Non-residents who own income generating French property are required to use a dedicated office for their income tax declarations.

The office is called the Service des Impôts des Particuliers Non Résidents (SIP-NR), and is located in Noisy-le-Grand, a suburb east of Paris.

As well as income tax, the office also handles wealth tax declarations for non-residents with assets in France that make them liable for the tax.

The service is responsible for over 1.6 million French citizens who live abroad, as well as foreign individuals with income and assets in France.

In response to a parliamentary question about delays in processing enquiries from members of the public the government admitted there were problems, which it attributed to the "unusual" volume of solicitation.

According to Frédéric Petit MP, there are delays of more than 3 months when responding to email requests as well as a failure to respond to telephone calls. Those delays and dropped calls will not be unfamiliar to many of our readers, whose own poor experiences with the SIP we regularly hear about.

Nevertheless, the government insisted that “the response times to user requests remain under control” and that current delays were due to the annual income tax reporting period, when many enquiries were received.

"Between April and June 2023, the non-resident reception service received nearly 125,000 phone calls," the government stated. They concede that the dropout rate on phone calls "deteriorates a little during the months of the income declaration campaign" but that the response rate exceeds 90% every month.

According to the government, while the "delays in processing email messages received may [...] vary between a few days and a few weeks", they "only exceptionally exceed the three-month period".

However, this is not the first occasion when the SIP has been criticised for poor service standards. The issue is regularly raised in parliament, and the national auditor has previously stated that the telephone service was "frequently saturated", with only 25% of calls on average being treated by officials. The service had a reputation of simply not responding to calls from non-residents and the recall service was rarely used.

The auditor criticised their handling of written enquiries, which was only marginally better, with less than 1 in 2 of emails and letters answered within the 5 day turnaround period set for a response.

The auditors also "deplored" the weakness of information provided to non-residents on the law and regulations to assist them in dealing with their tax affairs in France.

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