You will be able to complete your next income tax return online from mid-April. And to make this spring chore easier for you, the establishments in which you hold investments will send you a tax form. Here’s how to use it properly.
The tax return is back soon. The 2024 campaign is expected in mid-April and the deadline is June 6 for online declaration. For taxable taxpayers, it is rarely a cakewalk, particularly when it comes to life insurance which has a complex tax treatment. But, to avoid tearing your hair out (too much), you can rely on the tax document sent by your bank. Code name: IFU. Decryption in 7 questions and answers.
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1. What is the IFU for?
These three letters designate single tax form. This is a summary document which summarizes all income from taxable movable capital which were paid to you last year, including the interest on your bank account. The IFU will therefore help you declare your income for tax and/or check that the amounts pre-filled by the tax authorities are correct.
In detail, the single tax form is made up of 3 sheets: sheet n2561 which summarizes the most common products, sheet n2561 bis which includes operations carried out on the futures markets, PEA-PME or even common funds of investment (FCPR, FPCI, and FPI), and the n2561 ter slip which is used to justify certain tax credits from which you can benefit (tax credit on certain foreign assets in particular).
2. Are you affected by the single tax form?
If you were the holder in 2023 of at least an investment product and you have earned interest or dividends from it, you are concerned by the IFU. More concretely, this is the case if you have savings accounts – excluding Livret A, Sustainable and Solidarity Development Accounts (LDDS) and other regulated savings accounts which are non-taxable – term accounts, bonds, shares investment funds, a retirement savings plan, shares, or even shares housed or not in a Stock Savings Plan (PEA) or a securities account.
If you have had a Housing Savings Plan (PEL) since 2018, or you opened one more than 12 years ago, this will also be mentioned in the tax form… since these PELs are taxable. The same applies to interest earned from Housing Savings Accounts (CEL) opened from 2018.
3. What should you report on your tax return?
The main interest of the IFU is to help you complete your income tax return. The form associates the gains generated by your various investments with the corresponding boxes in your income tax return., which therefore makes it easier to verify. Indeed, although the amounts presented in the IFU are also those which were sent to the tax administration, transmission incidents may have occurred.
In doing so, your income tax return may still contain errors that you will need to correct. The IFUs received will therefore be useful for you to check that the pre-filled amounts are correct, in particular that reported in box 2TR, which concerns interest and fixed income investment products (tax-advantaged savings accounts, PEL, etc.).
The IFU, a valuable ally for life insurance
Life insurance is a very common savings product. According to INSEE, 4 out of 10 households in France have one. However, it has a complex tax framework. The IFU, and more precisely its product section for life insurance contracts and similar products (sheet 2561), is therefore particularly valuable.
It makes it possible to distinguish life insurance contracts opened more than 8 years ago from those which have not yet reached their tax maturity. It also differentiates the gains derived from payments made before and after September 27, 2017 and taking into account the tax option chosen (scale or single flat-rate deduction).
4. Who provides you with the single tax form?
While your tax form is sent to you by the tax administration, the IFU is sent to you in anticipation of the tax declaration, generally at the beginning of April, by the paying establishments, that is to say, in the majority of cases, by the bank(s) with which you hold savings products. If you have distributed your placements in several brands, you will therefore receive several IFUs, one per establishment.
For multi-bank taxpayers, so the IFU is not that unique… This requires juggling several documents, in addition to the income declaration form, and adding up the income from similar investments held in different brands yourself.
5. I did not receive IFU, is this normal?
You do not have to request your or your IFU. Your banks send them to you in anticipation of the opening of the income declaration campaign. The single tax form can be sent to your home in paper format.
But, more and more, banks, including establishments with agencies, make it available to you in your online customer area. If your bank has forgotten you, or you have stored your IFU, you can find it in your personal space.
If you have savings accounts left dormant, it may be normal not to receive IFU. If the tax due is less than 50 euro cents per savings product, the amounts are neglected by the tax administration.
6. With automatic debit, is IFU still useful?
Thanks to withholding at source and automatic declaration, more than 11 million taxpayers can avoid, or almost, having to declare their income. Essentially among those who have income taxed at source that can be pre-filled by the tax services.
But the tax authorities do not have, for all taxpayers, access to all the information allowing them to calculate the total amount of income tax d. Certain resources, such as land income or certain specific allowances cannot in fact be pre-declared.
This is why, in 2024, at least a third of users will have to continue to fill out an income declaration. In any case, check your IFU carefully if you are eligible for automatic declaration, a verification is still recommended to ensure that the tax administration takes into account the correct earnings for 2022.
7. Can we blindly trust the IFU?
On the MoneyVox forum, contributors sometimes echo errors in received IFUs. But, in reality, they are rather rare and the banks, in the event of errors identified, send back a new corrective tax form. They are vigilant because banks can be held responsible in the event of erroneous IFUs.
In any case, this is the decision rendered, in 2016, by the Court of Cassation in a tax adjustment case for failure to declare taxable capital gains. However, these earnings had not been indicated in the tax form sent to the complainant couple. The bank was sanctioned and ordered to compensate its customers. In case of doubt, therefore, or of amounts which seem inaccurate to you, nothing prevents you from reporting it to your bank.
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