You bought the stone cottage in the Dordogne, the flat near the sea in Brittany or the village house in the Luberon for holidays, long summers and, one day, perhaps retirement. Then the autumn post arrives at your French address, or in your online tax account, and the numbers are higher than you expected. A neighbour mentions that the council has voted a surcharge on second homes. Your estate agent mentions wealth tax. A letting agent suggests renting the house out while you are back in Britain, and you wonder where that rent is taxed. This guide answers those three worries in one place, for British owners after Brexit, in plain English with every French term explained at first use.
France still charges two main local property taxes that matter to you as a British second-home owner. The first is the taxe foncière (the annual land and buildings tax paid by the owner). The second is the taxe d’habitation (the housing tax, historically paid by the occupier, now kept only on second homes and a few other premises). On top of those, some councils add a surcharge of 5% to 60% on the housing tax for second homes. Beyond local taxes, two national questions arise: the impôt sur la fortune immobilière, known as IFI (the French tax on real-estate wealth, which catches worldwide property above 1.3 million euros for French residents and French property above that line for non-residents), and the treatment of rental income when you let your French house while living in Britain. The France–United Kingdom double tax treaty (the bilateral convention that allocates taxing rights between the two States) decides which country taxes what, and it gives France the first right to tax French rental income and French property wealth within defined limits.
This article follows a strict two-part plan. Part I explains what you pay each year on a second home: the housing tax and its surcharge, then the land tax when you do not live in the property. Part II explains what British owners still owe under the treaty and the wealth-tax rules, how rental income is declared on each side of the Channel, and how to challenge a wrong bill before the deadline. Every key rule is linked to an official source: the Code général des impôts, known as the CGI (the French General Tax Code, available on Légifrance), the service-public.fr factsheets, the impots.gouv.fr guidance and its BOFiP database (the Bulletin Officiel des Finances Publiques, the tax administration’s official commentary), and gov.uk for the British side. Figures are given for 2026 as published by the administration.
I. How much will you pay each year on your French second home?
Your yearly French bill as a British second-home owner normally has two lines: the housing tax on the second home, possibly increased by the council surcharge, and the land tax on the built property. Both are assessed against the occupier or owner as at 1 January of the tax year, both are based on the valeur locative cadastrale (the cadastral rental value, the notional rent attributed to your property by the land registry and updated by national coefficients), and both are collected by the Direction générale des finances publiques, known as the DGFiP (the French public finances administration). Understanding who is liable, what the base is and which rate applies lets you forecast the bill, spot errors and decide whether a challenge is worthwhile.
A. Taxe d’habitation on second homes and the 5% to 60% surcharge: will your commune apply it?
The starting point surprises many British buyers: although the taxe d’habitation (housing tax) was abolished on main homes, it was kept on second homes. The official English-language factsheet states the rule plainly: “You must pay housing tax if you own… a second home”. That single sentence governs thousands of British-owned holiday houses. If you own a furnished dwelling in France that is not your résidence principale (your main home, the dwelling where you habitually and effectively live), you owe the housing tax for that dwelling, whether you visit for six months or for two weeks a year. The liable person is the occupier on 1 January, and for a second home the owner-occupier on that date is normally the person taxed, even if the house stands empty most of the year.
The dwelling must be meublé (furnished, meaning equipped for habitation) and habitable to be caught. A ruin with no furniture, no electricity and no habitability is a different case from a holiday cottage that is ready to live in. Most British second homes plainly meet the furnished-and-habitable test, so exemption arguments based on vacancy rarely succeed for them. The relevant charging provisions sit in the General Tax Code, and the official Légifrance references include Article 1407 bis of the CGI on vacant-dwelling and second-home housing-tax rules, Articles 1408 and following of the CGI on liability and assessment of the housing tax and Articles 1409 to 1413 of the CGI on exemptions and special cases. The administration’s consolidated guidance on persons liable and taxable premises is published on Légifrance at Article 322 A of Annex III to the CGI on declaration and assessment details, and the collection and recovery framework appears under Articles 1657 to 1659 A of the CGI on collection of direct local taxes.
The surcharge is where the 2026 bills hurt. The Code allows councils in designated tight-housing areas to vote a majoration (an uplift) of the second-home housing-tax charge of between 5% and 60%. The official English guidance confirms that councils “may increase … by 5% to 60%”, and the administration reports that “4,046 municipalities … increased” the charge for 2026. Paris is the most visible example: press analysis of the official data describes Paris housing-tax revenue from second homes rising by 70.7% year on year in 2026 after the capital applied the maximum uplift. Coastal resorts in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, Alpine ski communes and much of the Paris region have followed the same path. A British-owned flat in Paris, Biarritz, Saint-Malo, Annecy or Aix-en-Provence can therefore bear a housing-tax bill half as large again as the un-surcharged amount, before the land tax is even counted.
Whether your commune has voted the uplift is a question of fact you can check in minutes. Your avis d’imposition (the tax assessment notice, available in your online impots.gouv.fr account under “Mes avis”) shows a line for the majoration where one applies. The délibération (the formal council resolution) is published by the mairie (the town hall) and often summarised on its website. If you bought during the year, note the timing rule: liability is fixed on 1 January, so the seller pays the whole year’s housing tax if they owned on that date, with any apportionment between buyer and seller handled only as a private contractual adjustment at the notaire’s office (the notary’s office, where the conveyance is completed), not by the tax office. The notaire (the French public-officer conveyancer who handles property sales) cannot make the Treasury bill the buyer for part of the year.
Practical steps follow from this. First, open your impots.gouv.fr personal account and verify that the dwelling is correctly recorded as a résidence secondaire (a second home) rather than a main home or a vacant property, because the wrong category changes the charge. Since 2023 every owner must file a déclaration d’occupation (an occupancy declaration stating who occupies each dwelling and in what capacity) through the “Biens immobiliers” (real-estate) section online; an incorrect or missing declaration can generate the wrong tax. Second, read the assessment line by line: cadastral rental value, rate, surcharge line, reliefs. Third, diarise the payment date, usually in November for the housing tax, and consider mensualisation (monthly direct debit, which spreads payment over the year). The detailed assessment mechanics, including the role of the 1 January occupation test, are set out under Article 1418 of the CGI on assessment and control of local taxes, read alongside the CGI itself at the General Tax Code on Légifrance.
A worked example helps. Take a British couple, resident in Kent, owning a two-bedroom furnished flat in Bordeaux used for holidays. Suppose the cadastral rental value is 4,500 euros and the combined communal and intercommunal housing-tax rate is 22%. The un-surcharged housing tax is roughly 990 euros. If Bordeaux votes a 60% uplift, about 594 euros is added, taking the housing-tax line to roughly 1,584 euros for the year, before the land tax. The same flat in a commune with no uplift would cost the couple about 600 euros less for the identical property. That difference is why checking the surcharge, rather than assuming last year’s bill repeats itself, is the single most valuable five-minute check a British second-home owner can make each autumn.
B. Taxe foncière when you do not live there: base, rates, waste charge and the few reliefs left
The taxe foncière sur les propriétés bâties, known as TFPB (the land tax on built properties, paid by the owner), applies whether the house is your main home, your second home or let to a tenant. The official English factsheet gives the timing rule: the person who owns the property on 1 January owes the whole year’s charge. A British owner who completes a purchase on 15 February therefore pays nothing for that year, while a British seller who completes on 15 February pays the full year. As with the housing tax, buyer-seller apportionment is purely contractual through the notaire’s completion statement. The base is the valeur locative cadastrale (the cadastral rental value described above) reduced by a 50% abattement (a flat-rate allowance) for built properties, then multiplied by the taux (the rate) voted by the commune, the intercommunal body and, where applicable, special-purpose syndicates. New national revaluation coefficients are applied each year in the Finance Act.
On top of the voted rates comes the taxe d’enlèvement des ordures ménagères, known as TEOM (the household-waste collection tax), which is shown on the same bill and follows the same ownership rule. In cities where waste costs have risen, the TEOM line alone can exceed several hundred euros. Some communes also levy a Gemapi charge (the tax for flood-prevention and aquatic-environment management) within the land-tax bill. None of these depends on your nationality or residence: a British non-resident owner pays exactly as a French owner of the same house in the same street. The charging architecture sits in the Code under the provisions referenced above, including Article 1407 bis of the CGI for the boundary with housing-tax rules, Articles 1408 and following of the CGI for assessment mechanics, and Articles 1409 to 1413 of the CGI for the limited exemptions.
Reliefs (dégrèvements, reductions cancelling all or part of the charge, and exonérations, full exemptions) help second-home owners far less than main-home owners. The age-and-means exemptions that can wipe out or cap the land tax for elderly occupiers of modest means on their main home generally do not transfer to a second home, and the plafonnement (the capping of housing-related charges by reference to income) that once sheltered modest households does not rescue a holiday house. New-build exemptions (two-year relief on new constructions, extended relief for high-energy-performance buildings where the council has voted it) can apply regardless of occupation, but they must normally be claimed by filing the completion declaration with the tax office within 90 days of finishing the works; missing that window forfeits the relief. Energy-renovation reliefs voted by some councils follow the same logic: real, but conditional on paperwork and deadlines. Do not assume any relief appears automatically on a second home.
Errors in the cadastral description are the most promising source of savings, and British owners are disproportionately affected because they rarely see the detailed property record. The service des impôts fonciers (the land-tax office) taxes what the cadastre (the official property register, combining the map and the descriptive schedule) says you own: floor area, number of rooms, comfort elements such as bathrooms and central heating, outbuildings, swimming pools, and the classification of each part (habitation, garage, shed). A converted barn recorded with the wrong category, a demolished garage still on the schedule, a pool recorded twice, or a surface overstated by twenty square metres all inflate the cadastral rental value every year until corrected. Request the relevé de propriété (the property extract) and the descriptive schedule for your parcel, compare them with reality, photograph discrepancies, and file a correction with measurements and plans. A sustained correction lowers not only next year’s land tax but, within the claim deadline discussed in Part II, can support a refund of earlier overpayments.
Payment administration matters from abroad. The land-tax bill usually arrives in late August to September with a mid-October deadline, payable online from your impots.gouv.fr account, by direct debit, or from a foreign bank account by SEPA transfer using the reference on the notice. If neither spouse has a French bank account, set up the online account early: activation codes are posted, and British post-Brexit delivery delays are real. Monthly direct debit avoids missed deadlines and the 10% late-payment uplift. Keep every avis for at least the claim period, and keep the purchase deed (titre de propriété), the completion declarations and any planning permissions with them; they are the evidence base for any future challenge. The recovery and control framework, including how the Treasury pursues unpaid local taxes from owners abroad, sits under Articles 1657 to 1659 A of the CGI, with assessment controls at Article 1418 of the CGI.
II. How do British owners handle double taxation, wealth tax and rental income — and challenge a wrong bill?
Local taxes are only half the picture. A British owner must also place the French house correctly within the bilateral treaty network, check whether the wealth-tax threshold is crossed, declare any rent in the right country first, and know the strict deadline for disputing a bill. Brexit did not change the France–United Kingdom double tax treaty, which continues to allocate taxing rights between the two States, but it did change residence, visa and administrative friction around everything else. This part gives the treaty map, the wealth-tax test, the rental-income circuit and the challenge procedure with the documents that make each step succeed.
A. France–United Kingdom treaty, IFI wealth tax and rental income: what Britons still owe
The treaty position is stable and documented on both sides. The France–United Kingdom convention against double taxation was signed on 19 June 2008 and entered into force on 18 December 2009, as recorded in the gov.uk treaty tables, and the French administration’s official commentary is published in the BOFiP under the INT-CVB-GBR series (the France–United Kingdom section of the official tax commentary, covering dividends at 10% and 15% in the cases it describes, interest, pensions, Government service and the elimination of double taxation). For property, the treaty’s logic follows the international standard: income from immovable property and gains connected with it may be taxed in the State where the property sits, and the owner’s State of residence then relieves double taxation, usually by credit. In plain terms, rent from your French house is taxable in France first, even if you live in Manchester, and Britain then gives relief under its foreign-tax-credit rules so the same rent is not taxed twice. The treaty does not exempt the French house from French tax; it organises who taxes first and how the other State gives credit.
French domestic law then decides how that French tax is computed. Rental income from a French dwelling falls under the revenus fonciers regime (the property-income category) when you let unfurnished, or under the BIC regime for furnished lettings (bénéfices industriels et commerciaux, the industrial-and-commercial-profits category that covers furnished holiday lets). Within each regime a micro scheme (a simplified flat-rate allowance, currently 30% for unfurnished and higher bands for classified furnished tourist accommodation) competes with the régime réel (the actual-expenses regime, where you deduct loan interest within limits, insurance, management, repairs and depreciation where allowed). The choice is annual arithmetic, not loyalty: compare the flat allowance against your real deductible costs, including the land tax itself where deductible, and elect accordingly on the 2042 and 2044 returns (the French income-tax return and its property-income annex). Non-resident landlords file in France for the French-source rent and declare the same rent in Britain, claiming the treaty credit there. Keep the letting contracts, agency statements, works invoices and loan schedules in both languages; HMRC (His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the British tax administration) and the DGFiP each ask for them in their own format.
The wealth-tax test is separate from income and from the local taxes above. The IFI (impôt sur la fortune immobilière, the tax on real-estate wealth that replaced the broader ISF wealth tax in 2018) catches net taxable real-estate assets above 1.3 million euros. French tax residents are caught on worldwide real-estate wealth above that line; non-residents are caught only on French real-estate wealth above that line. The official factsheet confirms the threshold and the progressive scale from 0.5% to 1.5%. For a British couple living in Britain with a single French holiday house worth 900,000 euros and no other French property, the IFI does not bite. For a British family resident in France with a Paris flat, a country house and a London flat retained after the move, the worldwide test can bite, because the London property counts while they are French resident (subject to treaty and timing nuances for new arrivals). Debts that are genuinely linked to the taxable property can be deducted within strict conditions, and recent anti-abuse rules restrict deduction of loans from related parties and of certain in-kind arrangements. Valuation is at 1 January market value, with the main home benefiting from a statutory discount that, by definition, does not help a second home.
Two British-specific traps deserve emphasis. First, the SCI (société civile immobilière, the French non-trading property company many British families use to hold a holiday house) does not make French tax disappear. An SCI holding French property keeps the property within French taxing rights for local taxes, rental income transparency or company treatment according to its tax election, IFI transparency for the shares, and succession exposure; it organises ownership and transmission, it does not de-tax the bricks. Second, residence drives everything: a British owner who moves into the French house full-time swaps the non-resident IFI test for the worldwide test, gains access to main-home reliefs on local taxes, but becomes fully French tax resident on worldwide income with treaty relief the other way. The purchase process itself, including notaire fees and registration duties, belongs to the conveyancing analysis and is outside this article; here you own the person, not the purchase, so the question is always what your residence, your wealth and your letting activity make you owe each year after completion.
The official backbone for this part is the Code itself, consulted at the General Tax Code on Légifrance, with the housing-tax boundary provisions at Article 1407 bis of the CGI and assessment provisions at Articles 1408 and following of the CGI. Collection mechanics sit under Articles 1657 to 1659 A of the CGI. Published administrative case law on local-tax disputes, which the courts apply to over-assessment and relief arguments of the kind British owners raise, is available on Légifrance including Conseil d’État decision CETATEXT000008224562 on Légifrance and Conseil d’État decision CETATEXT000031360870 on Légifrance, which illustrate how the administrative courts test the administration’s assessments. Always read the cited decision itself before relying on it: the headnote never replaces the reasoning.
B. How to challenge your taxe foncière or taxe d’habitation: deadlines, evidence and refunds
The challenge procedure, called réclamation (the formal claim to the tax office), is short, written and deadline-driven. The official guidance states the limit plainly: “December 31 of the year following … you can challenge your local taxes (housing tax … property tax…)”. A bill assessed in 2026 must therefore be challenged by 31 December 2027. That date is a guillotine, not a guideline: a letter posted on 2 January 2028 fails, however strong the merits. The claim goes to the service des impôts des particuliers (the personal-tax office) shown on the assessment, preferably through the online messaging system in your impots.gouv.fr account (which timestamps receipt) with a parallel recorded-delivery letter where large sums turn on proof of date. Identify the tax, the year, the property reference (références cadastrales, the parcel identifiers), the amount disputed and whether you seek a dégrèvement (full or partial cancellation), a restitution (a refund of sums already paid) or both. Ask expressly for a sursis de paiement (a stay of payment, the formal request to suspend enforced collection while the claim is examined) where the balance remains unpaid, and pay any undisputed part to avoid the late-payment uplift on that part.
Evidence decides these cases. The tax office does not re-measure your house because you assert it is smaller; it corrects the record when you prove it. For a surcharge dispute, produce the occupancy declaration, utility records showing the occupation pattern where relevant, and, where the point is the council uplift itself, the published rate schedule for the year: many “errors” turn out to be correctly applied uplifts the owner had not noticed, and the remedy is then budgeting rather than litigation. For a cadastral challenge, produce the relevé de propriété, a measured plan, dated photographs, planning permissions and completion certificates, and, for pools, annexes and extensions, proof of the date of completion or demolition. For an exemption or new-build relief, produce the filed 90-day declaration with its receipt, the completion certificate and the energy-performance evidence where the extended relief is claimed. For IFI and rental-income points that spill onto the local-tax bill (for example where the wrong occupancy category has cascading effects), add the returns and assessments that show the consistent position. Numbered exhibits, a one-page chronology and a short computation of the corrected charge help the caseworker grant relief without escalation.
The procedural home for these claims is the Livre des procédures fiscales, known as the LPF (the French Tax Procedure Code), consulted on Légifrance alongside the Code itself at the General Tax Code on Légifrance, with declaration mechanics at Article 322 A of Annex III to the CGI and assessment controls at Article 1418 of the CGI. Where the office rejects or partly admits the claim, the next step is the tribunal administratif (the administrative court) within the appeal deadline stated in the rejection, with the technical route and standing rules illustrated by the published case law cited above, including Conseil d’État decision CETATEXT000008224562 and Conseil d’État decision CETATEXT000031360870. Keep every notice, every receipt and every online message export: limitation and proof-of-filing points are where cross-border cases are most often lost, because post between Britain and France is slower than the deadline is forgiving.
Two final administrative points protect British owners who manage everything from the United Kingdom. First, give the tax office a reliable French correspondence address where possible (a letting agent, a family member, or the house itself with a neighbour collecting post) and enable every email and text alert in the online account; “I never received the assessment” rarely moves the deadline. Second, if cash flow is the problem rather than liability, ask early for a délai de paiement (a payment plan) or a remise gracieuse partielle (a discretionary partial remission of penalties, distinct from a claim of right): the administration grants staged payments far more readily before enforcement begins than after a bailiff, known as a commissaire de justice (the enforcement officer, formerly called huissier), is instructed. Interest and penalties are negotiable in hardship cases only when the underlying tax is acknowledged and the file shows payable effort. The collection framework for these requests sits under Articles 1657 to 1659 A of the CGI, read with Articles 1409 to 1413 of the CGI on reliefs and exemptions.
Conclusion
A British second home in France in 2026 carries three layers of cost that must be kept distinct: the housing tax with its possible 5% to 60% council uplift, the land tax with its waste and special charges, and, above defined thresholds or where the house is let, wealth tax and income tax on rent under the France–United Kingdom treaty. The housing tax survives on second homes by design, and with 4,046 councils applying the uplift, the commune’s vote matters as much as the house’s size. The land tax follows ownership on 1 January and the cadastral description, so checking the schedule and correcting it pays every year. Rental income is taxable in France first with treaty relief in Britain, and real-estate wealth above 1.3 million euros must be tested for IFI on the worldwide or French-only basis according to residence. Each of these turns on dated proof: occupancy declarations, property extracts, measured plans, filed relief claims and filed returns.
The method that protects British owners is therefore simple and repeatable. Each autumn, open the online account, read the housing-tax and land-tax assessments line by line, identify any surcharge line and verify the commune’s published position. Each winter, test the wealth-tax threshold at 1 January values and confirm the rental-income election between the flat-rate and actual-expenses regimes. And whenever a line looks wrong, challenge it in writing before December 31 of the following year with numbered exhibits, while paying the undisputed balance and requesting a stay for the rest. Run that cycle once and the French second home returns to what it should be: a holiday house with a predictable, checked and, where the law allows, reduced tax bill.
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