Your mother has just wired £40,000 from her Lloyds account to your French current account to help with the deposit on your flat in Lyon, or your father in Manchester has sent you €25,000 after selling a few shares so you can change the roof of your house in the Dordogne. Nobody signed anything before a notaire, which is the French public officer who authenticates serious legal acts, nobody paid any duty, and the money simply sits in your account. Then a letter arrives from the French tax office asking where the money came from, or your accountant turns pale and mentions a one-month deadline you have never heard of. Since Brexit, British families move money across the Channel exactly like this every week, and French law has a precise name for it: a don manuel, which is a gift made by simple handover, including a bank transfer, without a notarised deed. France taxes it, sometimes heavily, and the clock runs fast.

This article follows the only order that protects you. First, work out whether France can tax your British gift at all, which depends on where the donor and you are deemed resident for tax, then calculate the real bill with the allowances and rates that apply on the day you declare. Second, declare it correctly on form 2735, which is the official return for manual gifts and cash gifts, inside one month of revealing it, choosing the online or paper route that fits your case. Each step below gives the exact article of the French statute, the official government guidance in English, three recent judgments of the Cour de cassation, which is the highest French court for this type of dispute, showing how judges actually decide, and how to challenge every reassessment, interest charge and penalty along the way.

I. My parent sent me money from the UK, does France really tax it and how much duty will I pay?

A. When does a British bank transfer become a taxable gift in France and which allowances cut the bill?

A gift of money sent from a British account to a French resident is, in French eyes, a don manuel the moment the transfer lands and both sides treat it as a gift. No deed is needed and no threshold protects you: since the reform of 2011, every revealed manual gift is taxable, whatever its amount. What decides the tax is not the currency, the sending bank or the fact the donor lives in London, but tax residence. Article 750 ter of the General Tax Code provides that Sont soumis aux droits de mutation à titre gratuit : 1° Les biens meubles et immeubles situés en France ou hors de France where the donor has French tax domicile, and, symmetrically, property reçus par l’héritier, le donataire, le légataire who has French tax domicile, with the proviso that cette disposition ne s’applique que lorsque l’héritier, le donataire ou le bénéficiaire d’un trust a eu son domicile fiscal en France pendant au moins six années au cours des dix dernières années précédant celle au cours de laquelle il reçoit les biens. Full text at Article 750 ter of the General Tax Code. In plain terms, if you live in France, money your British parent sends you is within the French gift-tax net even though every pound started in the United Kingdom, unless you arrived so recently that the six-in-ten-years condition is not met. French tax domicile itself turns on everyday facts: Les personnes qui ont en France leur foyer ou le lieu de leur séjour principal count as domiciled, under Article 4 B of the General Tax Code, so a British consultant settled in Lyon with her family and her main home there is caught even if she still holds a British passport and votes in Manchester.

The taxable event is the revelation, not the transfer. Article 757 of the General Tax Code states that Les actes renfermant soit la déclaration par le donataire ou ses représentants, soit la reconnaissance judiciaire d’un don manuel, sont sujets aux droits de mutation à titre gratuit. It adds that the duty is computed on the value at declaration, or at the gift date if higher, and that the applicable rates and allowances are those in force on declaration day. Full text at Article 757 of the General Tax Code. The Cour de cassation confirmed the point on 2 April 2025 in case 23-15.834: le fait générateur de l’imposition des dons manuels aux droits de mutation à titre gratuit est constitué soit par l’acte renfermant la déclaration de ce don par le donataire ou ses représentants, soit par la reconnaissance judiciaire du don, soit par sa révélation à l’administration. Read the judgment at Cass. com., 2 April 2025, no. 23-15.834. Practically, your £40,000 becomes taxable when you declare it on form 2735, when a judge records it, or when you reveal it to the tax office, even in an answer given during an audit, and the euro value on that day sets the base.

Once taxable, the bill is computed like any French gift. Each child enjoys an allowance of 100,000 euros per parent, since Article 779 provides 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, while brothers and sisters get 15,932 euros. Full text at Article 779 of the General Tax Code. The progressive scale of Article 777 then runs from 5 per cent on the first 8,072 euros up to 45 per cent beyond 1,805,677 euros between parents and children, 35 to 45 per cent between siblings, 55 per cent up to the fourth degree and 60 per cent beyond. Full scale at Article 777 of the General Tax Code. A €45,000 gift from your mother therefore disappears entirely inside her 100,000 euro allowance if she has given you nothing in the previous fifteen years, which is why the recall rule examined below matters so much. Cash gifts between close generations can go further: Article 790 G states that Les dons de sommes d’argent consentis en pleine propriété au profit d’un enfant, d’un petit-enfant, d’un arrière-petit-enfant ou, à défaut d’une telle descendance, d’un neveu ou d’une nièce ou par représentation, d’un petit-neveu ou d’une petite-nièce sont exonérés de droits de mutation à titre gratuit dans la limite de 31 865 € tous les quinze ans. The donor must be under eighty and the donee an adult, the exemption stacks with the ordinary allowances, and it must still be declared within a month of the gift. Full text at Article 790 G of the General Tax Code. A British grandmother of seventy-five wiring €30,000 to her adult grandson in Bordeaux can thus pass it free, provided the form is filed.

London may tax the same money a second time, and the two systems do not mirror each other. On the British side, an outright cash gift is normally a potentially exempt transfer, which means No tax is due on any gifts you give if you live for 7 years after giving them, while Gifts given in the 3 years before your death are taxed at 40% with taper relief down to 8 per cent in year six to seven, and Taper relief only applies if the total value of gifts made in the 7 years before you die is over the £325,000 tax-free threshold. See the official guidance at GOV.UK on gifts and Inheritance Tax. France, by contrast, taxes at revelation with no seven-year survivorship test, and the 1963 Franco-British treaty organises death duties rather than lifetime gifts, so a gift that is perfectly exempt in Britain because grandfather survives seven years can still bear full French duty on declaration, and a gift taxed in France on revelation can later attract British tax if the donor dies within seven years. Map both clocks before moving money: the French one-month declaration deadline and the British seven-year survivorship window.

B. How do I file form 2735 on time and what does the one-month clock change after a tax audit?

The declaration deadline is one month from revelation, and revelation is easier to trigger than most British families imagine. Article 635 A of the General Tax Code provides that manual gifts doivent être déclarés ou enregistrés par le donataire ou ses représentants dans le délai d’un mois qui suit la date à laquelle le donataire a révélé ce don à l’administration fiscale. For gifts above 15,000 euros the donee may either declare within a month of revelation, or elect, when revealing, to defer declaration to within a month of the donor’s death, and where revelation follows an answer to the administration or a tax audit, the month runs from that revelation. Full text at Article 635 A of the General Tax Code. Voluntarily telling the tax office about the transfer, filing the form, answering an information request that mentions it, or producing bank statements during an audit that show it all count as revelation. The official English-language guidance confirms that a recipient of a gift above 15,000 euros must declare online from the personal account on impots.gouv.fr by clicking Declare then Declare a donation, and must pay online by card or direct debit, with the paper form 2735 as the fallback where online filing is impossible. See Service-Public on tax steps for a manual gift, Service-Public on revealing a gift above €15,000 and the official form 2735 on impots.gouv.fr.

Audit-triggered revelation is the trap that catches British donees who assumed silence was safe. On 4 March 2020 in case 18-11.120, the Cour de cassation approved a reassessment where the taxpayers’ reply letter during a personal tax examination disclosed manual gifts, holding that the appeal court had exactement déduit que la réponse des contribuables valait révélation au sens des articles 635 A et 757, so the one-month declaration duty started on that reply. The same judgment holds that l’administration fiscale peut notifier des rappels de droits d’enregistrement en se fondant sur des renseignements recueillis au cours d’un examen contradictoire d’une situation fiscale personnelle, y compris dans le cas où la date du fait générateur ne concerne pas la période vérifiée, meaning information found while checking your income tax can lawfully found a gift-duty reassessment for another year. Read the judgment at Cass. com., 4 March 2020, no. 18-11.120. If an auditor asks in writing where a £40,000 credit came from, your written answer likely starts the one-month clock even though you never meant to reveal a gift, and missing that month triggers the late-filing penalties of Article 1728: 10 per cent with no formal notice or payment within thirty days of one, 40 per cent beyond, and 80 per cent for concealed activity. Full text at Article 1728 of the General Tax Code, which imposes d’une majoration de : a. 10 % en l’absence de mise en demeure ou en cas de dépôt de la déclaration ou de l’acte dans les trente jours suivant la réception d’une mise en demeure. Never answer an information request about a family transfer without dating the reply, keeping a copy, and diarying one month from it.

File methodically and the process is straightforward. First, convert the sterling amount at the revelation date and assemble the paper trail: the donor’s transfer order, both bank statements showing the debit and credit, any covering message stating it is a gift, your French tax number, and proof of the family link such as birth certificates. Second, declare online through your impots.gouv.fr personal account within the month, or file the paper 2735 at the tax office of your domicile with payment, claiming the 100,000 euro parental allowance or the 31,865 euro cash-gift exemption with the supporting ages and dates. Third, if the gift exceeds 15,000 euros and the donor is elderly or ill, consider expressly electing, at revelation, to defer declaration and payment until one month after the donor’s death, but weigh the cost: the tariff and allowances frozen will be those in force at that later date, and the 2025 ruling below shows valuation follows the same logic. Fourth, keep the filed return, the payment proof and the acknowledgment together for fifteen years, because the recall rule can pull this gift back into the arithmetic of the next one.

II. The tax office says I owe more than expected, how do I challenge a reassessment on a British gift?

A. Why did the bill add an older gift and can I remove it from the fifteen-year recall?

The most common shock is the rappel, which is the fifteen-year recall of earlier gifts that pushes the new one into higher slices of the scale. Article 784 of the General Tax Code provides that La perception est effectuée en ajoutant à la valeur des biens compris dans la donation ou la déclaration de succession celle des biens qui ont fait l’objet de donations antérieures, à l’exception de celles passées depuis plus de quinze ans, with assets not yet taxed treated as sitting in the top slices. Full text at Article 784 of the General Tax Code. Suppose your father gave you €60,000 four years ago, duly declared, and now sends €60,000 more: the second gift is not taxed from zero but stacked on the first, so most of it falls in the 20 per cent band rather than starting at 5 per cent, and part of the 100,000 euro allowance is already used. Check the fifteen-year arithmetic before accepting any assessment: gifts older than fifteen years drop out entirely, cash gifts exempted under 790 G are ignored for the recall, and only gifts by the same donor to the same donee count.

Two 2025 and 2026 rulings show exactly where the administration overreaches. In the 2 April 2025 case 23-15.834, the taxpayer had received a manual gift in 2009, never reported it in a 2010 notarised gift of property from the same grandfather, and revealed it only in a 2014 regularisation letter; he argued the 2010 deed should retroactively anchor the gift for valuation. The Court rejected him: since ce don n’a été révélé à l’administration fiscale que postérieurement à cette date, the appeal court had exactement déduit que les dispositions de l’article 784 du code général des impôts ne pouvaient pas fonder l’imposition du don manuel aux droits de mutation à titre gratuit et que celui devait être imposé, sur le fondement de l’article 757 du même code, sur sa valeur à la date de la révélation. Read the judgment at Cass. com., 2 April 2025, no. 23-15.834. The lesson cuts both ways: an unreported gift cannot free-ride on a later deed, but by the same logic the administration cannot value your revealed gift at an earlier, higher sterling peak; it takes the value at revelation, converted on that day.

The 8 July 2026 decision, case 25-13.219, goes further and helps grandchildren directly. After a grandmother’s death, the tax office had added gifts previously made to their mother, who had renounced the succession, to the grandchildren’s own shares to exhaust the lower 777 bands. The Court quashed: pour la perception des droits de mutation à titre gratuit (DMTG), la valeur des biens compris dans la déclaration de succession est augmentée de celle des biens ayant fait l’objet de donations antérieures consenties par le défunt aux seuls donataires, héritiers ou légataires. Since the grandchildren, taking by representation, had never personally received those gifts, doivent être imposés personnellement d’après leur lien de parenté avec celui-ci, sans que puissent leur être opposées, pour l’application du tableau I du tarif des DMTG de l’article 777 susvisé, les donations antérieurement consenties à leur auteur renonçant. Read the judgment at Cass. com., 8 July 2026, no. 25-13.219. For a British family where grandmother in Leeds leaves her French house to grandchildren after their mother renounces, the fisc cannot inflate their French succession bill with gifts the mother once received. If your reassessment stacks somebody else’s gifts onto your share, cite this ruling in your reply.

B. How do I contest the assessment, the interest and the penalties step by step?

Every challenge starts with the paper the administration must send you. The tax office addresses the taxpayer une proposition de rectification qui doit être motivée de manière à lui permettre de formuler ses observations ou de faire connaître son acceptation. That is Article L. 57 of the Tax Procedures Book, full text at Article L. 57 of the Tax Procedures Book, and the 2020 ruling above shows judges enforce it: a rectification that misstates the year or hides the revelation theory can be annulled where the error misled you, while a purely clerical slip will not save you. Reply within the stated period, in French, by recorded delivery, point by point: contest the residence analysis with foyer and presence evidence if you arrived recently, contest the valuation date by pinning the exact revelation day with the exchange rate, claim the 100,000 euro or 31,865 euro reliefs with birth certificates and ages, strike out gifts older than fifteen years from the recall, and invoke the July 2026 ruling where gifts to a renouncer are loaded onto you. Ask expressly for discharge of the 40 per cent penalty where you filed within thirty days of the formal notice or where no notice preceded the assessment, and attach everything: transfer slips, statements, the 2735 acknowledgment, the notice and your dated reply.

If the reply fails, file the formal administrative claim, known as the réclamation contentieuse, against the recovery notice, then take the dispute to the tribunal judiciaire, which is the civil court hearing registration-duty cases, exactly as the taxpayers did in the 2025 ruling, who sued après rejet de sa réclamation contentieuse. The 2025 and 2026 judgments both ended with 3,000 euro cost orders under Article 700 of the Code of Civil Procedure, a reminder to plead tightly and concede weak points early. Interest for late payment runs alongside penalties, so paying the principal while expressly reserving your challenge stops interest without surrendering the case. Where the donor may die within seven years of the transfer, coordinate with the British side at once: keep the French declaration, valuation and allowance computations in a file the English executors can use, because the British seven-year clock and taper table will decide whether HM Revenue and Customs, the British tax authority, later claims a second share. For readers in Paris and the Île-de-France region, the procedure is national and online filing through impots.gouv.fr works identically, but keep a complete duplicate file, paper and scanned, of every notice, reply, return and receipt: Paris volumes mean longer processing times, and a lost acknowledgment of your 2735 or your observations letter is the single most expensive piece of paper to replace when limitation periods are argued.

Conclusion

A bank transfer from London is never just a bank transfer once you live in France: it is a don manuel that becomes taxable when revealed, valued on revelation day, declared within a month on form 2735, and stacked with the same donor’s gifts of the previous fifteen years. Test residence first, because the six-in-ten-years condition in Article 750 ter is the only exit for newcomers; claim the 100,000 euro parental allowance and, for cash, the 31,865 euro exemption before touching the rate scale; diary one month from anything that could count as revelation, especially a reply to the tax office; and meet every reassessment with the administration’s own paperwork, the correct valuation date, the cleaned fifteen-year recall, and, where needed, the April 2025 ruling on revelation value and the July 2026 ruling shielding representatives from gifts they never received. Handled in that order, a family gift stays a family gift instead of becoming a file.

Need a quick opinion on your case

Our firm offers a telephone consultation within 48 hours with a lawyer of the firm to review your gift, your form 2735, a reassessment, interest or penalties you wish to challenge. First telephone consultation: 80 EUR including VAT. Call 06 46 60 58 22, or write via our contact page with the date and amount of the gift, the donor’s and your residence history, any letter from the tax office, and the deadline printed on it.