You own a flat in Paris, a cottage in the Dordogne or a studio on the Riviera, you live in Britain, and Airbnb guests pay for the weeks you are not there. That income feels simple. French law treats it as two separate files that must both be clean: the town-hall file, meaning registration of the let and, in many cities, prior permission to change the use of the dwelling; and the tax file, meaning French income tax on furnished rents under business-profit rules, with thresholds that were tightened sharply for ordinary holiday lets. A British owner who neglects either file can face a fine of up to 100,000 euros per dwelling for an unlawful change of use, administrative fines for a missing registration number, back tax with penalties, and, since Brexit, no European shortcut for sorting matters out from London. Every French term used below is explained the first time it appears, and every decisive rule is quoted from the text in force, so that you can check your own position before the mairie (the town hall) or the tax office checks it for you.
This guide answers two questions in order. First, can you lawfully let your French second home to holidaymakers, and what paperwork does the commune (the municipality) require before the first guest arrives? Second, how is that rental income taxed in France when the owner is British, resident in France or still living in Britain, and what can you do if the assessment or the fine looks wrong? The answers draw on the Tourism Code, the Building and Housing Code, the General Tax Code, the Social Security Code and two recent rulings of the Cour de cassation (the French supreme court for civil matters) that directly concern short-term furnished lets.
I. Can I Lawfully Let My French Second Home to Holidaymakers After Brexit?
Short answer: often yes, but never without paperwork. French law distinguishes the furnished tourist let, the meublé de tourisme (a villa, flat or studio let furnished to passing guests who do not live there), from an ordinary residential tenancy. The meublé de tourisme has its own declaration duties, its own day-count ceiling when it is your main home, and, in large cities, its own permission regime. Brexit changed nothing in these municipal rules, which apply to French and foreign owners alike, but it did change your administrative life around them: as a British citizen you are now a third-country national, consular help is thinner, and any fine or tax bill must be challenged under French procedure, in French, within French time limits. Start with registration, then check whether your city also demands a change-of-use permission.
A. Do I Have to Register My Let With the Town Hall and Show the Number on Airbnb?
Yes, in most cases before the first booking. The Tourism Code provides that “Toute personne qui offre à la location un meublé de tourisme procède préalablement en personne à une déclaration soumise à enregistrement auprès d’un téléservice national”, in English: anyone who offers a furnished tourist let must first file a declaration, in person, for registration through a national online portal, as stated in Article L324-1-1 of the Tourism Code. On receipt of a complete declaration the portal immediately issues an electronic acknowledgement containing a declaration number, which the commune where the property sits can then see. You must update that declaration if anything changes and renew it when it expires.
That number follows you everywhere. Platforms and intermediaries, the plateformes (Airbnb, Booking.com, local agents and anyone who for payment or free helps market the let), must inform you of your declaration and permission duties, obtain from you a sworn statement that you comply, and publish your declaration number in every advertisement for the property, because Article L324-2-1 of the Tourism Code states: “Elle publie, dans toute annonce relative à ce meublé, ce numéro de déclaration.” In plain terms, no number on the listing means the listing itself proves the breach. Communes can also demand your letting data and day counts up to 31 December of the year after the letting year, and the single public body that collects platform data tells the commune when a main home has been let beyond the legal ceiling.
The ceiling matters mainly if you let what France regards as your main home, your résidence principale. The Code provides that “Toute personne qui offre à la location un meublé de tourisme qui est déclaré comme sa résidence principale ne peut le faire au-delà de cent vingt jours au cours d’une même année civile, sauf obligation professionnelle, raison de santé ou cas de force majeure”, meaning a main home cannot be let as a furnished tourist let for more than 120 days per calendar year, except for work duties, health reasons or force majeure, under Article L324-1-1 of the Tourism Code. A commune council can lower that ceiling to 90 days by reasoned decision. Most British owners letting a French second home are not letting a résidence principale at all, so the 120-day ceiling is not their problem; their problem is the next section, the change of use, which is stricter and far more expensive.
Fines for skipping registration are real and have been tested before the supreme court. Anyone who ignores the registration duty faces an administrative fine of up to 10,000 euros imposed by the commune, and anyone who files a false declaration or uses a false number faces up to 20,000 euros, while exceeding the day ceiling can draw a civil fine of up to 15,000 euros ordered by the president of the tribunal judiciaire (the ordinary civil court), sitting in fast-track proceedings on the merits, at the commune’s request. The Cour de cassation confirmed on 16 October 2025, in appeal number 24-14.006, that “le défaut d’accomplissement de cette formalité est passible d’une amende civile depuis le 25 novembre 2018”, meaning failure to register has been punishable since 25 November 2018, and it added that the fine “dont le prononcé est soumis aux principes de personnalité et d’individualisation de la peine, qui font obstacle, en la matière, à toute condamnation in solidum”, meaning the penalty must be personal and individual, so a couple cannot be condemned jointly and severally to a single fine, as decided in Cass. 3rd civil chamber, 16 October 2025, No 24-14.006. In that case a 1,500-euro joint fine was split into 750 euros per spouse. Check therefore that any fine names you personally and matches your own conduct, because a joint fine against both spouses is now vulnerable on that ground alone.
A second ruling widens the net further. On 27 June 2024 the same chamber held that the registration duty covers every furnished tourist let in a regulated commune, whatever the planning use of the premises, stating that the article “impose une obligation de déclaration préalable soumise à enregistrement de toute location d’un meublé de tourisme, quel que soit son usage au sens de l’article L. 631-7 du code de la construction et de l’habitation”, meaning prior registered declaration is required for any tourist-let letting regardless of the unit’s use classification, in Cass. 3rd civil chamber, 27 June 2024, No 23-13.567. The owner there argued that his unit was business premises, not housing, and therefore outside the declaration system; the Court quashed the judgment that had accepted that argument. Do not assume that a shop, office or studio with commercial use escapes registration: if you offer it as a meublé de tourisme in a commune that has set up the system, register it and display the number.
Practically, before publishing any listing, file the national declaration, obtain the number, insert it in every advertisement on every platform, keep proof of the acknowledgement, and track your let days if the property could pass for a main home. If the commune writes asking for day counts, reply within one month with the address and the declaration number. These steps cost nothing and remove the easiest ground the commune has for fining you.
B. When Does Holiday Letting Become a Change of Use, and What Is the 100,000-Euro Risk?
In communes where housing is under pressure, letting your flat to passing guests is not merely a letting choice; it is legally a change of use, a changement d’usage (the conversion of housing into a different use such as short-term tourist accommodation). The Building and Housing Code states: “Le fait de louer un local meublé à usage d’habitation en tant que meublé de tourisme” — letting furnished housing as a tourist let — “constitue un changement d’usage au sens du présent article”, meaning it counts as a change of use, under Article L631-7 of the Building and Housing Code. Where the municipal council has made change of use subject to prior permission, letting without that permission is unlawful even if your tourist-let declaration is perfectly registered. Registration and permission are two different gates, and you must pass both.
Permission is granted by the mayor of the commune where the building sits, the maire, and it can be conditional on compensation, the compensation (the simultaneous conversion of non-housing premises back into housing to offset the loss), because Article L631-7-1 of the Building and Housing Code provides that “L’autorisation préalable au changement d’usage est délivrée par le maire de la commune dans laquelle est situé l’immeuble”. The permission is normally personal to the holder and lapses when the holder permanently stops the activity, unless it was granted against compensation, in which case it attaches to the premises. Each council sets its own grant conditions and compensation rules by district in light of social mix and housing shortage, so Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux, Nice and the mountain resorts each play by their own detailed rulebook. Dwellings are widely defined, covering flats, houses, caretaker lodgings, service rooms, tied accommodation and furnished rooms let under the special regimes, and a unit counts as housing if it had that use at any point in the previous thirty years, or between 1970 and 1976, unless a later permission changed it. Agreements concluded in breach of these rules are void as of right.
The sanction is the heaviest in this field. The Code provides that an offender “est condamnée à une amende civile dont le montant ne peut excéder 100 000 € par local irrégulièrement transformé”, meaning a civil fine of up to 100,000 euros per unlawfully converted unit, ordered by the president of the tribunal judiciaire in fast-track proceedings at the suit of the commune, the housing authority, the planning body or the national housing agency, under Article L651-2 of the Building and Housing Code. The same judge orders the return of the unit to housing use within a fixed period, then imposes a penalty payment, the astreinte (a daily fine per square metre until compliance), of up to 1,000 euros per day per square metre of usable area, and after the deadline the administration can evict the occupants and do the works at your expense. Paris pursues these cases systematically, and courts routinely order both the fine and the return to housing use, so an inherited pied-a-terre that has been on Airbnb for years can produce a bill larger than several years of rents.
Three practical points follow for British owners. First, check the commune’s position before buying or before letting: ask the mairie or the intercommunal planning office whether change of use requires prior permission in your district, whether your street falls in a reinforced sector, and whether compensation is demanded in practice. Estate agents’ assurances are not permissions. Second, if permission with compensation is required and you cannot offer compensation premises, budget for buying smaller commercial premises to convert, or accept that lawful short-term letting is not viable and switch the business model to a long residential tenancy, a bail d’habitation, or a medium-term mobility lease, a bail mobilité, where the rules differ. Third, keep the two files consistent: your tourist-let declaration, your permission, your tax return and your platform listings must tell the same story about the same address, because communes now cross-check platform data against the declaration register.
If you receive a formal notice, a mise en demeure, or a summons from the commune, act fast and in writing. Gather the declaration acknowledgement, the permission or the refusal, the council deliberation setting the local rules, dated proof of the unit’s use history, and every listing with its number. Many disputes turn on dates, which version of the article applied, whether the council deliberation covered your facts, and whether the fine was personalised, as the October 2025 ruling shows. A lawyer can then test the summons line by line instead of arguing fairness in the abstract.
II. How Is My French Furnished Rental Income Taxed as a British Owner, and How Do I Challenge the Bill?
Rents from a French property are taxed in France. That principle surprises British owners who assume that living in Britain means paying tax only in Britain, or who declare the rents as French property income equivalent to British rental income. France classifies furnished letting as a commercial activity, taxes it as business profit, adds social levies in many cases, and expects a French return whether you are resident in France or still across the Channel. The good news is that the rules are mechanical once classified correctly; the bad news is that the simplified regime for ordinary holiday lets now shelters far less income than owners remember, so last year’s method may already be wrong for this year. Work through classification first, then the choice between the flat-rate micro régime and the actual-profit regime, then filing and challenge.
A. Micro-BIC or Actual Profit: How Do I Work Out the French Tax on My Holiday Rents?
Furnished letting is business profit, the bénéfices industriels et commerciaux, universally shortened to BIC. The General Tax Code lists among BIC “Personnes qui donnent en location directe ou indirecte des locaux d’habitation meublés”, meaning persons who let furnished housing directly or indirectly, in Article 35 of the General Tax Code. This classification is the single most important tax fact in this guide: your Airbnb rents are not revenus fonciers (unfurnished rental income) and cannot use that regime’s deductions; they are BIC, with BIC thresholds, BIC allowances and BIC loss rules. An owner who declares furnished rents in the unfurnished box has filed in the wrong category, and the correction alone can change the bill.
Within BIC, small operators may use the micro-BIC, the micro régime (a simplified flat-rate regime where tax applies to turnover minus a fixed percentage allowance, with no deduction of actual costs). For ordinary, unclassified furnished tourist lets the ceiling is now strikingly low: the Code covers, up to 15,000 euros of annual turnover, “dont l’activité principale est de louer directement ou indirectement des meublés de tourisme”, meaning businesses whose main activity is letting tourist lets directly or indirectly, and grants them “d’un abattement de 30 % pour le chiffre d’affaires provenant d’activités de la catégorie mentionnée au 1° bis”, meaning a 30 per cent allowance on that turnover, under Article 50-0 of the General Tax Code. In plain figures, 12,000 euros of Airbnb turnover taxed under this micro régime produces 8,400 euros of taxable profit before the rate scale, with a minimum allowance floor of 305 euros. The same article preserves carve-outs for certain classified lets, which keep a more generous regime, so check whether your property’s classement (the official tourist-furnishing star rating) moves you into a better bracket before assuming the 15,000-euro ceiling applies. If your turnover exceeds the ceiling for your category, or if you simply opt out, you fall into the régime réel, the actual-profit regime (tax on real receipts minus real deductible costs), where loan interest, agency fees, insurance, repairs, the taxe foncière (the French local property tax), depreciation of furniture and, on strict conditions, depreciation of the building itself can be deducted, and where a genuine early-years loss can in some structures be set against other income. The micro régime’s allowances are legally deemed to cover straight-line depreciation, so you cannot have both the flat allowance and depreciation: choose the regime that fits your cost base, and model both before committing, because high-service-charge Paris flats with management fees often pay less tax under the actual-profit regime despite its bookkeeping.
The taxable profit then goes through the ordinary income-tax scale. The Code states: “L’impôt est calculé en appliquant à la fraction de chaque part de revenu qui excède 11 600 € le taux de”, meaning tax is computed by applying the rate to each slice of household income above 11,600 euros, under Article 197 of the General Tax Code, with marginal rates rising through 11, 30, 41 and 45 per cent in the current scale. Your French household’s total French-taxable income sets the marginal slice, so a British pensioner whose French rents sit on top of a French-taxed pension may pay a higher marginal rate on the rents than expected. On top of income tax, social levies frequently apply. The Social Security Code makes French-domiciled individuals liable to a contribution on investment and property income assessed on the net amount used for income tax, covering among others business profits, 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”, under Article L136-6 of the Social Security Code. Owners affiliated to the British health system who hold the proper portable documents may in some cases escape certain French social charges on top of the levy for health cover, but the analysis turns on your exact affiliation proofs, so bring your S1 (the portable healthcare entitlement form) or A1 (the social-security posting certificate) to the meeting rather than assuming exemption.
Two related taxes complete the picture and are often forgotten. Letting furnished property can trigger the cotisation foncière des entreprises, the CFE (the local business tax due from anyone carrying on a habitual self-employed activity from premises), though narrow exemptions exist for very small or part-time lets that you should verify commune by commune rather than assume. And if your French property wealth exceeds the threshold, the impôt sur la fortune immobilière, the IFI (the annual tax on French real-estate wealth), may apply on top of the income tax on the rents; British owners who already read our guide to how French-resident Britons are taxed on English rental income and how double tax is relieved should treat this article as its mirror image, because French-source rents are the reverse flow. Owners using a société civile immobilière, the SCI (the French family property company), to hold the let property face a further layer, analysed in our guide to the SCI for British families holding a French home, since an SCI that lets furnished property can itself become liable to company tax. General background on the official portals is available from the French tax administration, the French public service portal and, for the British side of your affairs, the UK government portal.
B. I Live in Britain: Where Do I File, What Traps Must I Avoid, and How Do I Challenge a Reassessment or a Fine?
If you live in Britain and let a French property, you file in France for the French rents and in Britain for your worldwide income, claiming double-tax relief at home for the French tax on the French rents. File the French return online through your impots.gouv.fr account each spring for the previous year’s rents, declare the gross rents in the BIC section, apply the micro allowance or attach the actual-profit computation, and pay the balance on the assessment notice, the avis d’imposition. Keep a French bank account for payment, keep the declaration receipts, and keep every invoice behind an actual-profit computation for at least the years the administration can still audit. Owners who left France but kept a former home face neighbouring capital-gains questions on a later sale, examined in our guide for Britons who left France and later sell their old French home.
Five traps catch British filers every year. First, the wrong box: furnished rents declared as revenus fonciers instead of BIC, which misstates allowances and invites reassessment of the whole computation. Second, the stale threshold: applying the old, generous micro ceiling to an ordinary unclassified holiday let when the current ceiling is 15,000 euros with a 30 per cent allowance, which understates taxable profit. Third, the missing number: platform listings without the declaration number, which both the commune and the tax office can read from their desks. Fourth, the undeclared platform income: assuming Airbnb reports nothing, when platforms transmit activity data that the commune and the tax administration can obtain and cross-check against your return. Fifth, the silent change of use: paying tax neatly on rents from a letting that was never authorised, which proves the turnover for the commune’s fine file while adding nothing to your defence. Each of these is cheaper to fix before an audit than after one, through a corrective return, a late registration, or a permission application, with advice on which order avoids admissions that hurt the parallel file.
If the tax office reassesses you, the redressement (the reassessment), read the proposal letter before anything else: it must state the legal basis, the facts, the amounts per year and the deadline for observations. Reply in writing within the deadline with documents, not adjectives: leases, platform statements, bank credits, invoices, the declaration acknowledgement, the permission, and the computation that shows the correct BIC result. Most reassessments end at this adversarial stage, the procédure contradictoire, when the file is complete. If the administration maintains the charge, file a formal claim, the réclamation contentieuse, to the tax office within the statutory time limit shown on the assessment, then, on express or implied rejection, appeal to the tribunal administratif (the administrative court) for the tax and to the tribunal judiciaire for civil fines such as the tourist-let and change-of-use penalties, each within its own deadline. Never let a deadline pass while negotiating informally: protective claims and appeals can be filed while talks continue, and withdrawing them later costs nothing, while missing the limit ends the case.
Fines follow their own judges. Registration and day-count fines go to the president of the tribunal judiciaire in fast-track proceedings at the commune’s request, and change-of-use fines and return-to-housing orders go to the same judge under the heavier scale described above. Challenge the summons on facts, dates and personalisation: was the unit let as a meublé de tourisme within the meaning of the Code, did the council deliberation in force at the time cover your facts, was the amount individualised to your conduct as the October 2025 ruling requires, and was the procedure, language and service valid against a defendant living in Britain? Separately, if a permission refusal blocks your business model, the refusal itself can be challenged before the administrative court within two months, with interim relief available in urgent cases where the letting season is at stake. A refusal based on missing compensation, on the district quota, or on an error about the unit’s use history deserves a second look, because councils’ rulebooks are detailed and mistakes happen.
Conclusion
A British-owned French second home can be let lawfully and profitably to holidaymakers, but only as a two-file business. The municipal file comes first: register the meublé de tourisme on the national portal, display the number on every listing, respect the day ceiling if the property is anyone’s main home, and, in any commune that controls housing use, obtain the change-of-use permission before the first guest, because letting without it risks up to 100,000 euros per unit plus a daily penalty until the flat returns to housing. The tax file comes second: declare the rents as BIC, choose each year between the 15,000-euro, 30-per-cent micro régime and the actual-profit computation, pay income tax at your marginal slice and the applicable social levies, and keep the invoices that justify your choice. Both files must match, because platform data now feeds the commune and the tax office alike. If a fine or a reassessment arrives, answer in writing, inside the deadline, with dated documents: the acknowledgement, the permission, the deliberation, the bank statements and the computation. Cases are won on proof and procedure, and the two 2024 and 2025 rulings quoted above show that courts enforce the letter of these texts in both directions, against owners who skip registration and against communes that fine jointly instead of personally. Set the paperwork straight before the season starts, and the French holiday let remains what it should be: a second home that pays its way.
Need a quick opinion on your case?
A French holiday let that draws a commune fine or a tax reassessment needs a lawyer quickly, before the reply deadline passes. Our British desk offers a first telephone consultation for 80 EUR including VAT, within 48 hours, with an English-speaking lawyer of the firm. Call +33 6 46 60 58 22 or write through our contact page. We act in Paris and across Île-de-France, and for owners based in Britain, by video call.