Local tax collected for the benefit of municipalities and their groups, the property tax on built properties is due by any person who owns or usufructuaries of real estate, whether they intend it for their own use or rent it out.
For taxpayers who have not opted for the monthly direct debit, the payment deadline is 17 October. An additional period of five days is granted to those who pay their tax online, i.e. until October 22. The tax will be debited from their account ten days later.
The property tax – like the household waste collection tax which appears on the same tax notice – is calculated from the rental value of the property, to which a 50% reduction is then applied to take into account the costs incurred. by the owners.
However, for real estate intended for housing, these values have not been revalued for almost fifty years. They are only updated each year by applying a fixed coefficient, the same for all dwellings regardless of their location, their state of maintenance and the situation of the local market…
A rate that depends on inflation
Until now, this coefficient was set when the end-of-year finance law was adopted. Since 2018, it has depended on the evolution of the harmonized consumer price index published by INSEE in November. Which was quite favorable to taxpayers in previous years, given the lack of inflation.
But, with the resumption of inflation in 2021, the basis for calculating the property tax is undergoing an unprecedented increase: it increases by 3.4% this year. Comparatively, the increase was only 0.2% last year. This means that the amount of your property tax – all things being equal, that is to say without taking into account the rates voted by the municipalities and their groupings – increases by at least 3.4% this year.
Except that… most municipalities have also increased their tax rates after five years of very strong tax moderation (elections oblige). According to a census carried out each year by the firm FSL, more than a quarter of the large cities of 100,000 inhabitants and their associations have thus increased their tax rate by 1.9% on average this year. The prize goes to Marseille, with an increase of 13.1%. It is followed by Tours (+11.6%), Strasbourg (+8.9%), Nantes (+7.8%) and Montreuil (+7.4%).