Be careful what you say! Every year, it’s the same story, you must declare any change in your situation that could affect your income tax. Lower or higher salary, birth, separation… The list is long and, to lower the bill, you can count on tax credits, deductions or reductions, of course subject to conditions.
Be particularly vigilant, because the elements related to your salary are not the only ones that can tip the scales! As the tax site explains, “not all work carried out on your property necessarily results in the filing of a declaration”, but some must be. These are “new constructions”, “changes of use or consistency”, which must at all costs be mentioned to the tax authorities. For what ? The Ministry of the Economy specifies that this allows “the updating of the assessment of your property in terms of local taxes”.
If the terms used seem imprecise, they actually include many elements, which you can easily forget to declare. A new construction is “a building which is built for the first time on a plot of undeveloped land or a building constructed to replace an old building which has been demolished”, specifies the tax site. With regard to “changes in consistency”, the tax authorities refer to “transformations which have the effect of modifying the volume or the surface of a room”:
Changes of use concern the transformation of one type of property into another, for example if a residential premises is transformed into premises for professional use.
If you have done work recently or if you plan to do it soon at home, be careful not to play with the authorities, because they have new ways to track you. As Le Parisien explains, more and more municipalities are calling on private companies to go through taxpayer declarations and verify that everything is in order in terms of construction.
They are particularly interested in swimming pools that have not been declared, extensions or equipment that have gone unnoticed and which nevertheless change the amount of the property tax. Be careful, sometimes it’s just a bathtub or a new toilet, which can cost you dearly in case of control…
During works, the French must declare many changes made and some directly concern the development made in the structure. This is the case, for example, after adding a room, explains Le Parisien: “Each piece of equipment adds fictitious square meters to the surface of your home”. It is for example 5m² for a bathtub, the presence of which therefore increases the bill with the tax authorities.
The Ile-de-France daily lists several facilities that must be mentioned and which “cost taxpayers dearly”:
Think the taxman will never know you added a bathtub to your home? Think again. With Le Parisien, Finindev – one of the private companies hired by the municipalities to check the declarations – explains: “Sometimes, the document communicated by the tax authorities indicates that the accommodation has a bathroom but no bath or shower are declared. is a follow-up track that we mention to the tax authorities”. What do you risk if you forgot to mention these constructions?
As the Public Service website explains, the declaration of your constructions must be made within a fairly short period of time, 90 calendar days following their completion. To do this, you must complete Form 6704, which allows you to report material changes to a built or unbuilt property.
If you forget, if your work is not compliant, you risk a fine of between 1,200 and 300,000 euros, within three years of the completion of the work. You also do not benefit from a certificate attesting to the conformity of your work, which may engage your civil liability if there is a problem with a third party. The statute of limitations is five years for this matter.
You may also be refused the granting of a new declaration of works, but the limitation period being ten years, you will no longer run any risk after this period.
