JPD, French dividend withholding tax rate (absent treaty relief) was reduced from 30% in 2018 and 2019 to 28% in 2020.
"Send them to the income tax office that deals with your income tax": Well I only ever deal with ROS. I have not dealt with a physical office for many years.
I was hoping to find a postal address for whatever specialised office deals with residence confirmations of this sort.
The Revenue website is almost stripped clean of physical addresses for income tax. I see self assessment queries can be sent to:
Gillian Ryan, Business Division – Dubin South, Plaza Complex, Belgard Road, Tallaght, Dublin 24, D24 T2OT.
My reclaim is not large but I want to see how to use this system, indeed whether it is possible to do so. Then multiplying the refund by an indefinite number of future years might make the effort worthwhile. The shares in question are held because I like (or liked) the businesses, not for the income; indeed a high yield detracts from the attraction of a holding, better for the company to reinvest the money at a higher ROR than I could achieve especially after paying tax on the distributed money.
Bluefin: Yes I will try to do this.
Another question: In Form 5000 Part V, does the "Paying Institution" mean the company that paid the dividend, or the broker holding my shares that directly credited the funds to my broker account? The company has no record of me, with shares held in custodian account.
The whole withholding tax process is a pain in the ass, none of the parties involved in paying me a dividend has any incentive to assist my paying only the tax legally due and no more; not the company, not the custodian, not the broker, nor either of the tax authorities. Give me the W-8BEN system any day!
I read somewhere there is a European-level initiative to sort out the systemic problem of irrecoverable excess withholding taxes.