Almost 16,000 residents with undeclared foreign bank accounts have elected to regularize their tax situation in the last eight months, through a voluntary declaration of non-compliance. As of February 7, 2014 the tax authorities had received 15,813 requests for tax regularization. This follows the publication of a circular by French tax authorities in June 2013, which set out the conditions enabling taxpayers to legalize their tax situation. An average of 150 taxpayers are coming forward and declaring unpaid amounts each week.
Of the total number of voluntary declarations received, 2,621 files were “complete.” This means that taxpayers submitted both a retroactive declaration and the accompanying documents required to evidence the origin of the assets. Total cumulative assets declared on these complete files amounted to approximately EUR2.4bn (USD3.3bn), or almost EUR910, 000 per declaration. The tax authorities have collected approximately EUR230m from the 240 files processed so far.
The data indicates that 76 percent of taxpayers had inherited either one or several bank accounts abroad. Ten percent of declarations involved sums of less than EUR100,000. Most of the individuals filing declarations held undeclared assets in Switzerland (80 percent), while only 7 percent of taxpayers disclosed hidden accounts in Luxembourg.
