You have built up a self-invested personal pension, universally known as a SIPP, during your working life in Britain, and you are now settling in France for good. The question that follows is obvious: can the pension pot follow you into a French retirement plan, what will His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the British tax authority known as HMRC, charge on the way out, and what will the French tax office charge once you are resident here? The short answer is that there is no direct pipeline from a British SIPP into a French plan d’épargne retraite, the French retirement savings plan universally called the PER. Every transfer must pass through the British qualifying recognised overseas pension scheme regime, universally called QROPS, and since the exemption depends on where you live and where the receiving scheme is based, a French resident faces a likely 25 percent British charge on top of French taxation on arrival. This article explains the British exit rules first, then the French entry rules, and finally how to declare the operation and challenge the bill when the administration gets it wrong.
I. Can your SIPP follow you to France, and what does HMRC charge on the way out?
A. Why a direct SIPP transfer into a French PER fails the QROPS test
A SIPP is a British defined contribution pension wrapper: you, and sometimes your employer, pay contributions in, their growth is largely sheltered from British tax, and you draw benefits from age 55, rising to 57. A QROPS, a qualifying recognised overseas pension scheme, is an overseas pension scheme that has told HMRC it meets specific conditions and appears on HMRC’s published notification list. The British rule is blunt. Under the official British guidance, only an overseas scheme holding QROPS status can receive the transfer. Where the receiving scheme lacks that status, the British provider may refuse the instruction or treat the payment as unauthorised, attracting a tax charge of at least 40 percent. That 40 percent figure is the unauthorised payments charge, and it applies before France has taxed a single euro.
In practice, the first step is therefore a verification exercise, not a transfer instruction. You open HMRC’s recognised overseas pension schemes notification list, you search for the exact French scheme your bank or insurer proposes on HMRC’s recognised overseas pension schemes notification list, and you confirm its presence on the day you act, because schemes join and leave the list. If no French scheme appears on the list on that day, then a direct transfer from your SIPP to a French PER cannot proceed as a recognised transfer at all. Your British provider will either refuse the instruction or process it as an unauthorised payment, with the 40 percent minimum charge described above. No French legal argument can override that British classification, because it is HMRC, and only HMRC, that decides which overseas schemes qualify.
The transfer procedure itself is formal. HMRC’s guidance points you to form APSS 263, which lists the information to supply before the transfer, and the completed form goes to your British scheme administrator, not to the French receiver. Deadlines matter: incomplete paperwork still outstanding 60 days after the transfer request triggers a 25 percent charge. A British saver who has already moved to France, who corresponds across two languages and two time zones, and who waits for a French institution to supply paperwork, can easily miss that 60-day window. Diarise it from the day of the request, chase both administrators weekly, and keep written proof of every document sent, because a 25 percent charge imposed for missing paperwork is far harder to challenge than a charge disputed on principle.
A further trap runs for five years after the transfer. If you move country within five years, HMRC requires form APSS 241 to be filed with the scheme administrator, and the outcome is mechanical: moving into the country where the QROPS is based brings a refund of charge paid, while moving away from that country triggers a 25 percent tax on the transfer. A British saver who transfers to a scheme in one country, settles in France a year later, and forgets that form, can therefore manufacture a 25 percent charge by the mere fact of moving. Before instructing any transfer, map out where you will live for the next five years, and treat a planned move to France as a reason to pause, not to accelerate. HMRC also points savers toward regulated guidance where a pension scam is suspected, and that warning deserves attention: cold calls offering to unlock a British pension into a French property deal or an offshore bond are a classic fraud pattern, and a transfer induced by fraud still leaves you liable for the tax charges described here.
B. How the 25 percent overseas transfer charge and the allowance actually work
The overseas transfer charge is a flat 25 percent levy, but its base depends on your situation. The starting point is the overseas transfer allowance, which ordinarily stands at £1,073,100 according to the official British guidance. This figure may be higher if you hold a protected allowance, for example lifetime allowance protection granted before the British lifetime allowance was abolished, so anyone with historic protection should confirm the protected figure with their administrator before doing any arithmetic.
Two cases then arise. First, if you exceed your available allowance but the transfer is otherwise exempt from the charge, you pay 25 percent on the excess only: where the allowance is exceeded but the transfer is otherwise exempt, the 25 percent charge falls solely on the amount above the allowance. Take a saver with the standard allowance transferring £1,500,000 to an exempt arrangement: the excess is £426,900 and the charge is £106,725. Second, if you are not exempt at all, the charge falls on the whole amount: where no exemption applies, the 25 percent charge is computed on the total sum transferred. A £400,000 transfer by a saver with no exemption therefore costs £100,000 at the point of transfer, before any French tax.
Exemption turns principally on residence. You usually escape the charge where you transfer to a QROPS provided by your employer, and otherwise where both of the following apply: you live in the country your QROPS is based in, and the transfer does not exceed your available allowance. This residence-matching rule is the reason French residents face such difficulty. A saver living in France who transfers a SIPP to a QROPS based anywhere else does not match, and the 25 percent charge applies to the full amount transferred. Routing the money through a QROPS in a third country, a structure sometimes marketed to British expatriates, does not solve the problem for a French resident: it adds a layer of fees, a second set of scheme rules, and a five-year residence clock, while the mismatch with France remains. The only structurally clean exemptions for a French resident are an employer-provided QROPS or a France-based QROPS appearing on the HMRC list, which is why the list check described above is the decisive step.
One further point must be faced honestly. The France-Britain double tax treaty eliminates double taxation of taxes on income, but the overseas transfer charge is framed by Britain as a charge on the transfer itself, not as income tax on a pension payment. You should therefore assume, when budgeting, that no French tax credit will neutralise the 25 percent British charge, and that France may then tax the pension receipts themselves when they are paid out, as explained below. Planning that ignores this stacking effect understates the true cost by tens of thousands of pounds. Where the sums are large, the decision is rarely whether to transfer at all in a hurry; it is whether to leave the SIPP in Britain, draw it as a French resident under the treaty, and use the French PER separately for new savings, a comparison developed in the French section of this article.
II. How France taxes the pension money once you live here
A. Why France claims the taxing right, and what it does with lump sums and transfers
Once you settle in France, the French starting point is worldwide taxation. Article 4 A of the French General Tax Code, universally called the CGI provides: “Les personnes qui ont en France leur domicile fiscal sont passibles de l’impôt sur le revenu en raison de l’ensemble de leurs revenus. Celles dont le domicile fiscal est situé hors de France sont passibles de cet impôt en raison de leurs seuls revenus de source française.” In plain terms, a French tax resident pays French income tax, known as impôt sur le revenu, on worldwide income, while a non-resident pays only on French-source income. Tax residence itself, called domicile fiscal, follows Article 4 B of the same code: “Sont considérées comme ayant leur domicile fiscal en France au sens de l’article 4 A : a. Les personnes qui ont en France leur foyer ou le lieu de leur séjour principal”. The foyer means the family home, the place where your spouse and children live; the séjour principal means the place of your main physical presence, generally where you spend more than 183 days. Professional activity in France and the centre of your economic interests complete the test, and meeting any single limb is enough. A British retiree who keeps a London flat but lives with their family in the Dordogne, is treated as French resident without hesitation.
The 2008 France-Britain double tax treaty then allocates the taxing right between the two States. Its Article 18 reserves pensions and similar remuneration paid for past employment to the State of residence, taxing them only there. For a private pension, including a SIPP, drawn by a French resident, that means France alone taxes the pension, and Britain must step back. The exception concerns government service: Article 19 keeps pensions paid by a Contracting State for public service taxable in the paying State, stating that pensions paid by a State, one of its local authorities, or a French statutory body for public service remain taxable only in the paying State, subject to a dual-nationality proviso. A former British civil servant, teacher in a state school, NHS employee, police officer or member of the armed forces must therefore check Article 19 before assuming France taxes everything; for ordinary private-sector SIPPs, Article 18 gives France the exclusive right.
Two French court decisions show how these rules bite in practice. The first principle is that the treaty never creates tax by itself. The Toulouse administrative appeal court, in a pensions dispute, recalled that “Une convention bilatérale conclue en vue d’éviter les doubles impositions ne peut pas, par elle-même, directement servir de base légale à une décision relative à l’imposition”. The judge must first verify that French domestic law validly taxes the income, and only then ask whether the treaty blocks that tax. In that case the court examined Article 18 of the treaty at issue, which stated that “Sous réserve des dispositions du paragraphe 2 de l’article 19, les pensions, rentes viagères et autres rémunérations similaires payées à un résident d’un Etat contractant ne sont imposables que dans cet Etat”, and held that once the taxpayers counted as residents of the other State, “les pensions de retraite de source française qu’ils ont perçues à partir de cette date” were, under Article 18, taxable only there. The administration’s reassessments for the later years were discharged in full. The mechanism is identical under the Franco-British treaty: establish French residence, invoke Article 18, and obtain discharge of any French attempt to deny the treaty, or symmetrically resist any British attempt to tax a pension that belongs to France.
French domestic law then determines how the pension is taxed. Article 79 of the CGI states: “Les traitements, indemnités, émoluments, salaires, pensions et rentes viagères concourent à la formation du revenu global servant de base à l’impôt sur le revenu. Il en est de même des prestations de retraite servies sous forme de capital.” Pensions therefore join total income taxed at the progressive scale, and the second sentence expressly pulls in retirement benefits paid as capital. Article 158 softens the blow with a flat-rate allowance, called an abattement: “Les pensions et retraites font l’objet d’un abattement de 10 % qui ne peut excéder 4 439 €.” Each pensioner benefits individually, with a minimum allowance of 454 euros. A British saver drawing a £30,000 annual SIPP income as a French resident therefore declares the sterling amount converted to euros, deducts 10 percent, and pays the progressive scale on the balance, with France alone competent under Article 18.
Capital payments enjoy a specific option. Article 163 bis of the CGI allows retirement benefits paid as capital, taxable under Article 158, to be submitted “sur demande expresse et irrévocable du bénéficiaire”, on the express and irrevocable request of the recipient, to “un prélèvement au taux de 7,5 % qui libère les revenus auxquels il s’applique de l’impôt sur le revenu”, a levy at 7.5 percent discharging the income from income tax, where “Ce prélèvement est assis sur le montant du capital diminué d’un abattement de 10 %.” But the option is conditional: “Ce prélèvement est applicable lorsque le versement n’est pas fractionné et que le bénéficiaire justifie que les cotisations versées durant la phase de constitution des droits, y compris le cas échéant par l’employeur, étaient déductibles de son revenu imposable ou étaient afférentes à un revenu exonéré dans l’Etat auquel était attribué le droit d’imposer celui-ci”. A single payment, with proof that contributions were deductible or linked to exempt income in the State entitled to tax that income, opens the 7.5 percent route; a split payment closes it.
A Bordeaux appeal decision from December 2025 shows what happens when the conditions fail. An employee of an international group received 411,091 euros from an employer pension arrangement, took part of the balance in cash and transferred the remainder within the company plan. The administration denied the 7.5 percent levy and reassessed for 173,250 euros. The court held that “la somme de 411 091 euros perçue au cours de l’année 2015 ne présente pas le caractère d’une pension de retraite versée en capital mais relève de la catégorie des revenus de capitaux mobiliers“, investment income, because the arrangement let the employee take the accumulated sums immediately on departure, without any duration or age condition, and its purpose was not to pay a pension but to hand over the accumulated balance at once. The court added the general lesson that “le législateur a entendu ouvrir aux contribuables personnes physiques titulaires de prestations de retraite versées sous forme de capital qui y trouvent avantage la faculté d’opter, en lieu et place d’une taxation au barème progressif de l’impôt sur le revenu, pour l’application aux sommes en cause d’un prélèvement forfaitaire de 7,5 % libératoire de l’impôt sur le revenu.” Reclassification as investment income is expensive: the progressive scale can be replaced by the 30 percent flat rate on investment income, and the 10 percent pension allowance is lost. For a British saver, the warning is direct. Cashing out a SIPP in tranches, or taking a transfer value partly in cash before moving it on, risks the same reclassification in France. A scheme-to-scheme transfer of the whole pot, documented as such, preserves the pension character; a fragmented cash exercise invites the administration to see investment income instead.
Social levies complete the picture. Article L. 136-6 of the Social Security Code states: “Les personnes physiques fiscalement domiciliées en France au sens de l’article 4 B du code général des impôts sont assujetties à une contribution sur les revenus du patrimoine assise sur le montant net retenu pour l’établissement de l’impôt sur le revenu”. French residents therefore face social contributions on investment income, while pensions of persons affiliated to a foreign health regime may escape part of them, a point to verify on your own facts rather than assume. Where a British saver wants to build fresh French retirement savings instead of transferring, the PER is the natural vehicle. The Monetary and Financial Code opens it plainly: “Les personnes physiques peuvent verser des sommes dans un plan d’épargne retraite.” Voluntary payments into a PER are deductible from overall income under Article 83 of the CGI, which extends the deduction to “des versements mentionnés au 3° de l’article L. 224-2 du code monétaire et financier dans un plan d’épargne retraite mentionné à l’article L. 224-13 ou à l’article L. 224-23 du même code.” For readers weighing a lump-sum drawdown against a transfer, our companion analysis of British pension lump sums and Crown pensions under the same treaty sets out the parallel calculations. Leaving the SIPP in Britain, drawing it taxed only in France under Article 18 with the 10 percent allowance, and funding a PER separately with deductible contributions, will often beat a costly cross-border transfer.
B. How to declare the transfer in France and challenge a wrong tax bill
Declaration in France runs through the standard foreign-income machinery. The French tax authority confirms that each member of the tax household must in principle declare income received from abroad. Every member of the tax household, the foyer fiscal grouping spouses and dependants for joint taxation, must declare income received abroad. In practice you file the main return 2042, the foreign-income annex 2047, and where relevant the professional annex 2042-C PRO. Pensions, including British pensions received as a French resident, go in cadre 1 of annex 2047, the section for work-related income covering salaries and pensions, while dividends and interest fall in cadre 2 and capital gains in cadre 3. Amounts are then carried back onto the overall 2042 return, and the treaty is applied to eliminate double taxation where Britain has lawfully withheld tax, for example on a government-service pension taxable only in Britain. Declare the gross British amounts converted at the annual published rate, attach the British P60 or scheme statements, and keep the APSS 263 transfer paperwork with the French file, because the same documents prove both the British charge position and the French pension character of the sums.
Timing the transfer against the acquisition of French residence is the single most valuable planning decision. A transfer completed while you are still exclusively British resident falls under British rules alone, and the five-year residence clock described above then runs while you live in France. A transfer completed after you have become French resident adds the French layer immediately: worldwide taxation under Article 4 A, treaty allocation under Article 18, and French categorisation of whatever the transfer produces. There is no universally right answer. Transferring before the move can crystallise British treatment while your affairs are simple, but moving to France within five years of an exempt transfer can trigger the clawback. Transferring after the move aligns both countries’ residence tests, but exposes the operation to French reclassification if the money arrives as cash rather than as a scheme-to-scheme movement. Decide the date deliberately, record the reasons, and never let a British adviser set the date without checking the French consequences, nor a French bank set it without checking the British charge.
When the French bill arrives and it is wrong, the challenge route is administrative first, judicial second. File a réclamation, a formal claim to the tax office, before going to court; the court will declare inadmissible any claim that was not first put to the administration. Time limits are strict. Article R*196-1 of the Tax Procedures Book provides: “Pour être recevables, les réclamations relatives aux impôts autres que les impôts directs locaux et les taxes annexes à ces impôts, doivent être présentées à l’administration au plus tard le 31 décembre de la deuxième année suivant celle, selon le cas : a) De la mise en recouvrement du rôle ou de la notification d’un avis de mise en recouvrement”. The mise en recouvrement is the collection notice, and the rôle is the tax roll on which the assessment is entered. For income tax assessed by return, the practical deadline is 31 December of the second year after the year of the notice. A notice received in 2026 is therefore challenged by 31 December 2028, and a day late is fatal however strong the merits.
Build the file as a litigator would from day one. Prove French residence with the rental contract or title deeds, utility bills, children’s school certificates, and evidence of family presence, because the administration’s first line of defence is often to dispute residence rather than treaty interpretation. Prove the treaty position with the exact treaty article and the British residence position for the same year. For the 7.5 percent capital option, assemble from the start the proof Article 163 bis demands: contribution history showing deductibility or exemption in the State entitled to tax the employment income, the scheme rules showing a single undivided payment, and the express request for the levy. The Bordeaux case shows the administration testing exactly these points, and the partial dégrèvement of 25,178 euros in tax and 4,935 euros in penalties granted during that dispute shows that a well-documented file moves the administration before any judge rules. If the réclamation fails, the tribunal administratif, the first-instance administrative court, hears the appeal, and the cour administrative d’appel, the administrative appeal court, hears the second level, as both decisions cited in this article demonstrate. Ask in the alternative: discharge in full as the primary claim, and the 7.5 percent levy or the correct categorisation as fallback, so that a judge who rejects your main argument can still grant the secondary one.
Conclusion
Moving a British SIPP to France is a two-border operation, and each border applies its own test. On the British side, only a recognised QROPS can receive the money without triggering refusal or a minimum 40 percent charge, the 25 percent overseas transfer charge applies wherever residence does not match, the £1,073,100 allowance caps the exempt amount, the 60-day paperwork deadline is unforgiving, and any move of country within five years reopens the charge. On the French side, residence brings worldwide taxation, the treaty gives France the exclusive right over private pensions while reserving government-service pensions to Britain, capital payments can secure a 7.5 percent discharging levy after a 10 percent allowance only where the payment is undivided and the contribution history is proved, and fragmented cash movements risk reclassification as investment income at far higher rates. Declare everything through returns 2042 and 2047, time the transfer deliberately against the date you become French resident, keep every British form with the French file, and challenge a wrong assessment first by réclamation within the statutory deadline, then before the administrative courts. Handled in that order, with documents assembled before the transfer rather than after the reassessment, a British pension can fund a French retirement efficiently; handled backwards, the same money pays the British charge and the French tax together.