Among the mandatory information that must appear on an invoice is the SIRET number of the supplier or service provider.
Naturally, mentioning the SIRET number of a third party is prohibited...
Yet this is what a service provider did for several years to her ex-partner (and incidentally the father of her children), with the aim of making him pay the taxes and social security contributions relating to the amount invoiced.

A taxpayer, whom we will call Pierre, came to my office after his tax claim with the tax authorities failed.
The story seemed quite improbable.
His ex-partner, whose morality was clearly questionable and whom we will call Mrs. X, works as a service provider in the pharmaceutical sector.
Probably in order to avoid paying the tax and social security contributions linked to the exercise of any professional activity, Mrs X did not declare her activity to the tax and social security bodies.
In order to issue invoices, she then had the brilliant idea of issuing them in the name of her ex-partner's real estate agency, which had been closed since 2009. The SIRET number mentioned on the invoice also corresponds to this agency.
The customers clearly did not realize that this agency was operating as a real estate agency and had also been closed for more than ten years.
The subterfuge did not stop there.
Although closed since 2009, the agency still had a dormant bank account that Pierre had clearly forgotten to close. Mrs. X, knowing the online access codes to this account, invited her clients to pay her bills into this account.
Mrs X then rushed to make a transfer of the same amount from this account to an account of her own.
The amounts invoiced and transferred through Pierre's account amounted to almost €200,000 over four years.
Tax audit and rectification proposal
The tax authorities then carried out a tax audit of Pierre. They considered that Pierre's agency was indeed the source of this invoicing and increased his taxable income. This resulted in additional income tax and VAT.
Pierre then filed a complaint with the help of a lawyer to explain the error to the tax authorities.
The latter rejected it on the grounds, in particular:
That Pierre did not justify that his agency had not carried out the disputed services
That he was free to dispose of the sums as he wished and that there was no evidence that Pierre had not voluntarily transferred these sums to Mrs X.
Here is an excerpt from the rejection of this claim:

Referral to the administrative court
Pierre then contacted my office, which naturally suggested that he contest the rejection of this claim before the Administrative Court.
Proving that Pierre had not performed the disputed services constituted negative proof. In my opinion, the tax authorities could not demand this of Pierre. Letters from the clients concerned attesting that only Mrs X had always been involved in the various services were nevertheless able to be collected.
The argument based on the free disposal of sums invoked by the administration made a little more sense. It is true that from the moment that sums are present in a bank account from which a taxpayer has the power to withdraw the funds whenever he wishes, these sums are deemed to constitute disposable income and are therefore in principle taxable.
Of course, we could easily prove that these sums had been transferred to a personal account of Mrs X.
But we were afraid that the Court would uphold the tax authorities' reasoning and consider that these sums had in fact been the subject of a manual gift (delivery of a sum of money or tangible property that does not require a notarial deed). However, manual gifts do not require the beneficiary's acceptance to be valid. Furthermore, a manual gift does not necessarily require a written document.
On the other hand, manual gifts, like any donation, require a liberal intention on the part of the donor.
However, Pierre had filed complaints against Ms X several times (particularly for harassment and for having taken out bank loans and surety agreements in Pierre's name).
The liberal intention then seemed difficult to prove by the tax administration, which was then forced to issue a tax reduction notice.
So all's well that ends well for Pierre, even if all this naturally generated stress for him that he could have done without...
The office of Me Nicolas Rozenbaum is at your disposal for any tax request by clicking here.
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