Millions of people to receive payment from French tax service next week

Tax credit payments will be made next week, with up to 9 million households in France set to benefit. The average payment per eligible household will be €639.

The payments will be made into eligible bank accounts on January 15, with the French government estimating some €5.8 billion will be paid out. 

The payment – the first of two possible tax credit payments scheduled for this year – is estimated using prior tax returns.

Recipients will automatically receive a transfer into the bank account listed for tax payments/refunds in their personal space on the French tax site, referenced ‘AVANCE CREDIMPOT’, and paid by the Direction générale des Finances publiques.

Where bank account details are not available, recipients will receive a cheque for the corresponding amount sent to their address.

What are the payments for? 

These payments relate to France’s tax credit system. 

A tax credit derives from calculations relating to certain eligible expenses during the tax year. 

Qualifying expenses allow for a percentage of the expense to be taken off a taxpayer’s tax bill relating to income from the year in which the costs arose - and if the bill is not high enough to benefit in full, the rest of the credit is paid by the tax office into people’s bank accounts.

Tax credits include, for example, 60% of certain gifts to charity, or 50% of the cost of employing people such as gardeners or cleaners (within certain ceilings). Other eligible expenses include such as union membership fees or certain kinds of investment into buy-to-let properties.

A full official list of such payments eligible for tax refunds is available here. 

France taxes many kinds of income at source (i.e taxes being deducted automatically from salaries) but these tax credits are not taken into account by the authorities when calculating the level of tax paid at-source. 

Read more: How do tax credits for help at French home work?

The credits are, instead, assessed once a person’s full income from all sources for the French tax year is known following their declaration in the spring (eg. May-June 2025 for income from 2024). Relevant expenses are declared in boxes in the tax return.

However, so people do not have to wait for the benefit of their tax credits, in January 2025, a payment equal to 60% of the assumed tax credits for 2024 will be paid to qualifying households. 

This payment is an estimate using the last full year’s worth of income tax information available (in this year using information from the 2024 tax return, itself based on 2023 income and payments), as full information for the 2024 year is not yet available. 

Once this spring’s income tax declaration has been made, the final amount of tax credits a household is due can be calculated. A second payment will be made in July, if necessary, once a person’s overall tax bill for 2024 has been worked out, bearing in mind tax already paid at source during the year and January’s tax credit money.

The aim of not waiting until 2024’s income is assessed before paying out part of the tax credit money is to boost the spending power of those who made eligible payments.

However, if a taxpayer did not in fact have similar ‘tax credit’ expenses in 2024 compared to 2023, a repayment is required if too much was paid out in January.

To avoid this, it is possible to go into your account at impots.gouv.fr to reduce or cancel the expected January payment before the end of the preceding year, however it is too late to do this now if you have not already done so.

Read more: Month by month: What are key tax dates in France in 2025?