Manon Lauron
Lawyer
at the Bar
from Castres
Specialist in Tax Law and Customs Law
Specialist in Tax Control and Litigation
Discover the firm’s expertise.
Tax audit
The experience of a tax audit is traumatic for individuals and businesses.
It is a feared event which causes a lot of stress because it involves technical notions, it involves a direct relationship with the State through its agents, who are knowledgeable and you are laymen.
It’s mainly about your money and your assets.
Some experience control as an “intrusion” into your family life, or into the management of your business. This arouses an immediate, instinctive feeling of defense.
A clash of cultures and intentions therefore occurs.
Ultimately, the tax audit can destabilize you and you will then become your own worst enemy.
You should know that the tax audit follows a well-established procedure.
This procedure gives the taxpayer several opportunities to express themselves, to produce supporting documents, to explain themselves, even if they need to speak the same language and know it.
It is therefore simplistic to think that tax audit is an incontestable inevitability.
The Tax Administration sees your file through the prism of only the information available to it. It does not hold all the information because it concerns your life, your family, your professional practice and fortunately you are the only one to have the relevant information allowing you to see your file from another angle.
The tax audit has an educational aim. The State wants taxpayers to comply with tax law. The right to error is now taken into account in the assessment of files, since the Essoc law. In such a case, the cost of the tax audit must reflect the tax that you would have had to pay in the absence of an error.
The tax audit has a punitive aim. The State sanctions taxpayers who knowingly evade by applying penalties (40% or 80%) or even criminal proceedings (tax evasion, money laundering, etc.). The cost of the tax audit then corresponds to the tax that should have been paid in the absence of an error, increased by penalties and possible criminal proceedings.
The intervention of the tax lawyer also has an educational function in order to explain to you the tax audit, its procedure, the legitimacy of the adjustment and to indicate to you the interest or not of contesting it..
The tax audit is not always contested if the adjustment is perfectly founded in law. This information must be communicated to you because in such a case, there is no point in incurring unnecessary procedural costs. It’s best to try to get a settlement plan that you’re happy with.
Conversely, certain tax audits that are perfectly justified in law can be canceled due to a procedural defect.
The reading of the tax audit is therefore twofold : the tax rules specific to taxation and procedure.
The intervention of the tax lawyer aims to restore a balance in the dialogue between technician and technician and to optimize the dialogue.e with the Administration by reducing the femotional actor.
The tax audit is also an opportunity to review a situation and bring all the technicians around the table: the accountant, the tax lawyer, the notary, the asset manager, etc. The objective being either to obtain information relating to the history of the situation or to modify the disputed situation for the future.
Local taxes
Local taxes such as property tax, CFE and CVAE (soon to be abolished) are relatively expensive annual fixed costs for businesses.
The share of local taxes in the total taxes paid by companies is the largest.
These charges, although important, are most of the time paid without the taxpayer knowing how they are established or wondering about the correct establishment of the bases.
The mystery that hovers around these taxes must be removed in order to allow taxpayers to verify that the tax called is the correct one.
In most cases, the taxpayer wins and can claim a tax saving.
Indeed, it frequently happens that the bases are based on very old or incorrect bases.
Local professional taxes are established on a different basis depending on whether the premises are commercial premises or industrial premises.
Commercial premises (offices, shops, hotels, restaurants, etc.) are taxed on a basis directly linked to the surface area of the premises and the use of this surface area. If the premises existed before 2018, this base is adjusted by taking into account the old calculation method (ante reform 2017).
Since the reform in 2017, the basis of professional premises has become more complex.
Industrial premises (factories, storage platforms, etc.) are taxed on a basis linked to the cost price of the fixed assets constituting the building. A trade-off must be made between fixed assets classified as land and those classified as non-land assets.
The knowledge and development of appropriate tools to calculate these taxes allows me to offer youser:
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the study of your current taxation,
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verification of the calculation method,
You may be winning compared to the reactionlegality. If this is the case, I will quantify the amount of recovery risk.
It will be up to you to decide whether you wish to regularize your situation or live with the risk of recovery.
The Administration has a right of recovery of two years in terms of property tax (the current year and the preceding year) and four years in terms of CFE (the current year and the three previous years ).
If the study reveals that you are overtaxed, I will suggest that you claim the amounts of property tax, CFE and CVAE overpaid, within the limit of the preceding year and the current year.
This claim will reestablish the foundations for the future. You will therefore reduce your future tax burden.
Furthermore, if you are at the stage of creating your professional activity, and therefore at the stage of subscribing to your first CFE declaration, I will support you in the declaration of this one in order to start on a good basis. This will ensure you are taxed on a fair basis from the start.
If you wish, I can also monitor your situation over time, depending on whether you operate commercial or industrial premises.
Finally, in a tax audit situation, it is very important to be supported because this dispute is very complex and the absence of contesting this audit will reestablish the foundations for the future of your business.
In a word, local taxation is a little-known and ignored area of business management which deserves your interest.
Professional Activity
The professional activity in question is the business in the broad sense of the term, that is to say your work tool, all of the human and material resources based on an organization that you establish with a view to producing goods. or services.
You invest in it every day, and so do your employees. You must be involved in the structure of this work tool because the sustainability of your business depends on it.
This activity is intended to arise and develop individually or in a one-person or multi-person company.
Professional activity is in perpetual motion. It must adapt to your desires, your constraints and the people who bring it to life.
You must think about protecting your personal assets, optimizing your taxation as a manager, reinvesting cash (additional equipment, short or medium term investment, reinvestment in another professional activity, reinvestment in projects personal, payment of dividends, etc.), anticipation of asset transfer. All these questions will guide the choice of professional practice structure.
Thus, I offer you tax support corresponding to developments in your professional activity. This covers in particular the following situations:
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Development of an individual business and optimization of taxation,
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Transition into a company with a view to using the accumulated cash for other professional or personal projects,
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Constitution of holding company,
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Association of several individual companies into a company (contribution or transfer of companies or company shares to a new common structure, capital increase),
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Separation of partners (split, capital reduction),
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Transfer of individual business,
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Transfer of shares,
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Arbitration between transfer of business assets and transfer of company securities,
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Creation of an activity in a privileged tax zone (ZRR, ZFU, etc.),
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Obtaining tax credits,
These often complex subjects for managers must be the subject of frequent advice in order to adapt the trajectory together gradually.