French E-Filing For Individuals Launched

by Ulrika Lomas, Tax-News.com, Brussels

20 December 2001

The French tax authorities (Direction Générale des Impots) announced on Monday that the country's 35 million taxpayers will soon be able to file their tax returns online.

The new directory system, put in place by IT supplier Novell at a cost of around 9 million euros (£5.5 million), represents the largest e-government initiative undertaken so far in France, and will cover the entire population.

It is hoped that the service, which is already available to French businesses and the DGI's own staff, will be available to other public sector workers by next year, and to all individual taxpayers in 2003.

However, despite the government's enthusiasm for putting all public services online by 2005, if the take-up for electronic VAT filing is anything to go by, the online service for individuals may struggle initially.

The DGI revealed earlier this year that although French businesses have been able to pay VAT over the internet since April 2001, and 2,100 large companies have registered for the service, only 572 had actually made online payments.

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