Mistakes in collecting property taxes in 2023 cost the state 1,3 billion euros

In 2023, after the housing tax on the main residence was abolished, owners were invited to check the occupancy status of their properties on a State application, "Manage my real estate assets" (GMBI), to possibly pay certain remaining taxes, such as the housing tax on the second home or the tax on vacant housing.

But "the technical deployment" of this application "took place under particularly difficult conditions, since more than a million taxpayers were wrongly charged housing tax or vacant housing tax", noted the Court of Auditors.

This forced the administration to "consent to very significant tax reductions, amounting to more than 1,3 billion euros", calculated the Court of Auditors.

However, if these taxes are collected by the State mainly for the benefit of local authorities, it is the State alone which bears the cost of these tax reductions.

This loss represented 34% of the proceeds of the three taxes concerned - the housing tax on secondary residences, the housing tax on vacant housing and the tax on vacant housing - in 2023.

The Court of Auditors attributes these hiccups during the declaration campaign in particular to "taxpayers' lack of understanding of what was being asked of them."

Many owners did not understand why they had to fill out a declaration on an application when the housing tax on the main residence had been abolished, explains the Court of Auditors.

Despite several postponements of the end date of the campaign, only 73,1% of owners had correctly entered their information at the end of the campaign.

"In a very difficult financial context for public finances, all efforts must be made to ensure that a loss of such magnitude does not occur again in 2024," the Court of Auditors wrote in its report.

Developed over more than five years before being launched, the GMBI application also "suffered from inadequate governance and management which led to significant budgetary drift", noted the Court of Auditors.

The device cost at least 56,4 million euros from its development to its deployment.

Illustrative image of the article via Depositphotos.com.