May has long been my favourite month in France. The countryside is a riot of colour and the general green of the vegetation is so lush and succulent that you could imagine yourself a grasshopper. The month demands that you take the time to be still and just appreciate the sheer beauty of nature at its zenith – before black spot claims the roses and the heat and dust of summer burns everything to a flammable crisp. Open the door first thing and the chorus of bird song is positively deafening. Standing on the threshold of global disaster, you feel glad to be alive.
The merry month of May is always somewhat tarnished, though, by having to submit an annual tax return. It’s not that I mind particularly paying tax – and if we lived in a socially responsible country like Denmark, I’d probably rejoice in it, secure in the knowledge that my money would be channelled towards the common good rather than weapons of mass destruction – no, it’s the thought of how unfair the system is: the fact that those with the most means in this life will put themselves in the hands of some clever accountant, skilled in the dark arts of playing the system (for the benefit of Mr. Shite).
What’s more, given my lifelong fear of authority – parents, teachers, gendarmes, tax inspectors et al – I’m followed around all month by a shroud of guilt, in the way that Charlie Brown’s pal Pigpen would kick up a little blanket of dirt wherever he walked. The guilt is psychosomatic, triggered by the fear that I’ve missed something or made a mistake in my calculations. One evening there will be a knock at the front door. Monsieur Sampson? Je suis l’inspecteur des impôts. Je voudrais parler avec vous… Actually, it’s more likely to take the form of one of those awful official letters that occasionally land in our mail box, bringing dread and consternation.
This year the guilt was niggled by reading articles in The Connexion, France’s very own Anglophone newspaper for expatriates. In this era of artificial intelligence(or AI to the cognoscenti), the authorities, I read, are using it to analyse photos taken from above by satellites or helicopters to identify outbuildings as yet undeclared and liable to the infamous ‘shed tax’. I checked online to see what could be seen on Google Earth and, sure enough, there quite clearly is the little structure we put up to channel rainwater into our underground tank – a socially responsible act, I’m sure you will agree, that might nevertheless be subject to another of the stealth taxes in which this country specialises. Oh, the worry, the internal turmoil!
Any reading I did only served to cloud the issue. It was clear that I should go and see someone – but whom, without opening up a can of worms? I toyed with his worship the mayor, who had been down our way in his big yellow machine of destruction only a few days before to shred the overgrowth either side of the chemin rural that leads down to the house of our intermittent Parisian neighbours. He and I have a reasonably good working relationship: I dispense a bit of old-style British charm in return for his tacit understanding that I am essentially honest and harmless. I’m pretty sure that he clocked our construction on a previous slash-and-churn mission and said nothing, even though he knew and I knew that we were supposed to declare the work and await the official authorisation before starting it.
Better perhaps not to unsettle the status quo. So I decided to test the new France Services facility in Martel, where supposedly I could get information about all kinds of official business without having to betray my name, address and serial number. It’s quite a new service, presumably designed to help the public find their way through the tangled web of l’Administration. No doubt, too, to improve its awful public image. They, the functionaries who work for the faceless conglomerate, have a lot to learn about service, so it would be interesting to gauge how they’re managing.
I went one overcast morning to the gaunt little building that used to house the local treasury before online payments of public bills became the only option. My hopes were not high. Sure enough, the office was still closed five minutes after the supposed opening time. A notice on the door said something about exceptional closing that afternoon. Perhaps some colleague’s birthday celebrations, demanding an extra hour or two in the local restaurant, followed by a recuperative siesta. I was about to turn on my heels when another customer arrived followed soon after by a functionary with a key. He questioned us both about our needs – but not in a how-can-I-be-of-assistance? way, more of an aggressive what-the-hell-do-you-want? manner.
Once inside his domain, his comportment seemed to thaw somewhat and I felt slightly less of an intruder. However, he soon made it clear that he knew as little as I did about the regulations and directed me instead to someone at the Martel mairie, an expert in the field. Well, fair enough in some respects. Better to admit your limitations than to fudge it with hot air and bluster.
So I went up the hill to my next port-of-call. The woman at the misnamed Welcome desk indicated a gloomy room backstage where a middle-aged bespectacled man sat behind a desk. He looked up with an expression that said, Yes? What is it? Feeling like a pupil hauled up before a teacher after school, I tentatively stated my case. He went straight onto the defensive. No, no, no. He couldn’t possibly help me. I needed to go to the mairie in St. Denis les Martel, because every commune was different. You had to treat every application individually according to the specifics of the local cadastral plan blah blah blah. I stood my ground. Surely, I suggested, he must know what the regulations state in broad terms. He regarded me like an irritant that wouldn’t go away of its own accord. Reluctantly, he gave me the information I had hoped to hear: If a construction is under 20m2 and open to the elements, then you don’t have to pay the taxe d’amènagement, or shed tax.
I left the Jobsworth to his paper-pushing in peace. Needless to say, I thought of something more suitable than my meek words of thanks after the event. Oh to be an Oscar Wilde or some such doyen of repartee! I’d have pumped myself up to my full, commanding stature and addressed that human bean thus: ‘My good man, I too was once a civil servant. We learnt very early on the importance of civility towards the public, who – let us remember – pay us our handsome salary via their taxes. I bid you, sir, an unhappy evening and a wretched week ahead.’
Reader, I left that mairie fuming, full of dark thoughts to share with the Good Wife on my return. Why had we chosen to live among these dismal, rude and humourless people? And then I looked out upon the green and pleasant landscape below…
Well anyway, I got my answer. If I am questioned about our wooden construction, I can quote the regulations. I shouldn’t now be fined thousands of euros. What now worries me is that they may ask me when it was authorised, when it was finished, where is the paperwork and so on? I can try fudging it, but if they are feeling particularly vindictive, could they demand that we take it down?
May has segued into June. The tax return has been lodged. It’s all over for another year. Time once more to focus on the matter of surviving the three hottest months of the year.
