# Fisc seem to think I have a cellar



## EuroTrash

I only just spotted that there's a section on the accueil page on the impôts website where it lists your immobilier. Is this a new thing, or am I getting very unobservant?
Of course having spotted it I had to click on it, and I was surprised to see it says my house has a cave/cellier/buanderie. Which it doesn't. I would have noticed it.
It also says it has 4 rooms 'au sens foncier'. Which I wouldn't have thought it did. On the first floor it has a bedroom and a bathroom, and downstairs it's all like open plan. What exactly is a room 'au sens foncier', does anybody know?
And it says I have a grenier, which I do, but what's surprising there is that they give it a surface area of just over a third of the main living area when in fact it is the full length and breadth of the house. But maybe they don't count the bits you can't stand up in?
The phantom cellar or buanderie is apparently about two thirds of the surface area of the main living area. 
Do you think I ought to query this, one of these fine days? 
I did, within living memory, fill in one of those forms you have to do when you've completed work on the property, giving all the dimensions of everything, so they should have the right details recorded somewhere. I definitely never said there was a cave/cellier/buanderie. I wonder why it says rubbish on the website, and whether it matters.


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## conky2

I hope you have got rid of all those instruments of torture ET like the rack and the comfy chair.


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## suein56

EuroTrash said:


> Do you think I ought to query this, one of these fine days?
> I did, within living memory, fill in one of those forms you have to do when you've completed work on the property, giving all the dimensions of everything, so they should have the right details recorded somewhere. I definitely never said there was a cave/cellier/buanderie. I wonder why it says rubbish on the website, and whether it matters.


No they don't count the parts below a certain height.
Yes I would query the cave/cellist/buanderie bit as the details are supposed to be a copy of what is on the form used to calculate your taxe fonc .. which is based on whatever someone noted years ago plus the details from the H2 form you filled in after whatever work you had done was finished.
Are you sure you haven't got a hidden access to this secret cave/cellier ?


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## ToulouseRob

I haven't checked the fisc website for a while and don't have the time right now to do it. But I'll just add that a few weeks ago we received a letter saying that they have only just realised our house has a bathroom (!), central heating and a cellar that is habitable, so they are going to increase the Taxe Foncière. Which they did, albeit only a few euros per year. We wrote back saying the bathroom has always been there since the house was built (soon after WWII), that the central heating dates back to the 1980s and that the cellar doesn't exist: there is just a "vide sanitaire" not high enough to stand up in. Their reply was basically just to reassert their "discoveries" with no other information, and in particular no explanation of where their information came from. One possible explanation is a misread address - a lot of houses in the neighbourhood have been renovated recently, including some where bathrooms have been added and cellars made habitable. Perhaps the letter should have gone elsewhere? This story is on pause but not finished. 

Is there some wider initiative to update their data, perhaps with a view to increasing their tax receipts?


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## Bevdeforges

ToulouseRob said:


> Is there some wider initiative to update their data, perhaps with a view to increasing their tax receipts?


I know a few years back when I was attending the town council meetings regularly, they announced that they were looking for people to serve on the "committee" to review all the valuations of the houses in town. Evidently they do this every few years (far more often than I would have expected, actually). But it's possible that someone on the committee got confused about the address under consideration or something that caused them to re-evaluate your property. (Have any "enemies" in town? <g>)


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## ToulouseRob

Bevdeforges said:


> (Have any "enemies" in town? <g>)


It did cross our minds, but we're sure there's no-one who would maliciously "snitch". Mix-up about addresses is more likely.


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## EuroTrash

conky2 said:


> I hope you have got rid of all those instruments of torture ET like the rack and the comfy chair.


You never know when you might need them...



suein56 said:


> Are you sure you haven't got a hidden access to this secret cave/cellier ?


Quite sure. I got close up and personal with my floor when the house flooded. It's solid earth below the tiles.
Did any houses built in the 16th/17th century have foundations?



ToulouseRob said:


> I haven't checked the fisc website for a while and don't have the time right now to do it.


There's a couple of rows of buttons you can click down at the bottom of the home page, that I had never seen before, and one of them is Biens Immobiliers. It doesn't show the garage that I rent, that I pay taxe d'habitation on (usually at 0€) but I don't know whether this is because it's a garagenot a habitation, or because it's rented not owned. It doesn't invite you to check the info or explain how the info is used or anything, that I can see - there are little question mark icons, but nothing happens when you click on them. Maybe it's a work in progress.

I'll start by checking whether they've increased the total surface area of the house but that will mean finding a document to check it against, so will have to wait a while.


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## BackinFrance

You could of cour go to the Mairie and ask to peruse their records.


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## EuroTrash

BackinFrance said:


> You could of cour go to the Mairie and ask to peruse their records.


I could, but not immediately cos I'm in Wales right now, then I'm off to Ireland at the end of this week. 
But I think it might say on my home insurance certificate. That's where I was planning to start.


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## BackinFrance

When I purchased my place, my notaire provided me with a mountain of documents relating to the property, on which I rarely rely now because when he sent me the title deeds they contained all of the relevant information duly stamped by the Mairie and with cerrified attachments from the Mairie in respect of what they recorded, so the title deeds are what I now rely on and the work I have had done so far does not impact them. I have successfully resolved several disputes on my own with that documentation.


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## BackinFrance

Just to add, ET, in your case it should be the title deeds plus your H4 form.


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## SPGW

EuroTrash said:


> surprised to see it says my house has a cave/cellier/buanderie


It is a bit misleading, but I checked mine and take this to be a "heading" for the section describing your property. It doesn't necessarily mean they think you have a cellar. It means you have a certain surface area which fits their category "cellar, laundry room" etc. Same with "terrace, balcony...".
I noticed this feature in the personal space on gouv.fr a couple of years ago and have still not got around to correcting it based on the deeds (number of rooms particularly). But I suppose that, even if there are fewer rooms, it is the habitable area that determines the value and therefore the rate of tax fonc.


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## EuroTrash

Yes I think as long as the surface area is right, I'll leave it until I get very short of battles to fight.
Although I still can't think of anything that might even come under that heading - I have an open plan living area downstairs with a coin cuisine, upstairs a bedroom and a bathroom, upstairs from that an attic, and two staircases. And that's it.


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## 1790260

We have what used to be a garage. Well, that is to say the previous owner kept a car in it. It's not declared as a garage, I'm not even sure it gets a mention, I must have a look. We use it as storage space, and our wood pellet boiler and silo is in there too. It's not really convenient to use a garage in truth.

Years back, during renovations, we built a car port (much more convenient than the garage) and I did the necessary form filling etc for all of the changes (new bathrooms etc). We now have a separate line on our _taxe foncière_ bill specifically for the car port.

I recall an inspector coming around at one point, just by chance and not triggered by our renovations - a periodic review kind of thing I suppose, and they remarked that there is a difference between a garage and a car port for tax purposes - something to do with complete, floor to roof walls or something. I don't remember the details, I must look it up sometime. My 'office' is still classified as grenier space I think... I really ought have a look at what officialdom says of it all. I spent ages with tape measure and note pad, taking dimensions and then trying to decide what to include them as. A process that went through several iterations over the years but long since filed and forgotten.


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