But why do the tax authorities tick you off with an overseas account when you don’t have – to your knowledge – any account that can be categorized as such? What you need to know before unchecking this amazing box.
Questions from Samuel, Vincent and Scota, in May 2023
Why is the taxman pre-ticking me in the box for foreign accounts? I have nothing, my knowledge.
The declaration annexed 2047 income collected abroad is pre-checked at step 3 of the teledeclaration whereas I have never collected or declared any income of this kind. For what?
I opened a Paypal account in 2015 which I only use to pay for orders made online (clothing, food, etc.). Am I obliged to declare this account to the tax department?
The editorial team has received many questions this year relating to the declaration of accounts registered abroad, mainly relating to Revolut. But beyond the case of the nobank, MoneyVox has received several testimonials – beyond the 3 questions above – reporting the same misunderstanding in the face of the pre-ticked boxes: the miscellaneous section dedicated to accounts and income abroad, the box 8UU dedicated to foreign accounts or the annex declaration 2047 income collected abroad…
Result: the readers in question hesitate, uncheck the boxes… A tooltip then appears (to use the vocabulary of the tax authorities) on the screen: You declared online last year a bank account abroad or the administration became aware of the holding of such an account within the framework of the exchange of information between countries. Message from the DGFiP to the taxpayers concerned: if the box is pre-ticked, it’s not for nothing!
Screenshot of impots.gouv.fr
How to explain this unexpected pre-ticking? Mere coincidence? Evolution of the practices of the Directorate General of Public Finances (DGFiP)? Questioned by MoneyVox, the DGFiP refutes any change in its practices at this level. And confirms the message appearing in the tooltip: If the boxes linked to an account or income abroad are checked, it is either that the taxpayers in question checked it last year, or because we had a information to this effect in the context of international exchanges.
No bug on the part of the taxman. So why? The DGFiP mentions cases of taxpayers holding an account in a European country without knowing it, because their parents from this country opened one in their name. Or the case of people passing, for example, by London, for work, before forgetting an old bank account there. There remains the case of accounts such as Revolut: with a Lithuanian RIB, this type of account must actually be declared as a foreign account to the tax authorities.
Do I still have to declare my Revolut card as a foreign account?
The readers concerned persist: the cases mentioned above do not concern them. Nothing justifies the pre-ticking of income received abroad or of an account outside France. Remains a common point concerning them: the presence of a PayPal account to manage online payments. However, as the tax authorities point out in the tooltip above, accounts such as PayPal or TransferWise are declared to the administration as being declared abroad. Which may explain this pre-checking.
Should we be afraid to uncheck these boxes?
No. The principle of the declaration remains good faith. If you are actually convinced that you have no account that could be considered a foreign account, you can uncheck, as confirmed by the DGFiP MoneyVox.
If you ever have a PayPal account used only for online payments, like the image of our Scota player, above, there is no need to declare it as an account abroad: accounts whose purpose is to make online purchase payments (…) for an amount less than 10,000 euros per year for all accounts, writes the tax authorities on the page the tooltip links to refer above.
What fine? Please note: on the other hand, it is important not to hide from the tax authorities the existence of an account held abroad or income received on such an account. You risk a fine of 1500 euros per undeclared account.
N26, Revolut, PayPal… Here’s how to declare your foreign tax accounts