenses and resources.
The same approach is feasible at paper format: to do this, fill in the payment difficulties questionnairebring your tax notice, documents justifying your current difficulties and go to the nearest tax center to your home, the one whose address appears in the left box on the first page of your last imposition opinion.
Once the request is made, the response is not immediate. The DGFiP warns that if the administration has not responded within the 2-month period, the request for a period is considered rejected. A period extended to 4 months in the event of a complex situation, but the Public Treasury must warn you if this is the case. If you have no response from the tax authorities in 2 months, this therefore amounts to a refusal. This is why you should not wait to claim a payment delay after having received your tax notice!
If the DGFiP accepts the payment deadline, it will send you a new chance. Note: in theory, you will still have to pay the 10% tax increase, but the tax authorities can choose to grant you a discount or waive this penalty.
When? A deadline to ask upon receipt of the tax notice 2023. Or ask upstream. It is already possible to declare payment difficulties for the 2023 tax on 2022 income on the online messaging system. The final opinion is not yet available, you can enter the number of your possible opinion declarative situation for income tax (ASDIR).
2 Ask for a free discount
Unlike the payment deadline, which only allows you to postpone the regularization of the tax, the gracious request is aimed at you partially or totally erase the amount to settle. It is therefore a favor requested from the tax authorities, and which will have to be justified: unemployment, health problem, death or disability of the spouse, heavy loss of income due to the coronavirus health crisis…
To request such a flower from the DGFiP, you must contact the public finance center on which you depend, the one whose address appears on the summary document of the automatic declaration, on the ASDIR or your last tax notice.
You can use the secure messaging service on the tax website or go directly to your public finance center, where you will sign a visit form to record your request. The Public Treasury advises you to complete the same payment difficulties questionnaire as for the payment delay request before going to your tax office. Your complaint is then analyzed according to your tax compliance (declarations and payments for the last few years), judging your current financial situation and assessing the extent of your tax debt.
How to get a free discount
The response times are the same as for the first solution: if there is no response within 2 months, then the request is considered rejected. This request may as well lead to a refusal only one total discount or even a partial discount and subject to conditions (payment of other taxes, waiver of litigation with taxes, etc.) and the tax authorities did not justify their decision.
This approach also applies if you have difficulty paying the property tax.
When? Upon receipt of the 2023 tax notice.
3 Lower the source tax
Your difficulties arose in 2023? You can ask the tax authorities for a favor by activating the two solutions above, but these only apply to the balance of the tax you still have to pay. However, you are also deducted at source, directly from your salary or from your current account. If your resources have dropped significantly, it is therefore in your interest to request a modulation of your withholding tax rate.
To reduce your rate, the drop in income must be significant: the new amount of tax deducted at source must decrease by at least 5% compared to the initial deduction. If the drop in resources is significant, go to your personal space on impots.gouv.fr, section Manage my withholding at sourcethen click Update following an increase or decrease in your income.
How to reduce your tax at source in 2023
In particular, you will have to estimate your net taxable income for the year 2023. An always delicate task: impossible to estimate your taxable income to the nearest euro! In the help section, to enter your projected income, the DGFiP advises you to estimate your taxable income for the whole year based on the income of the first few months. If you do not know your taxable income, the DGFiP specifies that you can estimate it by increasing your net income by 3%. If your request is successful, the rate change must be effective within a maximum period of 2 months.
If you receive property or self-employment income and this source of income has dried up severely in 2023, you can Manage your deposits in the same space dedicated to tax at source and click on DELETE the monthly installment no longer having to be. Or on the orange button Postpone in case of temporary difficulty. Be aware, however, that income tax for 2023 will be regularized in 2024 following the declaration to be completed next spring: deleting a deposit does not permanently exempt you from tax on this source of income.
When? From now on: no need to wait for receipt of the tax notice to act on the withholding tax.