You are probably reading this and wondering how we managed to wait until late May/early June to deal with taxes, or, alternately perhaps, you're wondering whether we've been audited. In fact, I have not yet dealt with our American taxes for 2009, other than to file a request for an extension to file on the grounds that we will, once we have been out of the United States for 365 days, qualify as non-residents for tax purposes, all of which will make our lives much easier. No, the taxes of which I speak are the French ones.
A bit of background: Blaise is being paid by the French government through one of the universities. Every month, money is deposited into our bank account, and we receive in the mail a piece of pink paper with a looong list of all of the various deductions from his paycheck and the contributions made by his employer. Some of them are quite small (less than a euro) and some are considerably larger, but most are in the 10 to 40 euro range, and the percentage that is picked up by the employer is generally significant. So even though I didn't know what half of the stuff stood for, I figure that the tax thing was being taken care of, as it is in the US, except, hopefully, better, since maybe they would manage to take the right amount out. . .. Then, around mid May, Blaise received an email telling him that he needed to file his French income tax return on or before the 31st of May, or the government would file it for him and that we definitely didn't want that to happen. Also, we were told, there were any number of tax agreements between France and the US, which might or might not apply to us, some of which can be invoked only once by any one individual.
So I searched around and downloaded the form that I needed to fill out, and then hunted on the IRS website for copies and explanations of the various tax treaties in English and on the French tax website for copies and explanations of the various tax treaties in French. And then I read them all and decided that I am extremely glad that I am not a specialist in international tax law (although if I were, our filing would have been much easier). In any case, it appeared that our rental income could be exempted from the French income tax, so long as we paid taxes on it in the United States, and that we could choose to exempt Blaise's income as a researcher as well (and exempt it from US taxes since we were resident in France when it was earned), though the part of the treaty applicable to his income could only be invoked once, and so if we were ever to return for longer than a year, we wouldn't be able to use it again. So, basically it's a bet--does one take the sure tax savings now, or wait and hope to come back when one could use it for more income?
We decided to take the bet, and hope to come back. Next, the tax form. The beginning was relatively straightforward, I thought, names, birth names, birth dates, etc for the adults, and birth years (and that was it!) for the dependents. And then information about our housing situation: address--easy, dates of moves--easy, number of pièces (rooms)--not so easy. Yes, I know, that seems like a really easy question; after all, I do live in the place after all! But the rules for counting rooms in France seem to be different than those in the US. For example, bedrooms and living/dining rooms count, naturally, but kitchens do not. (Neither do bathrooms and toilets, but that's hardly surprising.) A question about whether or not we have a television (because there's a tax if you do--and we watch a lot fewer commercials here because it pays for a lot of the programming costs). And finally, the pages about income, at which point I threw up my hands and emailed the people who had emailed Blaise about filling in the forms in the first place (and had offered to help us).
Two days later, I got an email back from them, explaining that our tax situation was extremely complicated and they didn't know anything about rental income or tax treaties and that I should contact our tax center in Vincennes. So, I translated my email into French, and sent it off. And received an email back saying that our tax situation was extremely complicated and that I should really come in and meet with one of their tax experts for help in filling out the form. (Free of charge, I might add.)
So the next morning (by this point it was the 28th of May), Blaise took the kids to school and I boarded a bus to Vincennes, hoping that I wouldn't have too terribly long a wait for help. When I got there, the office had just opened, and the line of people snaked out the door and down the block, and I prepared for a long, long wait. But as the line began to move forward, I noticed that many people seemed to be there only to pick up a form or perhaps to drop off their completed tax forms, and that the percentage of people who were actually there for help was relatively small. Once I reached the front and picked up my number, there were 26 people in front of me in line, much of the waiting room was filled, and the line was still, at any rate, out the door, though I could no longer see past that point. (For reference, the tax center opened at 8:30, and I was seated and waiting my turn shortly after 8:45.) I pulled out my ipod and prepared to wait (and play Civilization).
Each time they were ready for someone else, the sign above the door would beep, and the next number would flash, along with the letter of the office (A to H) they were to go to. When I sat down, they were on 9, but the numbers kept chugging along, 10, 11, 12, . . .. About 45 minutes after I sat down, my number flashed, and I headed for the indicated office, paperwork in hand. After apologizing for my French, and my inability to figure out how to fill out the form, I sat down and we began the process of filling in the forms. Five minutes later the personal information was filled out, along with our housing information, television information, and number of dependents. I put our wages into the proper slot on the 3rd page, and explained that we had rental income, but that since our house was in the US I believed that we could pay the taxes on it to the US rather than the French. She wasn't sure whether or not that was true, so she called in the head of the office, who spent perhaps 30 seconds looking it up, confirmed that it was true, and had me fill in my name and the address of our house in the US, along with the amount of our rental income on another form. He then apologized profusely for the complexity of our tax return, which had taken, even including the 5 minutes it took to find the head of the department, a grand total of 16 minutes to fill in. I decided not to point out that it had taken me more than twice as long just to fill out the request for an extension to file our US tax return.
Once I got home, I decided to find out whether or not we had actually been granted the extension that I had requested, so I called the IRS to ask. The woman I talked to looked it up and assured me that the request had been granted, and said she wasn't sure why I had not yet received the form telling me so. I found that out the next day when the form finally came, and I discovered that it had been sent to New Zealand, and then mailed to France from there!
