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Letters from France: what each one means
The letters an official body from France actually sends — what each one means, the deadline that runs, and what happens if you ignore it.
Tax
- Saisie administrative à tiers détenteur (SATD)The tax authority did not go to court. It served a seizure on whoever holds money for you — usually your bank — on a title it holds itself. You have two months to bring an opposition, and the money moves anyway while it is examined.
- Proposition de rectificationThis is the document that opens the contradictory part of a French tax adjustment, and closes it. Reply inside thirty days and the administration must deal with what you say; say nothing and the rectifications are treated as accepted.
Court
Traffic
- Avis d'amende forfaitaire majoréeThe amount has gone up on its own and a title has been made enforceable, so this is no longer a demand: it is a debt the Treasury can collect. A réclamation is still open, on a shorter and stricter footing than the request you could have made the first time.
- Avis de contraventionA French fine does not negotiate with you in stages. Everything you can do — pay, contest, name whoever was driving — happens inside the same forty-five days, and when they run out the amount rises by operation of law.
Social insurance
- Mise en demeure (URSSAF)This is the step that must come before enforced recovery of social contributions. One month after it was notified, the URSSAF may issue a contrainte — a document that carries the effects of a judgment unless it is opposed in its own short period.
- Notification d'indu (CAF)The CAF has decided that benefits were paid that should not have been, and will take the amount back from what it still pays you. It is a decision of a social security body, which is why there is a two-month window to put it before the commission de recours amiable.