You, english people, are so lucky for ONE thing :

your taxes are automatically deducted from your salary.

and us, poor french people, we have to calculate each year what we have to declare to our tax department. If we make a mistake, we have to pay a penalty of 10%. In addition, we pay, for instance, in 2005 what you have earned two years before, that's so unfair.

BUT

I am not against paying taxes, it is important to save our public services. Instead of save money on education (by firing teachers) or social security (by hard controlling medical reimbursements), french government would better save money on taxation department in debiting directly the tax on our salary .

sorry for my english and what do you think about this typical difference between our two countries ?

portoalegro

I think it's better to PAYE as well, it must be a right hassle and very complicated to fill in a tax return eveyr year. Also, what if your circumstances changed and you had to leave a high-paying job for a low-salary one? then you'd be stuck with a massive tax bill that you couldn't really afford.
I understand why there are so many homeless poeple on the streets of Paris now.

That's so unfair! It's much better to 'pay as you earn'. Why don't you lobby your local policitians to get the law changed then everyone will know where they stand.