Your mother lived in the Dordogne for fifteen years and has died leaving you the stone house, or your father stayed in Kent but kept the flat in Paris he bought before Brexit. The notaire (the French public officer who alone settles a succession with French assets) then names a figure for droits de succession (French inheritance tax on what each heir receives) that bears no resemblance to anything you know from British probate. British heirs regularly overpay at this point, or underpay and discover interest and penalties a year later, because the two systems start from opposite ends: Britain taxes the estate as a whole above a single threshold, while France taxes each heir separately according to kinship, with allowances and progressive rates that differ for a child, a sibling and a surviving spouse. Every French term is explained the first time it appears.

The short answer is that France taxes first whenever the deceased was domiciled for tax in France or the asset stands in France, and the 1963 Franco-British succession convention then decides which country gives relief so the same value is not taxed twice in full. A child inheriting from a parent benefits from a 100,000 euro allowance and progressive rates from 5 to 45 per cent; a surviving spouse pays nothing in France; siblings, nephews and more distant relatives face far heavier rates with far smaller allowances. Gifts made in the previous fifteen years are added back, the declaration must be filed within six or twelve months, and a wrong assessment can be challenged by formal claim and then before the administrative court. This guide works through each stage with the exact statutory wording, two recent Court of Cassation decisions you can check, official calculators, and the file to hand your notaire so the bill is right before you pay it.

I. Are you liable to French succession tax as a British heir after Brexit?

A. Where the deceased lived and where the assets stand: the three cases that decide everything

Start with territoriality, because it determines whether France taxes the worldwide estate or only the French assets, and whether the British tax authority has any say at all. The governing provision is article 750 ter of the Code général des impôts (the French tax code), which sets out three cases. First, where the deceased had his or her fiscal domicile in France, France taxes movable and immovable property wherever situated, in France or abroad. Second, where the deceased was not domiciled in France, France taxes only the movable and immovable property situated in France, including shares in unlisted companies whose assets consist principally of French buildings, in proportion to those buildings. Third, where the heir receiving the assets has been domiciled in France for at least six of the previous ten years, France again taxes what that heir receives wherever situated. For British families these three cases cover every common pattern: the parent who retired to France and dies there falls in the first, the parent who returned to Kent but kept the Paris flat falls in the second, and the child long settled in Lyon who inherits a cottage in Cornwall from a British-domiciled parent can fall in the third.

Fiscal domicile itself is defined by article 4 B of the tax code: a person is domiciled in France where France holds the household home or principal place of stay, where a professional activity is exercised principally in France, or where the centre of economic interests lies. The provision adds an essential reservation for treaty cases, namely that a person meeting one of these tests is nevertheless not regarded as domiciled in France where an international double taxation convention treats that person as resident of the other state. In practice the notaire establishes domicile from factual evidence — the address on tax returns, the place of the main home, healthcare affiliation, the centre of bank accounts — and British heirs should assemble that evidence early rather than asserting a convenient answer, because the wrong characterisation taxes either too much or too little, and both errors are corrected later with interest.

Where both countries claim a taxing right, the Franco-British convention of 21 June 1963 on death duties (the bilateral treaty allocating succession taxing rights between France and the United Kingdom) decides the split, and the administration’s commentary is published on the official BOFiP treaty page for the United Kingdom. The architecture is familiar to anyone who has read a double tax treaty: immovable property is taxable in the state where it stands, so the Dordogne house or Paris flat is taxed in France even if the deceased died domiciled in England; other assets follow domicile-based allocation rules with a credit mechanism so that tax paid in one state reduces the bill in the other. The treaty does not exempt the British heir from French procedure: the French declaration must still be filed and French tax paid where France has the right to tax, and relief is then claimed on the other side of the Channel. On the British side, the official gov.uk guidance on inheritance tax when someone living outside the United Kingdom dies explains when the British charge still bites on non-domiciled or long-absent persons, and since the 2025 reform of the non-domicile regime British exposure now turns on long-term residence tests that returning expatriates must check with a British adviser. The practical sequence is therefore fixed: establish French domicile under article 4 B, apply article 750 ter to list what France taxes, apply the 1963 convention to identify the treaty relief, and only then compute.

Two judicial warnings frame this analysis for British families specifically. First, assets held through a trust (the English-law arrangement with no exact French equivalent, in which a trustee holds property for beneficiaries) do not escape the French charge by clever characterisation. In Court of Cassation, commercial chamber, 18 November 2020, No 18-14.242, the Court held word for word that “le fait générateur des droits de mutation à titre gratuit est constitué par le transfert de propriété, qui, s’agissant de biens placés dans un trust, s’opère par l’effet de la distribution de l’actif du trust au bénéficiaire final, au jour de sa clôture, laquelle peut être postérieure au décès du constituant.” In plain terms, the taxable event for trust assets is the distribution to the final beneficiary when the trust closes, which may occur well after the settlor’s death — so a British heir who treats trust property as already received tax-paid at the settlor’s death misdates the charge. Second, jurisdiction over the succession itself follows habitual residence under European Union succession Regulation No 650/2012, to which the United Kingdom is not a party. In Court of Cassation, first civil chamber, 18 November 2020, No 19-15.438, the Court recalled word for word that “lorsque la résidence habituelle du défunt au moment du décès n’est pas située dans un Etat membre, les juridictions de l’Etat membre dans lequel sont situés des biens successoraux sont néanmoins compétentes pour statuer sur l’ensemble de la succession dans la mesure où le défunt possédait la nationalité de cet Etat membre au moment du décès.” For a British national who died habitually resident in England leaving a house in France, the French courts therefore retain subsidiary jurisdiction over the whole succession — which is why the French notaire and the French declaration cannot simply be bypassed in favour of English probate.

B. What you actually pay: allowances, progressive rates and the surviving spouse exemption

Once the taxable base is identified, France taxes each heir individually, not the estate globally. The computation has three steps: deduct the personal allowance (abattement, the tax-free slice granted according to kinship) from the net share, apply the progressive rate table (barème, the scale of percentages rising with the taxable slice) to the remainder, and add back prior gifts where the recall rule applies. The allowances are set by article 779 of the tax code, whose first paragraph provides word for word that “il est effectué un abattement de 100 000 € sur la part de chacun des ascendants et sur la part de chacun des enfants vivants ou représentés par suite de prédécès ou de renonciation.” In practice each living child, or each child represented by his or her own descendants, deducts 100,000 euros from the share received. The same article grants 15,932 euros per brother or sister, 7,967 euros per nephew or niece, and 159,325 euros to any heir unable to work under normal conditions because of a physical or mental infirmity, a provision British families with a disabled child should never overlook because it stacks with the ordinary 100,000 euro allowance to give 259,325 euros tax-free. The official impots.gouv.fr page explaining how to calculate succession duties and the step-by-step official calculation and payment guide confirm these figures with worked examples the heir can follow line by line.

The rates are set by article 777 of the tax code. In the direct line between parents and children, the scale runs from 5 per cent on the slice up to 8,072 euros, through 10, 15 and 20 per cent bands, to 30 per cent between 552,324 and 902,838 euros, 40 per cent up to 1,805,677 euros and 45 per cent beyond. Between brothers and sisters the rate is 35 per cent up to 24,430 euros and 45 per cent above; relatives up to the fourth degree pay 55 per cent and more distant relatives or unrelated persons pay 60 per cent. The contrast that matters most for British heirs is the surviving spouse: article 796-0 bis of the tax code provides word for word that “Sont exonérés de droits de mutation par décès le conjoint survivant et le partenaire lié au défunt par un pacte civil de solidarité.” A husband, wife or civil partner therefore pays no French succession duty at all, whatever the amount — a result that surprises British spouses accustomed to the United Kingdom’s own spouse exemption operating through a different mechanism, but the French exemption is total and unconditional. Unmarried partners with no civil pact, by contrast, are treated as unrelated persons at 60 per cent after a token allowance, which is why British couples living in France without marriage or pact should take advice on status long before the first death.

A worked example shows how the pieces fit. Suppose a widowed mother domiciled in the Dordogne dies leaving a house worth 420,000 euros to her two children in equal shares. Each child receives 210,000 euros, deducts the 100,000 euro allowance, and is taxed on 110,000 euros: roughly 5 per cent on the first 8,072, 10 per cent to 12,109, 15 per cent to 15,932 and 20 per cent on the balance, giving a bill in the order of 18,000 to 19,000 euros per child. Now suppose instead that the deceased leaves the same house to a brother: the allowance is 15,932 euros and the rate is 35 then 45 per cent, producing a bill above 150,000 euros on the same property. The kinship table, not the size of the estate, dominates the outcome. One further correction then applies in many British files: article 784 of the tax code requires the parties to disclose earlier gifts and adds back gifts made within the previous fifteen years when computing both allowances and progressive bands, treating the earlier gifts as occupying the lowest slices. A mother who gave each child 100,000 euros five years before death has therefore already consumed their allowances, and the whole inherited share is taxed from the first euro. The fifteen-year recall is the single most common reason a British family faces a bill far above the back-of-the-envelope estimate, and the notaire must be told about every prior gift, English deed of gift included, so the disclosure obligation is met.

II. How to file, pay and challenge the bill when the notaire or the tax office gets it wrong

A. The declaration, the deadline and the notaire file: six months, twelve months and the papers to gather

The declaration of succession (déclaration de succession, the signed inventory and valuation filed with the tax office listing assets, liabilities and each heir’s share) must be filed on time even where no tax is ultimately due, because the declaration starts limitation running and proves the allowances claimed. Article 641 of the tax code fixes the period word for word: “De six mois, à compter du jour du décès, lorsque celui dont on recueille la succession est décédé en France métropolitaine” and “D’une année, dans tous les autres cas.” A death in France therefore gives six months; a death in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland gives twelve. The official service-public.fr page on succession declarations confirms the six-month rule and warns that late filing attracts a 10 per cent increase from the thirteenth month, whether the deadline was six months or a year. British heirs should diarise the deadline from the date of death, not from the English grant of probate, because the French clock ignores the probate timetable entirely and the notaire cannot stop it by requesting translations.

The notaire prepares and files the declaration, collects the duties from the heirs, and pays the Treasury; the heir’s task is to supply a complete file early enough for valuation choices to be made deliberately. That file should contain the death certificate with a sworn translation (traduction assermentée, a translation by a court-approved translator), the English will and grant of probate with apostille where the deceased left English assets, the marriage contract or civil partnership documentation, the property title deeds (titres de propriété) and recent valuation evidence, bank and investment statements at the date of death, life insurance policies (assurance-vie, the French savings contract with its own distinct succession treatment), and the list of deductible liabilities such as the outstanding mortgage and funeral costs. Two points deserve emphasis in British files. First, debts are deductible only with proper proof, so obtain the lender’s balance certificate rather than estimating. Second, disclose the English will’s choice of law: under article 22 of European Union succession Regulation No 650/2012 a person may choose the law of his or her nationality to govern the succession, and the official the official text of Regulation (EU) No 650/2012 (EUR-Lex reference CELEX:32012R0650) confirms that mechanism — but the choice governs who inherits, not the French tax computation, and heirs who confuse the applicable inheritance law with the tax rules omit allowances or misapply the tariff.

British testators who chose English law to avoid the French forced share should also understand the compensatory levy that protects children. Article 913 of the Code civil (the French civil code) reserves half of the estate where one child survives, a third where two survive and a quarter where three or more survive, and its final paragraph adds that where the deceased or at least one child is a European Union national or habitually resident there and the applicable foreign law provides no reserved-share mechanism for children, then “chaque enfant ou ses héritiers ou ses ayants cause peuvent effectuer un prélèvement compensatoire sur les biens existants situés en France au jour du décès, de façon à être rétablis dans les droits réservataires que leur octroie la loi française, dans la limite de ceux-ci.” Each child may therefore take a compensatory levy on the French assets to restore the French reserved share. After Brexit an English-law will of a British national habitually resident in France still triggers this analysis where a child would otherwise receive nothing, and the resulting reallocation changes each heir’s taxable share — another reason the tax computation cannot be finalised before the civil-law distribution is settled.

B. Challenging a wrong assessment: the formal claim, suspension of payment and the court

A challenge always begins with the administration, never with the court. The formal claim (réclamation contentieuse, the written complaint asking the tax office to discharge or reduce an assessment) must identify the assessment, state the legal basis — wrong domicile characterisation, missed allowance, misapplied tariff band, ignored treaty credit, omitted deductible debt, misdated trust distribution — and quantify the reduction sought euro by euro. Article L190 of the Livre des procédures fiscales (the Book of Tax Procedures) assigns such claims to the contentious jurisdiction where they seek to repair errors in base or computation or to obtain the benefit of a legislative provision, which covers every standard succession dispute. File through the secure messaging service (messagerie sécurisée) on impots.gouv.fr or by recorded delivery to the office that issued the assessment, keep the acknowledgment, and attach the declaration, the assessment notice (avis de mise en recouvrement, the formal demand for payment), the civil-status documents proving kinship, and the official printouts of the articles and decisions relied on.

Where the bill must be paid while the dispute runs, the suspension mechanism is strict and must be expressly invoked. Article L277 of the Book of Tax Procedures provides word for word: “Le contribuable qui conteste le bien-fondé ou le montant des impositions mises à sa charge est autorisé, s’il en a expressément formulé la demande dans sa réclamation et précisé le montant ou les bases du dégrèvement auquel il estime avoir droit, à différer le paiement de la partie contestée de ces impositions et des pénalités y afférentes.” The two conditions are cumulative: an express request for deferred payment (sursis de paiement, the suspension of collection while the dispute is examined) inside the claim itself, and the amount or basis of the reduction claimed. Write the sentence; do not imply it. Above the threshold fixed by decree the accountant may require guarantees, and enforcement is then frozen until a final decision. Heirs who simply stop paying without those words accrue the 10 per cent late increase and enforcement measures while their file is examined.

If the administration rejects the claim expressly or by silence once the examination period has run, the dispute moves to the tribunal administratif (the administrative court, the first-level judge for tax disputes) of the place where the tax was assessed. That court re-examines the assessment in full: domicile under article 4 B, territorial scope under article 750 ter, treaty application, allowances, tariff, recall of prior gifts, and penalty computations. This is where the two Court of Cassation decisions quoted above do their work: No 18-14.242 fixes the taxable event for trust assets at distribution on closure, defeating both premature and late assessments, while No 19-15.438 confirms that French courts keep subsidiary jurisdiction where the deceased died habitually resident outside the Member States but left French assets. Cite each decision by number and date, annex the official printouts from courdecassation.fr, and explain in one paragraph each why the facts match. An appeal then lies to the cour administrative d’appel (the administrative court of appeal) and, on points of law, to the Conseil d’État (the Council of State, France’s highest administrative court). Three British-specific errors deserve a final warning: assuming Brexit created an exemption, which it did not; assuming the English grant of probate replaces the French declaration, which it does not; and assuming the choice of English law for the succession removes the French tax computation, which it does not. The disciplined sequence is to file the French declaration within its six- or twelve-month deadline with a complete file, pay what is truly due, claim in writing with an express suspension request where the euros justify it, and litigate the refusal with the statute and the two decisions by number.

Conclusion

Return to the Dordogne house or the Paris flat and the notaire figure that opened this guide. The British heir who pays the right amount works four questions in order. First, what does France actually tax on these facts: the worldwide estate because the deceased was domiciled in France, only the French assets because the deceased died domiciled in England, or the heir’s worldwide receipts because the heir has been domiciled in France for six of the last ten years. Second, what does each heir’s personal computation look like: the 100,000 euro allowance per child or the smaller allowance for siblings and nephews, the progressive tariff from 5 to 45 per cent in the direct line or the far heavier collateral rates, the total exemption for a surviving spouse, and the fifteen-year recall of earlier gifts that so often consumes the allowance before the succession opens. Third, what does the 1963 convention reserve for the other side of the Channel, documented so the British return claims the correct credit instead of paying twice. Fourth, was the assessment wrong, and if so was it challenged through the formal claim with an express suspension request and then before the administrative court citing the statute and the two 2020 decisions by number. Heirs who skip a step pay for it: the domicile misdescribed, the prior gift undisclosed, the treaty credit never claimed, the deadline missed by reference to the probate calendar. Heirs who work the four questions hand the notaire a complete, translated, receipted file, check the printed computation against articles 750 ter, 777, 779 and 796-0 bis, and where the figures resist a straightforward reading take advice before the six- or twelve-month clock runs out, because a late declaration, however well explained, cannot be saved.

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