The rental value of business premises had been assessed since 1970 according to cadastral rules referring to a standard property. In 2010, the legislature sought to update these rental values and implemented a system for their continuous updating. This mechanism, provided for by Article 1498 bis of the French General Tax Code (CGI), created by the 2010 amending finance law (Article 34 M of Law No. 2010-1658 of December 29, 2010) and first effective in 2015, is based on a declaration by business premises operators of the amount of rent they pay.
All business premises operators are affected.
A decree dated April 3, 2015, specifies that taxpayers subject to this obligation must declare, for each property they rent on January 1st of the year the declaration is filed, the amount of the annual rent, excluding charges and taxes, for the year in which the declaration is filed.
The rent declaration must be submitted at the same time as the income tax returns. However, for this initial filing period, the tax authorities are allowing this declaration to be submitted until September 15, 2015.
