What do you think this is...?

[sunny]

Hello,

We were looking at our French bank account online for our maison secondaire in France and we found this

06/10/2009       FRAIS ATD

                     

                 07/10/2009

      104,00          

06/10/2009       BLOC ESPECES

ATD 05102009        07/10/2009      

1 043,64

 Our bank manager said it is for unpaid taxes or fines.  Any idea what this means?  Any suggestions on a government number we can call to find out? And since our French is not great, any hope of an English-speaking hotline...

Thanks for your help!

Anxious and worried[:(]

[Sunday Driver]

ATD = avis à tiers d'etenteur

The ATD is used by the trésor public and the impots to seize unpaid taxes directly from your bank account. The frais ATD is the fee charged by your bank for processing the avis and the payment.

As you have a maison secondaire, then it's likely to be unpaid property taxes.

 

 

[sunny]

Thanks, Sunday Driver.  We had gone to the Tresorie and set up direct debit for tax fonciere and habitacion, a couple of years back.  Only fonciere had been deducted from our account and on inquiring, the tresorie lady said not to worry, she couldn't see a bill for habitation, and that it would be deducted when a bill was generated.  I guess it is being deducted now, in this strange way[8-)]

How do we check if this is indeed the case, and prevent any further such deductions with 'fines' in the future?

Many thanks!

[Sunday Driver]

If the tax fonciere has been deducted from your account then you should be up to date with your payments because the tax d'habitation isn't due until November.

You need to discuss this with your trésorerie to find out what is going on and get things sorted out.

 

[Celine]

We had this too for our French property because the facture never arrived at our UK address. When we checked they had spelt the town incorrectly by miles and had not bothered to write the UK post code. Our bank, CA, told us they get a lot of this happening but are powerless to refund the fine without a letter of explanation/apology from the centre des impots. No chance. I'm tempted to make a special visit to france every October to pay the sum in person. The trip would be cheaper than the ATD!

[Will]

A better value option, if you don't have a friendly French speaker who could sort this out for you, might be to pay for an hour or so of an interpreter's time. Moderators should note that this is a helpful suggestion, not an unsolicited advertisement, it's just that being married to somebody who acts as an interpreter and has sorted out several similar cases to the satisfaction of all parties concerned, I do think that this option would be well worth considering.

[Celine]

Good point, Will. Thank you.

In the good old days you used to be able to call into offices in France and actually write down the English address for them. These days companies like EDF, France Telecom are rapidly closing their branches so face to face contact becomes impossible leaving letters to go astray and messages over the phone to be misinterpreted and e mails never answered. I'm sure it's called progress in the long run, but this personal contact was one of things we used to find comforting about the French way of doing things. Of course it also now relies on the fact that the typist inputs the details correctly which is why our address looked like some alien planet.

[sunny]

Good point, Will.  We are thinking of using interpreters who live close to our place to help sort this out.

Celine, like you, I am a bit surprised at this.  The Tax Fonciere is debited every year from our bank account, so why not the habitation tax? We assumed when setting up the automatic debit, that both would be deducted - are there two different bodies dealing with these taxes?