DECLARATION d'IMPOTS: barême kilométrique 2010

[Clair]

The 2010 scale for employees using their car or bike for work (barême

kilométrique 2010) has been published and can be found here:

• http://www11.minefi.gouv.fr/boi/boi2010/5fppub/textes/5f1210/5f1210.pdf

The

scale

is used by employees who drive their own (or their partner's)

vehicle or motorbike in the course of their work, to help them calculate

deductions when declaring frais réels (not frais

forfaitaires) on their income declaration.

(see http://www.completefrance.com/cs/forums/1586614/ShowPost.aspx for more details)

[Will]

I think it worth pointing out that we have been having considerable difficulty getting les impôts to accept legitimate claims for mileage undertaken in the course of salaried employment for 2008: it has still not been resolved. We have been asked for all sorts of justification, records, attestations (even evidence from a garage about kms covered while we owned a vehicle that was sold some years ago) going back further than just 2008, and have had to employ an expert comptable. Yet we are still faced with a large tax demand.

I don't know if this is just one tax official who is determined to be awkward (maybe she doesn't like the English) or if it marks a general tightening of the rules. I would advise making sure you have your 2009 kilometrage justified in intimate detail, and then some.

[Clair]

In our case, travel to and from work is very easily proven. I also make a note on the declaration of the distance, the number of days and the horse power.

It must be very difficult to have to justify transport costs when travelling

between various places.

[Will]

Clair

Just to let you know, we have now received a letter to say that after full investigation of the latest information supplied the tax office has decided to withdraw its demand for extra tax. This just as we were about to go to the conciliateur...

We had supplied the 'proof' you mentioned several months ago; a lot of it had to be reconstructed from the office diary giving names of clients, places visited etc etc. The latest demand was to prove that a car sold some time ago had done the kms claimed within the time period; fortunately garage receipts proved this.

So a demand well into four figures (and people on this forum say that if you are on or near the SMIC you won't have to pay tax) was mostly wiped out; we still have the expert comptable's fee to pay, but I doubt if we would have got there without her help.

I think some of it comes down to a tax official's difficulty in understanding, from her well-paid, plenty-of-perks position, that somebody would work so hard for so little monetary reward - therefore we must be trying to evade tax. Having 'got away with it' once, no doubt our file is marked for investigation in future years.

Ironic really that we are surrounded by people (French, British and Polish [6]) who really are working on the black and blatantly boasting about not declaring and paying tax, yet it is one of the few honest tax declarations that gets the Gestapo treatment.

[Benjamin]

Think yourselves lucky.  [6]

For 0-5.000 kms. in a 6CV vehicle your allowace is 53 cents. For our monthly out of department hospital trip we're re-imbursed the princely sum of 36 cents via the bon de transporte system.  [:P]

[Will]

And the current HMRC scale is 40p per mile (i.e. about 27c/km) for any car or van up to 10,000 miles, 25p thereafter. So the hospital barême is not so bad, and les impôts positively generous. HMRC does not allow relief for travel to your place of work either.