You are British, you own or plan to buy a house in France with your partner or your children, and a French notaire (a public officer who handles conveyancing and estates in France), a friend in the Dordogne or an internet forum has told you to put the house into an SCI. The SCI, or société civile immobilière (a French non-trading property company), is the most common vehicle British families use to hold French bricks. Since Brexit, the questions around it have changed: you are now a third-country national, your residence rights come from a visa or from the Withdrawal Agreement rather than from European Union citizenship, and every tax or succession step is read through the France-United Kingdom double tax treaty rather than through European Union mechanisms. This guide explains, in plain English and with the exact French legal texts, whether an SCI still makes sense for a British family, how to set one up and run it, what it costs and how it is taxed, how shares in it pass to your children or are sold, and how to challenge a refusal or a tax bill when something goes wrong. Each French term is explained the first time it appears, so you can read the statutes and the notaire’s paperwork without a dictionary.
The short answer is that an SCI remains open to British buyers after Brexit, because French company law imposes no nationality condition on partners (associés, the shareholders of an SCI), but it is neither free nor neutral. It creates yearly paperwork, a separate tax life and succession mechanics of its own, and unwinding a badly drafted SCI can end in court. The official starting points for your own checks are the Civil Code provisions reproduced below on Légifrance, the tax pages of impots.gouv.fr, the practical guidance for Britons on gov.uk Living in France, and the family SCI explanations published by the French notaires and by the Ministry of the Economy. What those pages do not give you is the British angle: residence, treaty relief and the way French courts actually treat withdrawals, deadlocks and dismissals of managers. That is what this article adds.
I. Should a British Family Put Its French House in an SCI After Brexit?
A. How Do You Set Up and Run an SCI for a French House?
An SCI is a société civile, a civil (non-commercial) company whose purpose is to own and manage property. The definition sits in Article 1832 of the Civil Code: “La société est instituée par deux ou plusieurs personnes qui conviennent par un contrat d’affecter à une entreprise commune des biens ou leur industrie en vue de partager le bénéfice ou de profiter de l’économie qui pourra en résulter.” In ordinary English, two or more people agree by contract to put assets or work into a joint enterprise in order to share the profit or benefit from the saving that results. For a British couple or a parent with adult children, the joint enterprise is simply the purchase and management of the French house, and the saving is the shared use and the organised transmission of it. One person alone cannot form an SCI in the ordinary way, so a single buyer must either buy in their own name (en nom propre) or bring in a second partner, even with a token one per cent holding. And Article 1845 of the Civil Code confirms the framework: “Les dispositions du présent chapitre sont applicables à toutes les sociétés civiles, à moins qu’il n’y soit dérogé par le statut légal particulier auquel certaines d’entre elles sont assujetties.” The general civil-company rules therefore apply to your SCI unless a special statute says otherwise.
Brexit changed nothing about who may be a partner. There is no French rule reserving SCIs to French or European Union nationals, and the post-Brexit guidance on gov.uk Living in France treats property ownership as unaffected: what changed is your right to live in France, not your right to own there. Do not confuse the two. An SCI gives you no residence right, no visa and no shortcut at the préfecture (the local state authority that issues residence cards). If you plan to live in the house, organise your immigration status separately, through a long-stay visa or, if you were already settled before 2021, through the Withdrawal Agreement residence card (carte de séjour accord de retrait). The SCI owns the walls; it does not legalise the people sleeping inside them.
Setting the SCI up follows a fixed sequence, and each step leaves a paper trail you will need later. First, the partners agree the capital and the contributions (apports): cash, or the house itself if it is being transferred in, with the value stated in the statutes (statuts, the written constitution of the company). Second, a lawyer or notaire drafts the statutes in French, because the statutes will be registered with the French authorities and read by French courts. Insist on clauses covering the appointment and dismissal of the manager, the approval (agrément) of new partners on death or gift, the majority required for selling, borrowing or carrying out works, and the fate of the company if the couple separates. Third, the formation is advertised in a legal notices paper (journal d’annonces légales) and the file is filed with the business formalities office, which registers the SCI with the company register (Registre du commerce et des sociétés) and issues a SIREN number. Fourth, the SCI opens its own French bank account in its own name, and the purchase deed (acte authentique, the notarial deed of sale) is signed by the manager on behalf of the SCI before the notaire. From that signature, the house belongs to the SCI, and you own instead intangible shares (parts sociales) giving rights to profits, votes and, on exit, to a cash value, not to specific rooms.
Running the SCI means running a small institution. Article 1846 of the Civil Code states that “La société est gérée par une ou plusieurs personnes, associées ou non, nommées soit par les statuts, soit par un acte distinct, soit par une décision des associés.” The company is managed by one or more people, partners or not, appointed by the statutes, by a separate deed or by a decision of the partners. In a family SCI the manager (gérant) is usually one parent or both spouses as co-managers, and French banks will ask for the manager’s specimen signature before releasing renovation funds. The same article adds that “Les statuts fixent les règles de désignation du ou des gérants et le mode d’organisation de la gérance”, so whatever your statutes say about appointing and organising managers governs day to day life. Day to day, the manager pays the bills, collects any rent, signs insurance and maintenance contracts and represents the SCI before the tax office (service des impôts) and the bank. Decisions beyond the manager’s powers, such as selling the house, borrowing heavily or admitting a new partner, belong to the partners collectively, and Article 1852 of the Civil Code sets the default rule: “Les décisions qui excèdent les pouvoirs reconnus aux gérants sont prises selon les dispositions statutaires ou, en l’absence de telles dispositions, à l’unanimité des associés.” Anything beyond the manager’s powers is taken under the statutes or, failing that, unanimously. For a British family this default unanimity is the trap most often sprung: one child who refuses to vote can block a sale for years, which is why the statutes should define majority rules for each type of decision instead of leaving the default in place. Hold a documented general meeting (assemblée générale) at least once a year, approve the accounts, record who voted and file the minutes with the company papers, because a court asked to resolve a deadlock will read those minutes first.
Practical evidence matters as much as paperwork. Keep the SCI’s money strictly separate from personal accounts, never pay the French electricity bill for the house from a personal sterling account if the SCI is the owner, and keep every invoice for works, because the tax office and a future buyer’s notaire will both ask who paid for what. If the family is split between England and France, appoint a manager who actually lives near the property or give a written power of attorney (pouvoir) to someone who does, and make sure at least one partner can read French administrative letters or pays a professional who can. The préfecture, the bank and the tax office write in French and set short deadlines, and the most common British failure is not legal but logistical: a registered letter (lettre recommandée) ignored in an empty holiday home, then a missed appeal deadline. If a bank refuses to open the SCI’s account, ask for the written reasons, try a second institution and keep the refusal letters, because an unexplained blanket refusal linked to British nationality or residence can be challenged, while a refusal based on missing statutes or unclear funding cannot.
B. What Does an SCI Cost and How Is It Taxed Each Year?
The honest price of an SCI has three layers: the price of creating it, the price of running it and the price of its yearly tax life. Creation costs include the drafter’s fee for bespoke statutes, the legal notices publication, the registration fee and, where the house is transferred into a newly formed SCI rather than bought directly by it, the notaire’s transfer duties and emoluments on that contribution, which mirror purchase costs. Figures move every year, so take a written quote (devis) from the notaire before signing anything and compare it with at least one other quote. Running costs are steadier but never zero: bookkeeping, preparation of the yearly accounts, the general meeting paperwork, the French bank account charges and, in many families, an accountant’s subscription. Ask the accountant whether the letter of engagement covers the partners’ personal French returns as well, because the SCI’s figures flow into your own filings and British clients often discover too late that the company accounts were prepared but nobody filed the personal consequences. The Ministry of the Economy overview and the notaires’ family SCI guide both describe this standing machinery, and their shared warning is the one British readers should underline: an SCI that is never maintained, with no meetings and no accounts, is worse than no SCI at all, because it still produces legal effects while its paperwork contradicts real life.
The yearly tax life of an ordinary family SCI follows the transparency principle (translucidité fiscale): the company itself generally pays no income tax and each partner is taxed personally on their share. Article 8 of the General Tax Code (Code général des impôts) provides that “les associés des sociétés en nom collectif et les commandités des sociétés en commandite simple sont, lorsque ces sociétés n’ont pas opté pour le régime fiscal des sociétés de capitaux, personnellement soumis à l’impôt sur le revenu pour la part de bénéfices sociaux correspondant à leurs droits dans la société”, and continues: “Il en est de même, sous les mêmes conditions : 1° Des membres des sociétés civiles qui ne revêtent pas, en droit ou en fait, l’une des formes de sociétés visées au 1 de l’article 206”. Members of civil companies that are not in substance commercial companies are treated the same way, each taxed on their slice. The mirror provision, Article 1655 ter of the General Tax Code, deems certain property companies to have no personality distinct from their members, stating that “les associés ou actionnaires sont personnellement soumis à l’impôt sur le revenu ou à l’impôt sur les sociétés, suivant le cas, pour la part des revenus sociaux correspondant à leurs droits dans la société.” Each partner is therefore taxed personally on the share of the company’s income matching their rights. For a British family letting a Provençal cottage unfurnished through the SCI, the rent is typically declared partner by partner in France, and a partner who has become French tax resident declares worldwide income there under Article 4 B of the General Tax Code, which treats as French tax resident persons who have “en France leur foyer ou le lieu de leur séjour principal”, their home or principal place of residence in France. The France-United Kingdom treaty then allocates taxing rights between the two states and generally gives a credit in the residence state for tax paid in the other, so keep both countries’ assessments and claim the relief expressly rather than assuming the two administrations talk to each other.
Two common British uses can break this simple transparency and must be decided with eyes open. First, furnished holiday letting (location meublée, short stays with services or equipment provided) is treated as a commercial activity, and an SCI that runs it systematically can be pushed into corporation tax (impôt sur les sociétés), with its own accounting, its own rate and different rules on deducting depreciation and on distributing profits. If your business model is a gîte (a furnished holiday cottage) marketed to British tourists, take advice before the first booking, not after the first tax notice, and record in the minutes whether the SCI or the partners personally carry on the activity. Second, leaving the house empty does not make the SCI tax-free: local property taxes (taxe foncière, the yearly owners’ tax) continue to be billed in the SCI’s name, insurance and diagnostics (diagnostics techniques, the mandatory surveys on lead, asbestos, energy and electrics) must be renewed, and the partners must still file. Check every assessment on impots.gouv.fr against the title deed (titre de propriété): wrong surface area, wrong occupancy status and missing exemption claims are the three errors that recur in British-owned files, and each has a correction route.
When a bill looks wrong, challenge it methodically rather than ignoring it. Start by downloading the detailed calculation (décompte) from the online account and comparing the cadastral rental value (valeur locative cadastrale), the rate voted by the commune and any claimed relief. Then file a written complaint (réclamation) with the tax office shown on the notice, attaching the deed, the occupancy evidence and the calculation of the correct amount, and keep proof of sending. If the reply maintains the charge, the dispute moves to the administrative or judicial courts depending on the tax, and time limits run from the administration’s decision, not from your first letter, so diary every date on receipt. The same discipline applies to a bank or insurer dispute: written complaint first, then the sector mediator (médiateur), then court, with each step documented. Never stop paying an enforceable tax while contesting it unless a suspension (sursis de paiement) has been expressly granted on your guarantee, because enforcement (saisie, seizure of funds) can proceed during the dispute and creates a second problem on top of the first. For a non-resident partner, appoint a correspondent in France who opens official letters weekly, because a réclamation posted from Surrey on the last day of the deadline is a gamble no family company should take.
II. How Do You Pass On, Sell or Challenge an SCI After Brexit?
A. How Do You Gift or Inherit SCI Shares and Challenge the Tax Bill?
The reason most British families form an SCI is transmission: instead of co-owning the house directly in indivision (indivision, joint ownership without division into shares), the family owns shares that can be given away gradually, split between bare ownership and usufruct, and kept under an approval clause. French succession law still protects children through the réserve héréditaire (the reserved share of the estate that must go to the children), and a British parent with a French house should combine the SCI with a valid will choosing the applicable law, as explained in our companion guide to British wills and French houses. The SCI does not remove the children’s rights, but it changes the object transmitted: on death, what passes is not half the farmhouse kitchen but a number of parts sociales, which the statutes can direct toward named heirs subject to the approval of the remaining partners. Article 1870 of the Civil Code sets the default: “La société n’est pas dissoute par le décès d’un associé, mais continue avec ses héritiers ou légataires, sauf à prévoir dans les statuts qu’ils doivent être agréés par les associés.” The company is not dissolved by a partner’s death but continues with the heirs or legatees, unless the statutes require them to be approved by the partners. Read that sentence twice before drafting or signing statutes: without an agrément clause, a deceased parent’s shares pass to whoever inherits, including a stranger to the family project, while a well-drafted clause lets the surviving partners buy out the newcomer at a set valuation instead. The clause must also say who values the shares, by which expert method and within what time, because most family lawsuits about SCI successions are not about the principle of approval but about the price and the delay.
Gifts of shares during lifetime (donations de parts sociales) follow the same logic and use the same tax machinery as gifts of bricks. Parents often give the bare ownership (nue-propriété) to the children while keeping the usufruct (usufruit, the lifelong right to use the property and take its income), so the children become partners early while the parents keep control and occupation. Each gift needs a notarial deed, a valuation of the shares on the day of the gift, registration with the tax office and an update of the partners’ register (registre des associés) and of the beneficial owners’ register. The valuation is the sensitive point: the tax office may argue that the company’s debts were understated or that a discount for lack of marketability (décote) was exaggerated, and it can reassess within its recovery period. Commission an independent valuation report at the time of the gift, keep the bank statements proving any shareholder loans (comptes courants d’associés), and have the minutes record the method, because a file that explains its own figures survives a challenge and a file that merely asserts them does not.
French gift and inheritance tax (droits de mutation à titre gratuit) reaches British families even when the deceased or the donor lived in England, because the charge attaches to French property however it is held. Article 750 ter of the General Tax Code expressly taxes French real estate “que ces derniers soient possédés directement ou indirectement”, whether held directly or indirectly, and explains that “tout immeuble ou droit immobilier est réputé possédé indirectement lorsqu’il appartient à des personnes morales ou des organismes dont le donateur ou le défunt” holds the majority of the rights. Any building held through a company such as an SCI is deemed held indirectly, so the shares do not escape French duty by virtue of being movable property. Relief comes from the allowances (abattements) and the treaty. Article 779 of the General Tax Code grants 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”, a 100,000 euro allowance on each ascendant’s and each living or represented child’s share, renewable for gifts under the recall (rappel fiscal) mechanism, while Article 777 of the General Tax Code provides that “Les droits de mutation à titre gratuit sont fixés aux taux indiqués dans les tableaux ci-après, pour la part nette revenant à chaque ayant droit”, the rates applying per beneficiary on the net share after allowance. The France-United Kingdom estate treaty and the income and capital treaty then limit double taxation, typically by crediting French tax against the United Kingdom liability on the same property, but the credit must be claimed with the foreign assessment attached and within each country’s deadlines. Keep the French declaration (déclaration de succession), the United Kingdom inheritance tax account and both assessments together for six years, because either administration can ask how the other valued the same Dordogne farmhouse.
If the notaire’s succession bill or the tax office’s reassessment seems wrong, challenge the precise line, not the whole system. Ask the notaire for the detailed settlement (décompte de succession) showing the gross assets, the deductible liabilities, the allowance applied to each beneficiary and the table rate used, and compare each figure with the deeds and bank statements. Common British-file errors include taxing the full value of shares whose usufruct was retained without applying the age-based split, forgetting a prior gift’s recall, or applying the stranger’s rate to a stepchild treated as a stranger for duty purposes. Raise the point first in a reasoned letter to the notaire or to the tax office with the supporting documents, then use the formal complaint and appeal routes, keeping every deadline in a single diary. Where the dispute is between heirs rather than with the administration, for example a sibling who blocks the approval of a surviving spouse or contests the share valuation, the remedy is a summons (assignation) before the judicial court (tribunal judiciaire), often preceded by a demand letter (mise en demeure) and an attempt at mediation, and the court will read the statutes, the minutes and the valuation report before anything else. Families that kept those three documents current almost always settle; families that did not almost always pay for an expert.
B. How Do You Sell, Close or Challenge a Dispute Over the SCI?
Selling an SCI-held house can be done two ways, and the choice changes the paperwork, the tax and the buyer’s caution. Either the SCI sells the building itself, in which case the manager signs the notarial deed after the partners have authorised the sale under the statutes or unanimously by default, and the price enters the company’s accounts before any distribution, or the partners sell their shares to the buyer, who steps into the SCI with its history, its loans and its latent liabilities. Buyers and their banks usually prefer the first route, a clean building with a clean title (titre), while sellers sometimes prefer the second for its simplicity. Whichever route the family takes, the authorisation must be provable: convene the meeting, state the minimum price and the manager’s powers in the convocation, vote, and annex the resolution to the notaire’s file. A sale signed by a manager whose powers were never voted can be attacked by a dissenting partner, and British families who run the SCI informally from London are the most exposed, because the partner who stayed in France can later claim never to have agreed. If one partner blocks a sale the family considers necessary, the statutes’ majority clause is the first answer, court-authorised withdrawal (retrait judiciaire) the second, and dissolution the last, and they should be tried in that order.
Withdrawal is the dignified exit: a partner leaves, keeps neither keys nor liability for the future, and receives the cash value of their rights. Article 1869 of the Civil Code states that “Sans préjudice des droits des tiers, un associé peut se retirer totalement ou partiellement de la société, dans les conditions prévues par les statuts ou, à défaut, après autorisation donnée par une décision unanime des autres associés.” A partner may withdraw wholly or partly on the statutes’ conditions or, failing that, with the unanimous authorisation of the other partners. The same article continues: “Ce retrait peut également être autorisé pour justes motifs par une décision de justice.” It may also be authorised on good grounds by a court decision. French courts police this right strictly. In a judgment of 29 September 2016 the Third Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation (Cour de cassation, the supreme court for civil matters), appeal number 15-18.396, recalled expressly “Vu l’article 1869 du code civil”, having regard to Article 1869 of the Civil Code, and quashed an appeal decision that had postponed a doctor’s withdrawal from a property company until its buildings were sold, holding that “Qu’en statuant ainsi, par des motifs qui ne suffisent pas à établir le caractère effectif du droit au retrait de M. V…, la cour d’appel n’a pas donné de base légale à sa décision” By deciding on grounds that did not establish the effective character of the claimant’s right of withdrawal, the appeal court had given no legal basis for its decision. The full decision is published at Cour de cassation, Third Civil Chamber, 29 September 2016, No. 15-18.396. For a British partner trapped in a family SCI by relatives who keep delaying, the lesson is direct: a withdrawal right reduced to a promise conditional on a hypothetical future sale is not a real right, and a court can authorise the exit and fix the value of the shares, usually through an expert valuation under the statutory method. Prepare the application with the statutes, the refusal letters, the accounts and a proposed expert, and ask the court to set both the principle and the timetable.
Dissolution ends the company itself and should remain exceptional between relatives, because it forces a sale, a division or a buyout under a liquidator’s (liquidateur) supervision. Article 1844-7 of the Civil Code lists the cases where “La société prend fin”, the company comes to an end, including “Par la dissolution anticipée prononcée par le tribunal à la demande d’un associé pour justes motifs, notamment en cas d’inexécution de ses obligations par un associé, ou de mésentente entre associés paralysant le fonctionnement de la société” Early dissolution ordered by the court at a partner’s request on good grounds, including a partner’s failure to perform or a deadlock between partners paralysing the company’s operation. On 16 March 2011 the Third Civil Chamber, in the case published at Cour de cassation, Third Civil Chamber, 16 March 2011, appeal No. 10-15.459, approved an appeal court that had refused to dissolve a two-partner SCI despite the disappearance of their personal understanding, because it had “exactement retenu que la mésentente existant entre les associés et par suite la disparition de l’affectio societatis ne pouvaient constituer un juste motif de dissolution qu’à la condition de se traduire par une paralysie du fonctionnement de la société” It had correctly held that disagreement and the resulting loss of mutual trust (affectio societatis, the shared intention to cooperate as partners) could only justify dissolution if they produced a paralysis of the company’s functioning. A British reader should draw the practical moral: French judges do not dissolve an SCI because the family no longer speaks at Christmas; they dissolve it when the company can no longer function, with unpaid bills, no manager and no valid meetings. Keep paying your share, keep convening meetings and keep the paralysis evidence concrete if you seek dissolution, or keep the company functioning if you oppose it.
Manager disputes follow their own track. Article 1851 of the Civil Code provides that “Sauf disposition contraire des statuts le gérant est révocable par une décision des associés représentant plus de la moitié des parts sociales.” Unless the statutes say otherwise, the manager may be dismissed by partners holding more than half the shares. It adds that “Si la révocation est décidée sans juste motif, elle peut donner lieu à dommages-intérêts.” Dismissal without good reason can give rise to damages. And that “Le gérant est également révocable par les tribunaux pour cause légitime, à la demande de tout associé.” The manager may also be dismissed by the courts for lawful cause at any partner’s request. In practice this means a British minority partner can ask a court to remove a sibling-manager who mixes company money with personal money, refuses all accounts or lets the house decay, without having to dissolve the whole SCI, while a majority that sacks a manager brutally and without reason should expect a damages claim. Document the grievance with bank statements, unanswered registered letters and photographs before acting, because courts decide lawful cause on papers, not on family narratives. Where the majority uses its votes to starve the minority, for example by refusing every distribution while occupying the house rent-free, French law offers the abuse of majority (abus de majorité) claim for annulment and damages, and the same documentary discipline decides it: accounts, comparable rents, meeting minutes and the paper trail of the disputed resolutions.
Closing an SCI that has served its purpose is an administrative sequence, not a single form. The partners vote the dissolution under the statutes, a liquidator is appointed and registered, creditors are paid, the remaining cash or property is shared, the liquidation accounts are approved, and the removal (radiation) is published and filed. Between the dissolution vote and the removal, the letters SCI en liquidation (company in liquidation) must appear on correspondence, and the manager’s powers pass to the liquidator, so stop signing in the old capacity the day the vote is registered. If the SCI still owns the house at dissolution, the sharing (partage) needs a notarial deed and registration, with duty calculated on the values attributed. Throughout, keep the tax office informed of each step, because assessments continue to arrive in the company’s name until the removal is effective, and a file closed cleanly on the company register but left open at the tax office produces zombie bills for years.
Conclusion
For a British family with a French house, an SCI remains a useful instrument after Brexit, but only as a deliberate choice, never as a reflex. It organises joint ownership, eases gradual gifts of shares and gives the family a written constitution for decisions, sales and successions, all without any nationality barrier. Its price is real: formation and notaire costs, yearly accounts and meetings, personal taxation of each partner on their share, and succession duties that reach French property even when it is held indirectly through the company. Draft the statutes for the worst day, not the best, with clear majorities, an approval clause with a valuation method, and a manager whose powers and dismissal are spelled out. Keep the money separate, the minutes current and the valuations reasoned, because every dispute described above, from the tax reassessment to the blocked sale, is won on documents. And when a refusal or a bill arrives, challenge the exact line with the exact text: the articles and the two Court of Cassation decisions cited here give British readers the same weapons French families use. Used that way, the SCI does what it promises, holding the house steady while the family changes around it.
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