You retired to the Dordogne, the Var or the Pays Basque with a UK State Pension, one or two workplace pensions and perhaps a small personal pension. Every spring the same questions return: where do you actually pay tax after Brexit, how do you fill in the French return without paying twice, what happens to the 25 per cent lump sum that was tax-free in Britain, and what can you do if the French tax office or the social charges office gets it wrong? This guide answers those questions in one place, for a British reader living in France, with the exact French and treaty rules, the declaration boxes the tax office expects, and the remedies that work when a pension is taxed twice or a levy should never have been charged. French legal terms are explained the first time they appear, so you can use this page both as a practical checklist and as the basis for a formal challenge.

I. Where Are Your UK Pensions Taxed When You Live in France After Brexit?

A. How Do You Declare Your British State Pension and Private Pensions in France?

The starting point is your tax residence, because it decides which country has the first claim on your worldwide income. French domestic law treats you as having your domicile fiscal (tax home) in France when France holds your foyer (the place where your home and family life are centred) or your lieu de séjour principal (the place of your main physical presence), or when you carry on a professional activity in France that is not merely accessory. The statute puts it in these words: “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”. In practice, if your only home is in France, your spouse lives with you in France and you spend most of the year there, you are French tax resident even though you remain a British citizen, and you must declare your worldwide pensions in France.

Once you are French resident, French domestic law brings pensions into the general income tax base. The Code général des impôts (the French Tax Code, usually shortened to CGI) provides that “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.” That single sentence matters because it covers both regular pension instalments and, as the same article adds, retirement benefits paid as a lump sum. Your UK State Pension, your defined benefit workplace pension and your defined contribution drawdown all fall inside that base when you are resident in France. The question is then not whether France wants to see them, but whether the treaty gives France the exclusive right to tax them or shares that right with the United Kingdom.

The answer for most private pensions is in the France–United Kingdom double tax convention signed on 19 June 2008 and now in force. Its pensions article is short and decisive: under Article 18 of the 2008 convention, a pension paid for past employment to a person living in France is taxable only in France, subject to the government-service exception in Article 19(2). In plain English, a private pension paid for past work to someone who lives in France is taxable only in France. Your UK State Pension, a former employer’s occupational pension and a personal pension paid to you as a French resident therefore belong to France for income tax purposes, and the United Kingdom should not also tax the same income. That is why many British residents apply for HMRC to pay the pension gross, without British withholding, once French residence is established and the treaty claim has been accepted.

Government service pensions work the other way round, and this is where British retirees most often go wrong. Pensions paid by the British State for government service — the classic examples are civil service, armed forces, police and some local authority pensions paid out of public funds — remain taxable only in the United Kingdom under the government service article, under which pensions paid by a State or its local authorities for services rendered to that State remain taxable only in that paying State There is an important nationality exception: where you are both resident and solely a national of France without also being a British national, that pension can become taxable only in France instead. A dual British–French national retired from the NHS administration, a teacher whose pension is paid as a government pension, or a former soldier must therefore check the exact legal character of the scheme before assuming the Article 18 residence rule applies. The distinction between a pension for past private employment and a pension for services rendered to the State itself is the single most litigated boundary in this field, and getting it wrong means declaring the pension in the wrong country.

When the treaty allocates the taxing right to France, you still have to declare correctly, because the French administration processes foreign pensions through specific boxes and cross-checks them against the foreign income return. The official guidance on the impots.gouv.fr portal explains that a French domicilié (a person whose tax home is in France) with foreign-source pensions must report them either as pensions opening a right to a tax credit equal to the French tax, or as pensions that do not open that right, and in both cases must also complete return 2047 for foreign income. The official pensions page instructs French residents to enter foreign-source pensions that carry a credit equal to the French tax in boxes 1AL to 1DL, and to carry the same figures to line 8TK and to foreign-income return 2047. For pensions that do not open that full credit, the same official page sends all other foreign-source pensions to boxes 1AM to 1DM, again with return 2047. Your practical file should therefore always contain the British P60 or final payslip equivalent, the annual pension statements showing gross amounts and any British tax deducted, the date you became French resident, and a copy of return 2047 matching the main return, because any mismatch between those documents is the most common trigger for an enquiry.

The treaty then neutralises any remaining British tax through its elimination article. For France, that mechanism works as a credit rather than a simple exemption: income that the treaty reserves to the United Kingdom is still taken into account to compute the French tax, but France grants a credit, and the official text describes that credit as equal, for most ordinary income, to the French tax attributable to it where the resident has actually borne British tax on it. The convention expresses the principle for the French side by providing that France avoids double taxation by granting a tax credit against French tax, calculated by reference to the French tax attributable to the income concerned. Where the pension is taxable only in France under Article 18, there should be no British tax left to credit, and you ask HMRC for gross payment; where a slice of income remains taxable in Britain — typically a government service pension under Article 19 — you declare it in France, claim the treaty credit, and keep the British assessment and proof of payment as the evidence that unlocks the credit. Never accept a French assessment that simply adds a British-taxed government pension to your taxable income with no credit and no explanation: that assessment has skipped the elimination article altogether.

Two residence refinements deserve attention because they generate a steady stream of disputes. First, treaty residence is not the same as holding a visa or a carte de séjour (residence permit). The courts interpret treaty residence as full tax liability in a State by reason of domicile, residence or a similar criterion, a definition the Cour de cassation restated in treaty litigation in these terms: a convention defines “le résident d’un Etat contractant comme toute personne qui, en vertu de la législation dudit Etat, est assujettie à l’impôt dans cet Etat en raison de son domicile, de sa résidence, de son siège de direction ou de tout autre critère de nature analogue”. A person taxed in a State only on a flat-rate basis tied to the rental value of a holiday home is not a treaty resident on that basis alone. For a British family that keeps a flat in London and buys a house near Bordeaux, the lesson is concrete: keep council tax bills, travel records, utility contracts, school and medical registrations and bank statements that prove where the foyer truly sits, because the treaty tie-breaker will look at the permanent home, the centre of vital interests, habitual presence and nationality in that order.

Second, people who leave France keep a residual French obligation on French-source pensions. Where French-source salaries, pensions and life annuities are paid to someone who is not French resident, France applies a withholding at source, since “les traitements, salaires, pensions et rentes viagères, de source française, servis à des personnes qui ne sont pas fiscalement domiciliées en France donnent lieu à l’application d’une retenue à la source.” A British retiree who returns to Kent but keeps a French occupational pension must therefore expect French withholding on that French source, report it on annexe 2041E, and enter the withholding on line 8TA, while claiming the corresponding relief in the United Kingdom under the same treaty read in the opposite direction.

B. What Rate, Allowance and Social Charges Apply to Your UK Pension Income?

Once the pension is in the French base, three layers apply: the 10 per cent allowance, the progressive scale, and the social charges. Each layer has its own trap for British pensioners, and each can be checked against an official text.

The allowance, called an abattement (a fixed statutory reduction of the taxable base), is the first relief. The Tax Code provides that “Les pensions et retraites font l’objet d’un abattement de 10 % qui ne peut excéder 4 439 €.” The same paragraph adds the floor and the household logic that the tax office software applies automatically but that you must verify: the allowance cannot be less than 454 euros per pensioner, it cannot exceed the gross pension itself, the ceiling applies to the total pensions of the whole foyer fiscal (the tax household, meaning the persons taxed together on one return), and the 454 euro floor is revised each year in line with the top of the first income tax band. The official pensions page confirms that the 10 per cent allowance applies across boxes 1AS to 1DS, 1AZ to 1DZ, 1AO to 1DO, 1AL to 1DL and 1AM to 1DM. Concretely, a British couple in France each receiving a UK pension get one 10 per cent allowance per person within the shared household ceiling, and the declared boxes 1AS to 1DS for ordinary pensions, 1AL to 1DL for foreign pensions with full credit, and 1AM to 1DM for other foreign pensions all feed that same allowance. If your notice shows no allowance, or a single allowance for two pensioners, the computation is wrong on its face.

The scale itself is the familiar progressive barème (the graduated rate table). For the year covered by the version applicable to recent assessments, the Code provides that tax is computed by applying to the slice of each part of income above 11,600 euros the rate of 11 per cent up to 29,579 euros, 30 per cent up to 84,577 euros, 41 per cent up to 181,917 euros and 45 per cent above, with the family quotient (quotient familial, the system that divides the household income into parts according to family size) capped per half-part. The article states the opening of that scale as follows: “L’impôt est calculé en appliquant à la fraction de chaque part de revenu qui excède 11 600 € le taux de : – 11 % pour la fraction supérieure à 11 600 € et inférieure ou égale à 29 579 €”. British pensioners sometimes assume that a modest UK pension means no French tax, forgetting that France aggregates worldwide income: your UK pensions, any French top-up work, rental income and investment income are added together before the scale is applied, so a pension that looked exempt in isolation can become taxable once stacked on top of other household income. Conversely, a year with only the State Pension and a small occupational pension can genuinely fall below the taxable threshold once the 10 per cent allowance and the family parts are applied, and in that case the correct result is a non-taxable notice, not a small balancing charge invented by mis-coding a box.

Some pensions are outside the tax altogether, and you should know the boundary so you neither omit taxable income nor declare what the law exempts. The Code opens its exemption list with special allowances that cover costs inherent in a function or employment and are genuinely used for that purpose, a category that includes, within strict caps, items such as journalists’ allowances and local elected officials’ function payments. The article begins: “Sont affranchis de l’impôt : 1° Les allocations spéciales destinées à couvrir les frais inhérents à la fonction ou à l’emploi et effectivement utilisées conformément à leur objet.” War pensions, certain disability and veterans’ benefits and other items listed in Article 81 follow their own exemption logic, mirrored in the treaty itself where each State exempts the other State’s listed war and service-injury pensions so long as they are exempt at home. Before you treat a British disability or injury pension as taxable in France, check whether it falls under one of those listed exemptions rather than under ordinary pension treatment.

Social charges, called prélèvements sociaux, are the second great source of British disputes, because they sit on top of income tax and use different affiliation rules. The headline rate on retirement income is now 8.3 per cent, since the Social Security Code provides that “Sont assujetties à la contribution au taux de 8,3 % les pensions de retraite, et les pensions d’invalidité.” That 8.3 per cent is the contribution sociale généralisée (CSG, the general social contribution) on replacement income at the full rate; reduced rates of 3.8 per cent and the intermediate rate, plus the contribution pour le remboursement de la dette sociale (CRDS, the social debt repayment contribution) at 0.5 per cent, apply according to your income level and your social security position. The base for those charges is deliberately wide: the Cour de cassation, dealing with a capital payment from a supplementary retirement contract, restated that “sont inclus dans l’assiette de la contribution sur les revenus d’activité et de remplacement perçue au titre de la contribution sociale généralisée (CSG), pour leur montant brut, les traitements, indemnités, émoluments, salaires, allocations, pensions y compris les majorations et bonifications pour enfants”. A lump sum that escapes income tax under a special redemption provision can therefore still bear CSG, CRDS and the health contribution on retirement benefits, and the insurer or fund is entitled — indeed obliged — to deduct them. British readers who cash in a small supplementary scheme and receive a net figure lower than the gross surrender value are usually looking at exactly those lawful deductions, not at an error.

The harder question is whether CSG and CRDS should have been charged at all on your UK pension, because since the de Ruyter line of European case law a person affiliated to the social security scheme of one State cannot be subjected in another State to levies that finance that other State’s social security without a proper legal basis. French law expresses the domestic side of that affiliation logic for capital income by making persons whose tax home is in France liable to the heritage contribution on the net amount used for income tax, since “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”. For pensions, the practical test is affiliation: if you are affiliated to the French scheme — for example through PUMA (the universal health protection that covers stable residents) or through a French pension — CSG and CRDS on replacement income normally apply at the rate matching your income; if you hold a valid S1 healthcare certificate issued by the United Kingdom and are consequently exempt from French health affiliation on that income, the CSG and CRDS treatment must be re-examined rather than applied automatically. Since Brexit the United Kingdom is a third country, so the European coordination regulation no longer connects Britain and France the way it connects two Member States, and the Cour de cassation’s reminder of the single-legislation principle — that “les personnes auxquelles ce règlement est applicable ne sont soumises qu’à la législation d’un seul État membre, ce qui exclut dès lors, en principe, toute possibilité de cumul de plusieurs législations nationales pour une même période” — applies within the European Union, while British cases now turn on the bilateral social security coordination agreed after Brexit and on the precise wording of your S1 and your French affiliation. Keep both documents: a CPAM refusal or a miscoded affiliation is challengeable, but only with the S1, the French affiliation notice and the assessment showing the levy in hand.

Finally, watch the exchange rate and the year of taxation. France taxes pensions on a cash basis for the year of actual payment or crediting to an account, and the impots.gouv.fr guidance on movable income states the same cash logic for comparable items paid in money. Convert each British payment at the rate applicable for the year concerned, keep the bank statements showing the sterling amounts and the conversion, and reconcile them to the euro figure on the return. A surprising number of double-tax complaints dissolve into a rate error or a payment allocated to the wrong year, which a corrective return fixes faster than any formal appeal.

II. How Do You Handle the 25% Lump Sum, a QROPS Transfer and Double Taxation?

A. Can You Take the 25% Tax-Free Lump Sum and Move Your Pension to a QROPS?

The phrase tax-free causes more British–French pension disputes than any other two words. In Britain, a defined contribution member can usually take up to a quarter of the pot as a Pension Commencement Lump Sum without British tax, within the applicable allowances. In France, that same cash can be taxable, because France applies its own categories to the payment: either it is a pension taxable at the scale after the 10 per cent allowance, or it is a capital payment eligible for a special flat-rate option. The impots.gouv.fr pensions page describes that option in these terms: pensions paid as capital for which you elect flat-rate taxation benefit from a 10 per cent reduction without a cap on the amount declared in the relevant boxes, which the portal presents as a 7.5 per cent flat rate with an uncapped 10 per cent reduction for amounts in boxes 1AT to 1DT. The standard French election for a qualifying capital payment is therefore tax at 7.5 per cent after an uncapped 10 per cent reduction, declared in boxes 1AT to 1DT, plus the applicable social charges. A £40,000 lump sum that felt tax-free in Manchester can lawfully produce several thousand euros of French tax in Montpellier, and that is not double taxation: it is France exercising the taxing right the treaty gives it over a French resident’s pension, with Britain correctly charging nothing.

Before you trigger that payment, check three things in writing. First, confirm with the British scheme whether the lump sum is genuinely a pension commencement payment within your available allowance or whether part of it is an excess that Britain will tax; any British tax actually levied on the taxable slice feeds the treaty credit analysis in France rather than being ignored. Second, ask the French tax office by rescrit (a formal written ruling request) where the point is large enough to justify it, so the 7.5 per cent option, the box and the social charges are agreed before the money moves. Third, remember the CSG lesson from the case law above: even where a capitalised retirement benefit escapes income tax under a special surrender provision, the social levies can still apply, because the Cour de cassation includes pensions and similar benefits in the CSG base at their gross amount. Budget for income tax plus CSG, CRDS and where relevant the health contribution on retirement benefits, and compare that total with phased drawdown taxed at the scale, because phasing can be cheaper than a single large capital payment that pushes you into a higher marginal band for that year.

A transfer to a QROPS — a qualifying recognised overseas pension scheme, meaning an overseas pension scheme that HMRC recognises as meeting the conditions for receiving a British pension transfer — raises a parallel set of British and French questions, and the British side must be cleared first. The official British guidance puts the burden squarely on you to verify QROPS status with the overseas scheme, your UK provider or your adviser. The warning in the same guidance is deliberately stark: get it wrong and the UK scheme may refuse the move or tax it at 40 per cent or more. Only transfers to a scheme on the recognised list, or verified as qualifying at the transfer date, should proceed, because an unauthorised transfer charge of 40 per cent or more destroys the planning at a stroke.

Even a transfer to a genuine QROPS can attract the overseas transfer charge of 25 per cent. The British guidance explains that a 25 per cent charge may apply depending on the location of the QROPS and on where you live, within an overseas transfer allowance usually set at £1,073,100. Above that allowance, or where no exemption applies, the charge bites at 25 per cent on the excess above the allowance where the transfer is otherwise exempt (see the official guidance). And where no exemption applies, the same guidance applies the 25 per cent charge to the whole amount transferred. A British retiree already living in France who moves a British pension to a QROPS based in a different country, or who leaves the QROPS country within the clawback window, is the textbook case for that 25 per cent charge, with a possible refund only if the residence condition is later met and evidenced. Get the exemption analysis in writing from the ceding scheme before the transfer, keep the transfer value, the allowance calculation and the residence evidence together, and diary the five-year position, because HMRC will not remind you.

The French side of a QROPS transfer is quieter but not neutral. A direct scheme-to-scheme transfer with no cash paid to you is generally not French income at the transfer date, because nothing has been paid or credited to you within the meaning of the cash-basis rule. French tax arises when benefits are later paid out of the receiving scheme as pensions or capital, at which point the Article 18 residence rule, the 10 per cent allowance or the 7.5 per cent capital option, and the social charges analysis all re-engage. What you must avoid is a transfer routed through your personal bank account, a partial encashment dressed up as a transfer, or a surrender and re-contribution that France reads as a taxable payment followed by a fresh investment. Insist on a trustee-to-trustee transfer, keep the transfer statement showing no benefit paid to you, and file it with the year’s return even though nothing is declared as income, so a later enquiry cannot reconstruct the transfer as an undeclared receipt.

Practical timing matters as much as labels. Taking the lump sum in the year before you become French resident, while you are still solely British resident, can place it outside French worldwide taxation altogether, provided the move and the residence date are genuine and documented; taking it a month after arrival places it squarely inside the French return. Similarly, transferring to a QROPS while still British resident and then moving to France produces a different sequence of British charges and French declarations than transferring after the move. There is no single right answer — it depends on the size of the pot, the French marginal rate that year, the British allowance position and the QROPS location — but there is a single wrong approach, which is to move the money first and ask about the tax afterwards.

B. How Do You Challenge French Double Taxation and a Wrong Levy?

When the assessment arrives and something looks wrong — the same pension taxed in both countries, a government pension taxed in France with no credit, CSG charged despite an S1, or a lump sum taxed at the scale when the 7.5 per cent option was elected — work through the challenge in the order the administration expects, because skipping a step is the most common reason a good case fails.

Start with the paper correction. Log into your impots.gouv.fr personal space and check the detailed calculation (décompte): which boxes fed the base, whether the 10 per cent abattement was applied per pensioner within the household ceiling, whether boxes 1AL to 1DL generated the credit equal to the French tax and whether line 8TK and return 2047 match, and whether the scale and the family parts are correct. Many British cases are resolved here: a pension entered in 1AS instead of 1AL, a missing 2047, a forgotten S1, or a sterling-to-euro conversion that used the wrong year’s rate. File a corrective return for a simple coding error within the correction window, and keep screenshots and acknowledgements, because the correction itself is evidence if the dispute continues.

Where British tax has genuinely been levied on income the treaty gives to France, act on the British side as well as the French side. For a private pension taxable only in France under Article 18, send HMRC the treaty claim for gross payment with proof of French residence — the French tax notice, the residence certificate and the scheme details — and reclaim any British withholding that post-dates the treaty entitlement. For a government pension taxable only in Britain under Article 19, do the mirror exercise in France: declare the pension, claim the elimination credit, attach the British assessment and proof of payment, and require the French notice to show the credit line rather than burying the pension in worldwide income with no relief. The treaty’s mutual agreement article allows the two competent authorities to resolve interpretation and application difficulties together, and you can invoke that procedure through the French competent authority where a case of taxation not in accordance with the convention persists. Quote the treaty articles by number, attach both assessments, and set out the computation you say is correct, because a vague complaint about double taxation with no figures is routinely parked.

Where the dispute is about social charges rather than income tax, assemble the affiliation file before you write. You need the S1 or the decision refusing it, the French affiliation or non-affiliation notice from CPAM or URSSAF, the assessment showing CSG at 8.3 per cent or CRDS alongside it, and the pension slips proving the nature of the income. Your letter should cite the rate provision — “Sont assujetties à la contribution au taux de 8,3 % les pensions de retraite, et les pensions d’invalidité.” — then explain why, on your affiliation facts, that rate provision should not have been applied to you, referencing the wide base restated by the Cour de cassation only to show you understand it and to distinguish your case from it. If the administration maintains the levy, the next step is the formal social security dispute route: an amicable appeal (recours amiable) to the commission de recours amiable within the short deadline on the notice, then the judicial route, with every deadline calendared from the date of receipt, not the date of the document.

Where the dispute is about income tax itself, the route is the tax claim ladder. File a réclamation (formal tax claim) to the tax office that issued the notice, identifying the tax, the year, the article of the assessment and the exact relief sought: deletion of the double charge, substitution of the 7.5 per cent capital rate for the scale, application of the 10 per cent allowance per pensioner, or grant of the treaty credit. Attach the treaty articles, the British and French assessments, the P60 and pension statements, return 2047, the conversion schedule and, for lump sums, the election for the flat rate and the payment statement. If the claim is rejected expressly or by silence after six months, you can take the matter to the administrative court (tribunal administratif) within two months of the rejection, where the judge will apply the treaty over domestic law in case of conflict. Throughout, keep paying what is genuinely due and request a stay (sursis de paiement) for the disputed balance with guarantees where required, so interest and penalties do not accumulate while you argue a point you are likely to win.

Three British profiles illustrate how the pieces fit together. A retired teacher in the Dordogne with a teachers’ pension paid from public funds and a small private top-up declares the government pension as taxable in Britain and claims the French credit, while declaring the top-up as taxable only in France under Article 18 with the 10 per cent allowance; mixing the two into a single worldwide figure with no credit is the error to challenge. A former engineer in Lyon with a defined contribution pot who takes the quarter lump sum after becoming French resident declares it under the 7.5 per cent capital option with the uncapped 10 per cent reduction and budgets for CSG and CRDS, rather than assuming the British tax-free label travels with the cash. A couple in Nice where one spouse holds an S1 and the other is under PUMA checks the CSG line pensioner by pensioner instead of accepting a single household levy, because affiliation can differ within the same foyer fiscal and the levy must follow the person, not the household.

Limitation periods decide whether any of this is still possible, so check them first. Income tax claims generally follow the taxpayer-friendly limb of the French claim deadlines, social security amicable appeals run on very short notice periods, and British reclaims of overpaid withholding have their own time limits from the end of the tax year concerned. An assessment from three years ago with a clear treaty breach is worth a claim this week; the same assessment discovered after the deadline is worth a lesson for next year. When you instruct anyone — an accountant, a financial adviser or a lawyer — give them the complete file, not a summary: both countries’ assessments, all pension statements, the S1 and affiliation notices, the returns with 2047, and the correspondence so far. A short, fully evidenced claim beats a long, document-free argument every time.

Conclusion

Living in France on British pensions after Brexit is entirely manageable once the three layers are separated: the treaty decides which country taxes which pension, French domestic law decides the allowance and the rate, and the affiliation facts decide the social charges. Private pensions of a French resident belong to France under Article 18 and are declared with the 10 per cent allowance and return 2047; government service pensions generally remain British under Article 19 with a French credit rather than a second full tax; lump sums and QROPS moves turn on precise British allowance and charge rules before French tax even begins, with the French 7.5 per cent capital option and CSG and CRDS waiting on the French side. Keep the British and French assessments side by side, reconcile every box and every conversion, and challenge promptly and in writing — with the treaty article, the domestic article and the proof attached — whenever the same pound is taxed twice or a levy is charged to the wrong person. Done in that order, most British pension disputes in France end not in court but in a corrected notice.

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