You may not know it, but certain information from your tax return is public and accessible to all other taxpayers in your department. Find out which ones.
Next Thursday, April 11, the 2024 tax filing season begins. Like every year, you will therefore have to reveal the tax administration all the elements (family situation, income, assets, etc.) necessary to calculate your contribution to the State budget. To the tax authorities only: its agents are, in fact, subject to an obligation of professional secrecy.
However, as surprising as it may seem, certain information from your declaration is not secret. On the contrary, they are even public and can therefore be consulted by any other taxpayerprovided that he lives and declares in the same department as yours.
What information are we talking about? Of your name and the first letter of your first name; of number of parts deducted for calculating your family quotient; of your reference tax income (RFR); and finally amount of your income tax. Until now, your address was also part of this public information. This is no longer the case, since March 30, 2024, and the publication of a decree (1)in order to avoid misuse of the device, explains its instructions.
Salary, taxes, real estate prices: everything you can know about your neighbors
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Are you afraid that your neighbors, your colleagues or an ill-intentioned third party will consult this database and discover in particular the amount of your household income? Unfortunately there’s not much you can do about it.. If someone views your tax information, they are not required to explain the reasons for their request. And you won’t even be notified.
You can, however, reassure yourself by telling yourself that this database is not not accessible through self-service, online for example. To consult it, it is necessary to go to the premises of the public finance department of your department and to show your credentials: justify your identity, prove that you are taxed well in the department and sign a written request kept by the tax authorities.
Furthermore, it is prohibited from publishing the information collected during the consultation, under penalty of an administrative fine equal to the amount of the taxes disclosed and criminal sanctions (4500 euros fine and up to 5 years in prison).