The spouses and PACS partners are jointly responsible for the payment of the couple’s taxes. This means that the tax authorities can ask for the full payment of what is due to one or the other of the spouses, on the condition that the one who has paid the entire debt to turn against the other to obtain it. reimbursement.
This solidarity ends with divorce or the termination of the PACS. But debt recovery can be implemented by the Public Treasury after the separation of the couple for taxes on income received during cohabitation.
This solidarity comes into play even when the spouses had chosen the regime of separation of property. “The spouse who has the weakest assets may have to pay for the one who is more fortunate. Including tax on real estate wealth. The ex-spouse or partner can bear joint taxation on property that belongs exclusively to the other ”, explains Lise Chatain, lecturer at the Faculty of Law and Political Science in Montpellier.
It is possible to request a discharge from the tax authorities, but if the latter considers it possible to pay off the debt of his ex over a period not exceeding 10 years (!), He refuses
Since 2008, the ex-spouse or ex-partner can however ask to be relieved of this responsibility when he is implicated. “These requests for discharge come almost exclusively from women. More than 80% of them relate to a tax debt following a tax audit relating to the professional profits of a former spouse or PACS partner ”, relates Annabel-Mauve Bonnefous, president of the Collective of divorced women victims of fiscal solidarity.
It is the tax administration which decides in a discretionary manner whether the discharge should be pronounced or not. However, 75% of discharge requests received over the past seven years have been rejected or not processed, according to figures communicated by the General Directorate of Public Finances. On the basis of the testimonies collected by this collective, it appears that it is the absence of “marked disproportion” between the tax debt and the financial and patrimonial situation of the ex-wife which motivates the refusal.
Clearly, if the tax authorities believe that she can settle the debt of her ex over a period not exceeding ten years (!), He refuses to grant discharge. It does not matter that she is not at the origin of this debt, that it relates to hidden income of which she was not aware or that she is the victim of uncivil or indelicate behavior of her ex …
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