Renovation Project - Tax d'habitation in France

Renovation Project - Tax d'habitation in France

Well last night was back to normal thank goodness! And we have a busy day today. I am going to the tax office to sort out our tax d’habitation, we paid it last year but the form was wrong, our house was classed as 3 apartments so we don’t know if we have paid too much.

A friend is going to go with me as her French is much better than mine; I am just hoping our S1 forms arrive today from the UK so that we can sort our health out as well.

The S1’s don’t arrive in the post so I will have to do them at another time, we get to the tax office with all of the information I require, I have a photocopy of our sale, stating that we bought a house and not 3 apartments, I also take a photocopy of the tax d’habitation and everything else that may be of help. A really big tip when you are in France and have to go to any government department is  always take your 

information with you and have photocopies available, this will make sure that things go much more smoothly.

We go to speak to an official and I am really impressed with myself, I only have to have my friend help me out a few times, I manage most of the conversation myself!

It turns out that the house is actually registered as 3 houses and not 3 apartments! We are not sure why this is the case, but think it may be because when people did last live there, there were more than one person who rented a room.

However the house is confirmed as one house, our tax d’habitation amount was correct. The official also asks lots of questions about who lives there now, so I explain that it is just me and John, so she wants to know where we work, I explain that we don’t work and the look of shock when she realises neither of us are working is quite funny and she asks me to justify how we can live in France if we are not retired and my husband does not work (not why I don’t work, just why John doesn’t work) I explain that we will be opening a chambre d’hôte (B&B) and she explains that I have to register with the tax office when we are open, which was really helpful.

So hopefully all of our property taxes are now sorted and we are registered as living full time in the house and it is not a second home.

We also ask for our tax returns but we are too early, these need to be completed in May, we now just have to wait and see if we have one sent to us or whether we have to go back in explain that we live here, I’ll let you know how this goes.

Back at the house and John has been busy, we were never sure what to do with the open space on the stairs, we did not want to build it back in as we like the open look, but we cannot have a hole to the stairs, especially as we will be having toddlers to visit.

John has some wood that we had bought and is adding them to the space like spindles, this kills every bird with one stone and once stained and varnished look like they have always been there, we have pondered this dilemma for so long, and are now glad we left it as the solution is so simple.

We have a dinner invite tonight, we are going to go for dinner with a family that came to visit us last summer, these are people who we met through the blog and have given us such support over the last 18 months, the dinner was amazing (I’m now panicking about when we invite them to dinner as my cooking is nothing like this!) we even get to bring some of the carrot cake home with us. Thank you for such a wonderful evening.

It amazes me how many great friends we have made since starting this blog from around the world and how many we have actually met up with, John is now getting used to the idea that strangers from the internet can call at any time, without freaking out, because we have found the ones we meet are very similar to us and people we would choose to be friends with if we were to meet them in a more conventional manner.