greentea3

Hi there,

Can anyone help me please.

I no longer live in France but have to pay the tax fonciere for my house there. I do speak French but in the end after a lot of head-banging and frustration, got my French friend to phone up the local Tresor-public to explain that I was living abroad, no longer had a French bank account and wished to pay by credit card. They said yes, not a problem - and 2 months later I finally got the facture - of course by this time it had incrued an extra payment because of being late

Anyway, I've logged on and my details come up but for a payment to be made it only gives me space to type in French bank details eg, code guichet, account, cle etc.

So, can anyone help? I can't see anywhere on the facture that I can take it to my local bank (I'm in Canada) and make a payment that way (even though the Tresor-public told my French friend that it could be done this way or by an international credit card). And I can't see online where a payment can be made by credit card.

Ka Ora!

Simplest solution I can think of is you Email a Paypal payment to your Friend in France and they go in and pay cash. Simples Like.

Novocastrian

It was probably a mistake to close your french bank account if you still own a house there.

I'd suggest (for the medium term) opening a french account with e.g. HSBC (they'll do that for you from Canada), then you can transfer funds to it when needed for taxes, utility payments etc.

In the short term what he ^^ said.

camproger

I too needed to pay my Taxes Foncieres from a non-French (Irish) bank account.

When I recently received the demand, I e-mailed my local Centre des Finances Publique, whose contact e-mail address for additional payment information was on the back of the form, requesting the relevant account details.

Next day I received an e-mailed response detailing the relevant IBAN and BIC codes and I've been able to very conveniently make payment online.

There's no need to maintain a French bank account for such payments.

vin rouge

Very impressed camproger that you got a reply to your e-mail, our TP didn't answer mine even when I was offering to pay more tax as they didn't note we had a TV on our bill.

Had to call them from UK to let them know, only to be told no - we are mistaken we do not have or have had a TV in our maison secondaire or else they would have billed us. Ok I say, your correct my mistake, paid over the telephone with my CB

First time in 9yrs the TV charge was not on our bill, hey were wrong there correct I need to live with my short comings

VR

camproger

Yes, Vin Rouge, this particular Contrôleur des Finances has been impressive in his responses/response times. Two years ago he also responded next day to my e-mail notifying the Tresorerie that I had been billed by my local mairie in respect of a Facturation Eau for a second but non-existent maison secondaire (an amalgamation of my Irish and French addresses!) and that, in spite of the amount due for the real French maison secondaire having been promptly paid and two letters from me pointing out the error in respect of the fictitious one, I was being threatened with a fine for non-payment. His intervention resulted in the error being immediately rectified.

We expats complain (rightly) about unresponsive officialdom.
However it's a joy to encounter an official who is both responsive and efficient.
I hope there are many more French officials like him out there!

dennerlymum

We have had a few issues with tax etc over the years (mostly due to OUR lack of understanding of the system.

The response hasnt always been quick, but we have always found the staff at our halle impots and tresorie to be very helpful

wetwang

5 years ago I was late with a tax fonciere payment. I found out when my Bank phoned me to say my account had been frozen by The Bank of France and could not be re-activated until the overdue amount was paid.
Impressive debt collection service ?