VShow to remain insensitive to the torment suffered by a significant number of divorced women who, due to the evasion of their ex-husband, are required to pay alone the income tax reminders established due to the declaratory failures committed by this one, during the last period of living together?
Their question comes from the fact that, during their marriage, husband and wife are subject to joint taxation on their respective income and are thus co-debtors of this taxation, which authorizes the tax authorities to demand full payment, for example. one or the other, even if he made his rectification after their separation.
We must truthfully say that it also happens, but more rarely, that the ex-husband is accused of failings committed by his ex-wife. Partners bound by a civil solidarity pact (pacs) are also affected.
The “actuated” spouse then undergoes a severe and long punishment. The situations described to us are alarming. These are women who have been robbed by their ex-husband, who leaves them to take care of the education of their children alone, while they find themselves subject to financial constraints which hamper their means of existence, over a very long period of time. period. Fiscal solidarity then acts like a time bomb.
Two fundamental rights
In the most serious cases, which are unfortunately frequent, where the ex-spouse has engaged in secret activity and has failed to file, within the legal deadline, the declarations he was required to make, the tax authorities are justified in establishing the tax evaded, going back to the period of ten years preceding the discovery of the irregularity. It thus happens that the ex-spouse is implicated very long after the separation and divorce have been declared.
Example: the period of living together ended in 2017, the divorce was pronounced in 2019. If the ex-spouse engaged in occult activities during the period 2013-2017, the tax authorities were still able, in 2023, establish a tax reminder for the income from this period and turn against the wife, to demand payment.
We can only welcome the efforts made on several occasions to relax the conditions which bind the right recognized to the tax services to grant the accused spouse a total or partial discharge of their solidarity. However, we believe that, as it is exercised, this solidarity ignores two fundamental rights.
Penalties
Firstly, it violates one of the main rights attached to the status of taxpayer, that of knowing the exact origin of the tax debt for which payment is requested and, if necessary, of contesting its liability. . In fact, the accused spouse does not have the right to contest the tax imposed on his ex-spouse. The verification which led to the payment of the tax reminder took place without his knowledge and, what is more, without giving rise to a contradictory debate each time the income holder evaded the dialogue to which the invited the taxman.
You have 55% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.