Refund of Taxe d'habitation

[idun]

We sold our house during the summer of 2009 and the taxe d'hab payments for that year were done by prelevement, we paid in full.

We had left France in 2008 and in 2009 did two declarations d'impots, one to our local tax office for earnings whilst living in France and a further one to Noisy CINR. When the avis d'impots arrived from the CINR, it said that we had paid 'O' impots, in spite of having paid up directly from salary every month after leaving France. And we had paid a lot more tax than when we lived in France as there are no allowances for couples etc.

Next thing that happened was that the Taxe d'hab people got in touch and said that they were going to reimburse the full years payments and so they did. All of it.

I have called and written and explained but they say that no, we didn't have to pay. And I have said, we owned a furnished house in France on the 1st of Jan 2009 and 'had' to pay taxe d'hab, but they still say no.

Now, as I know of people who have ran into problems with the impots people raiding bank accounts, even reopening closed ones to put them in debit, with sometimes no reason or even justification, I feel that I cannot touch this money. And so it stands, like an elephant in the room. It is in the hundreds of euros too, so not a negligable amount either.

How do I clear this up, is it a job for the mediator? could well be!