You have done the hard part. You sold up or scaled down in Britain, found your house in France, sorted the visa, and registered with the local doctor. Then the pension file lands on the kitchen table and the questions start. Your workplace pension and your personal pension, called a SIPP in Britain, are still sitting with a British provider. Your adviser mentions moving the whole pot to a QROPS, a qualifying recognised overseas pension scheme, so that everything sits in one place. Another adviser warns that the British tax authority, HMRC, will take a quarter of the pot on the way out. Meanwhile the French tax office expects you to declare worldwide income, and a neighbour insists France will tax the 25 per cent lump sum Britain pays out without tax. Every one of these statements contains a grain of truth and at least one trap. This guide works through the problem in the order a British resident of France actually meets it: whether to move the pot and what the British exit charge really costs, what France taxes on the transfer and on each later payment, which country the treaty lets tax your pension, and how to challenge a bill that taxes the same money twice. French terms are explained as they appear, and every decisive rule is quoted word for word from the statute, treaty or judgment that states it.

The stakes are higher than a paperwork annoyance. A transfer charge of 25 per cent on a 400,000-pound pot is 100,000 pounds gone before France has taxed a penny. A declaration missed on a foreign pension contract can turn a routine file review into penalties. And a treaty credit wrongly refused can mean paying full tax in both countries for years before anyone notices. The good news is that the framework is written down, the courts have answered the hardest questions, and a methodical file wins. What follows is that method, step by step.

I. Should you transfer your UK pension pot to a QROPS once you live in France?

A. Can I move my SIPP to a French QROPS after Brexit, and when does the 25 per cent UK charge bite?

A QROPS is a pension scheme outside Britain that HMRC recognises as eligible to receive transfers from British pension schemes without the transfer itself counting as an unauthorised payment. The British government’s own guidance provides that the overseas scheme you want to transfer your pension savings to must be a qualifying recognised overseas pension scheme, universally shortened to QROPS (GOV.UK, Transferring to an overseas pension scheme). The same page places the checking duty on you, to be done with the overseas scheme, your UK provider or your adviser. If the receiving scheme is not a QROPS, the consequences are brutal: your UK scheme may refuse the transfer, or you may face a tax charge of at least 40 per cent on the sum moved. So the first practical step is not a tax calculation at all. It is a status check on the receiving scheme, confirmed in writing before a single pound moves.

The charge that frightens most people is the overseas transfer charge. The British guidance states plainly that a 25 per cent tax may be due on a transfer. Whether the charge applies depends on two things: the country where the receiving QROPS is based, and your available overseas transfer allowance. The main exemption is geographic and personal at once. The guidance says no tax is due where both of the following apply: you live in the country where your QROPS is based, and the transfer stays within your available overseas transfer allowance. Read that twice, because it decides most French cases. A British resident of France who transfers a SIPP to a QROPS based in France, within the allowance, pays no overseas transfer charge. A British resident of France who transfers the same SIPP to a QROPS based in a third country, for example a scheme in Malta or Gibraltar that an adviser recommended years ago, fails the residence test and the 25 per cent charge bites in full. There is also an employer-scheme route: transfers to an employer-provided QROPS usually escape the charge.

Two timing traps surround the exemption, and both are expensive. The first is the five-year tail. The guidance carries a warning section for readers who move countries within five years of the transfer, directing them to form APSS 241. In practice this means a transfer that was exempt on day one can lose its exemption if you leave the QROPS country within five years, with a clawback assessed later. A family that moves the pot to a French QROPS, then relocates to Spain or back to Britain three years later for work or health reasons, can reopen a charge it thought was closed. Plan the five years before you sign, not after. The second trap is procedural and much shorter. The transfer uses form APSS 263, which sets out the information to provide before the transfer, and the sanction for silence is automatic: a transfer is taxed at 25 per cent where the requested information is not all provided within 60 days of the transfer request. Sixty days runs fast when two countries’ administrators are posting documents to each other. Diarise it, chase it, and keep proof of every sending.

Where the charge does apply, its base is wider than many expect. The guidance warns that where no exemption applies, the 25 per cent overseas transfer charge falls on the total amount transferred. Note the word total. The charge is not computed on the excess over the allowance alone in every case; on a non-exempt transfer it can attach to the whole sum moved. On a 300,000-pound transfer that is 75,000 pounds. This is why the residence test matters more than haggling over the allowance figure: passing it takes the whole transfer out of charge, failing it puts the whole transfer in. And remember the allowance itself still matters even when you are exempt on residence grounds, because any slice above “your available overseas transfer allowance” remains exposed. Get the allowance figure from your provider in writing, in pounds, before the transfer date, and keep the calculation with the transfer deed.

A final British-side point before crossing the Channel. Money paid out of the overseas scheme later can still attract British tax in some situations: UK tax may remain due on some payments from the overseas scheme, depending on when you were UK-resident (GOV.UK, Transferring to an overseas pension scheme). Transferring the pot does not cut every tie with the British system on day one. Your British residence history follows the payments for a time, and the treaty, examined in Part II, then decides which country has the taxing right each year. Anyone who tells you a QROPS makes you invisible to HMRC the morning after the transfer is selling something. The honest pitch is narrower and still valuable: one pot, one set of statements, one currency for spending, and no yearly British provider asking for a British address you no longer have.

So should you do it. The decision tree is short. First, confirm the receiving scheme is a genuine QROPS and get that confirmation in writing. Second, test residence: will you live in the QROPS country, in practice France, on the transfer date and for the five years after. Third, measure the pot against your available overseas transfer allowance and price the 25 per cent on the whole sum if either test fails. Fourth, run the French comparison in Part II before moving anything, because a transfer that saves nothing in France and costs 25 per cent in Britain is a loss whatever the brochure says. If all four answers point the same way, transfer with the forms filed inside sixty days. If any answer wobbles, sit still: an unmoved SIPP, correctly declared in France each year, beats a moved pot with a charge attached.

B. Does France tax the transfer itself, and what must I declare in the year of the move?

France taxes its residents on worldwide income. That is the starting point for everything, and the statute states it without nuance: net income of every category is assessed under the same rules “sans qu’il y ait lieu de distinguer suivant que ces revenus ont leur source en France ou hors de France” (article 158, 1, of the General Tax Code). The residence trigger itself is deliberately broad. Among the tests, the first is physical and family life: persons are treated as having their tax home, called domicile fiscal, in France when they “ont en France leur foyer ou le lieu de leur séjour principal” (article 4 B, a, of the General Tax Code). The foyer means the family home, the place where your spouse and children normally live; the séjour principal means where you spend most of your time. A British couple living eleven months a year in the Dordogne, with the children at the local collège, is French-resident for tax purposes even if the pensions, the bank, and the provider’s letterhead are all still British. Residence is about your life, not your paperwork.

Once you are resident, France taxes pensions as part of your overall income. The rule is short and covers everything: “Les traitements, indemnités, émoluments, salaires, pensions et rentes viagères concourent à la formation du revenu global servant de base à l’impôt sur le revenu” (article 79 of the General Tax Code). The same article adds a sentence that matters enormously for pension planning: “Il en est de même des prestations de retraite servies sous forme de capital.” A lump sum paid out of a retirement arrangement is caught by the same net. This is the hinge of the whole transfer question. A direct transfer from trustee to trustee, where no money passes through your hands and no benefit is paid to you, is not a pension paid to you; it moves the pot, it does not distribute it. But any step that cashes you out first, even briefly, even described as a technical stage of the transfer, can be characterised in France as a capital-form retirement benefit and taxed as income in the year you touch it. Never accept a transfer route that pays the money to you personally first. Insist on a direct scheme-to-scheme movement, keep the transfer deed showing you received nothing, and keep the bank statements proving it.

The declaration duty goes further than the income itself. France requires residents holding foreign capitalised contracts to report them every year. The statute provides: where capitalisation contracts or similar investments, “notamment des contrats d’assurance vie”, are taken out with bodies established outside France, “les souscripteurs sont tenus de déclarer, en même temps que leur déclaration de revenus, les références des contrats ou placements concernés, la date d’effet et la durée de ces contrats ou placements” (article 1649 AA of the General Tax Code). The same article requires reporting of payments in and out during the previous year and, where relevant, the surrender value or guaranteed capital on 1 January of the declaration year, and it ends with a warning: payments through undeclared contracts are presumed taxable income unless you prove otherwise. Your SIPP, your drawdown account, and arguably the QROPS itself after the move sit squarely in this reporting logic: foreign contracts, foreign bodies, yearly references, yearly movements. File the foreign-contracts form, known as form 3916, alongside the income return every single year, even in years you draw nothing. A pot that is perfectly legal but undeclared is the most common way a quiet retirement becomes a file with penalties.

One relief softens the yearly bill. Pensions and retirement income benefit from a standard deduction: “Les pensions et retraites font l’objet d’un abattement de 10 % qui ne peut excéder 4 439 €” (article 158, 5, a, of the General Tax Code). The ceiling applies per tax household across all pensions, it is revised yearly with the tax scale, and there is a floor of 454 euros per pensioner. In plain terms, France knocks 10 per cent off your pension income before applying the scale, up to the cap. This deduction applies to British pensions declared in France just as it does to French ones, once the treaty gives France the taxing right, which Part II examines. It does not apply to the 25 per cent British transfer charge itself: that charge is not French income, not French tax, and not creditable against French tax. Price it as a sunk cost of moving, never as something the French return will refund.

The year of the move needs a checklist, because two tax years and two countries overlap. First, pin down your residence date. The day your foyer or principal stay shifts to France, the worldwide rule starts applying to you, and every pension receipt after that date belongs on the French return. Second, keep the transfer direct and documented, as above, so no capital-form benefit arises in the year of movement. Third, declare the foreign contracts on form 3916 in the first French return and every return after, with references, dates, movements and values. Fourth, declare each pension receipt on the foreign-income form 2047 and carry it to the main return 2042, claiming the 10 per cent deduction and, where the treaty allows, the credit examined in Part II. Fifth, keep the British paperwork: transfer deed, allowance calculation, APSS forms, proof of the sixty-day filing, and any HMRC assessment. If the French office queries the file three years later, that envelope is your defence. Miss one of the five and the transfer can still be rescued, but every missing paper doubles the cost of the rescue.

II. Once you are French-resident, who taxes your UK pension income and how do you challenge double tax?

A. Which country taxes your State Pension, your workplace pension and your Crown pension under the treaty?

The treaty between France and Britain, signed in London on 19 June 2008, allocates taxing rights pension by pension. Its general rule for private pensions is residence-only taxation: subject to the government-service exception in article 19(2), pensions paid to a resident of one state for past employment are taxable only in that state (article 18 of the France-United Kingdom tax treaty of 19 June 2008). For the ordinary British retiree in France, someone with a State Pension, a former employer’s scheme, and a SIPP in drawdown, article 18 means France alone taxes the receipts. Britain should not tax them, and France taxes them under articles 79 and 158 with the 10 per cent deduction. Your declaration position follows directly: full declaration in France, no British tax to credit, because there is no British tax that the treaty allows.

The exception covers pensions paid by the British state itself for government service: civil service, armed forces, police, fire service, National Health Service employment treated as government service, and similar public payrolls. For these, the treaty keeps taxation with the paying state: such pensions are taxable only in that state (article 19, paragraph 2, of the France-United Kingdom tax treaty of 19 June 2008), meaning Britain where Britain pays. The treaty adds a nationality-and-residence proviso: the pension becomes taxable only in the other state if the recipient is a resident of that other state and holds its nationality without holding the paying state’s nationality at the same time. Concretely, a French national who is French-resident and draws a British government-service pension, without British nationality, is taxed only in France. A British national who is French-resident and draws the same pension stays taxable only in Britain. Teachers sit on the boundary and need individual analysis: a teacher paid from public funds for service to the state falls under the government article, while a teacher in a private school falls under the general article 18. Do not guess this classification. Get the paying body’s status in writing, because the whole declaration turns on it.

Where both countries may tax, the treaty eliminates double taxation through a French credit. The mechanism lives in article 24, and the Conseil d’État, France’s highest administrative court, has explained exactly how it works for British-source income. The court quotes the treaty’s own scope first: French social contributions, the CSG and the CRDS, are part of French tax under the treaty, listed alongside income tax in article 2. It then holds that the treaty’s opening words, “nonobstant toute autre disposition de la présente Convention”, mean that income taxable only in Britain may still be taken into account to compute French tax, but adds the key limit: that phrase “ne saurait permettre à la France, s’agissant des résidents de France personnes physiques, de ne pas appliquer le crédit d’impôt prévu à l’alinéa (i) du a) du paragraphe 3 de l’article 24 aux contributions sociales françaises, au motif qu’aucun impôt sur le revenu ou sur un élément du revenu de nature équivalente n’existe au Royaume-Uni” (Conseil d’État, avis, 12 February 2020, no. 435907). In plain terms: France cannot refuse the treaty credit on your CSG and CRDS by arguing Britain has no equivalent charge. The credit applies to the social contributions too.

The same opinion settles the question the tax office raises most often: must you have actually paid British tax to earn the French credit. The answer is no. The court holds that the income must be “compris dans la base de ” l’impôt du Royaume-Uni ” au sens du a) du paragraphe 1 de l’article 2 de la même convention, sans que le résident de France en soit exonéré à raison de son statut ou de son activité”, and then states the principle: “cette condition n’exige pas que les revenus en cause aient été soumis à une imposition effective” (Conseil d’État, avis, 12 February 2020, no. 435907). Inclusion in the British tax base suffices; effective payment is not required. The court then gives the practical test: the condition “doit être regardée comme satisfaite s’il est établi par le résident de France qu’il a déclaré les revenus en cause au Royaume-Uni”, adding “alors même qu’il n’aurait acquitté dans cet Etat aucun impôt à raison de ces revenus.” So a British pension that is within the British tax base, for example because Britain retains a taxing right under article 19, but on which you paid nothing because of personal allowances, still opens the French credit if you declared it in Britain. Keep the British tax return or the HMRC coding notice proving the declaration. That single document is worth the credit.

A cautionary tale from Paris shows the other side of the coin. In April 2025 the Paris administrative court of appeal rejected a taxpayer’s claim for the article 24 credit on millions of euros of employment income, holding that the work was in substance exercised in France and therefore not taxable in Britain at all. The court’s central finding was factual: the executive “ne peut être regardé comme ayant exercé son emploi de mandataire social de cette société ailleurs qu’en France”, so the income was not taxable in Britain under article 15 and no credit could arise under article 24, and the case ends “La requête de M. B… est rejetée” (Administrative Court of Appeal of Paris, 11 April 2025, no. 23PA02576). The lesson for pensioners is direct. Treaty relief follows the treaty’s allocation, not your preference. If the pension is taxable only in France under article 18, there is no British tax and no credit to claim; you simply declare and pay in France. If it is taxable in Britain under article 19, you declare in both countries and claim the French credit with proof of the British declaration. Claiming a credit where the treaty gives Britain no taxing right fails exactly as it failed in Paris.

One more building block for readers who split their careers between the two countries. Before Brexit, coordination rules required states to count insurance periods completed elsewhere when deciding pension rights. The Court of Cassation stated the principle in a case involving a British national: the competent social-security bodies of one member state “sont tenues de prendre en compte, aux fins de l’acquisition du droit à prestations de vieillesse, les périodes d’assurance accomplies dans un Etat tiers par un ressortissant d’un second Etat membre” where bilateral conventions recognise such counting for their own nationals (Court of Cassation, Second Civil Chamber, 7 November 2019, no. 18-18.344). That was European Union law applied while Britain was a member state. After Brexit, the Withdrawal Agreement and its social-security coordination carry equivalent protections for periods and rights built up before the end of the transition, but the mechanics now run through the agreement and the two administrations, not through Union citizenship. If your British State Pension forecast looks short because French years are missing, or the reverse, raise it with the International Pension Centre and the French caisse with both contribution records in hand, rather than assuming the years are lost. They usually are not, but they are never counted automatically.

B. How do I declare my UK pension on forms 2047 and 2042, and how do I challenge the bill?

The yearly routine, once residence and treaty position are settled, is mechanical. Enter each British pension on form 2047, the foreign-income schedule, identifying the source country as the United Kingdom and the nature of the income as pensions. Carry the totals to the main return 2042 in the pensions boxes, where the 10 per cent deduction of article 158, 5, a applies automatically within its ceiling. Where the pension is taxable only in France under article 18, that is the whole story: declare, deduct, pay the scale rate plus social contributions. Where Britain retains the taxing right under article 19 and you paid British tax, claim the article 24 credit on the French side for the French tax corresponding to that income, and attach the proof the Conseil d’État calls for: the British declaration showing the income was in the British base. Where Britain had the right but your allowances reduced the British bill to zero, claim the credit anyway on the same proof, because effective payment is not required. And every year, file form 3916 for the foreign contracts behind the income, whether you drew from them or not.

Social contributions deserve their own paragraph because they surprise every newcomer. French pensions bear the CSG and the CRDS, and British pensions taxable in France bear them too, since the treaty counts them as French tax. Pensioners affiliated to the French health system pay these on their pensions; pensioners holding a British S1 certificate, which moves health cover to Britain’s account under the coordination rules, may be lifted out of some French social charges on certain income, but the exemption depends on the income category, the form in which it is paid, and the certificate being valid and registered with the local caisse, known as the CPAM. Do not assume the S1 wipes the whole social-charges line. Read the assessment line by line: income tax at the scale, then each contribution separately. If a contribution was charged where an exemption applied, that single line is challenged on its own, with the S1 and the CPAM registration as exhibits. Precision here saves thousands, because the contributions run near ten per cent on top of the income tax.

When the assessment is wrong, challenge it in the order the system expects. First, file a claim, called a réclamation, with the tax office that issued the notice, setting out the treaty article, the numbers, and the exhibits: British declaration, HMRC notices, transfer deed, S1 where relevant. Most clean treaty-credit files are fixed at this stage, because the office applies the same Conseil d’État opinion quoted above. Second, if the claim is refused or unanswered for six months, appeal to the administrative court, the tribunal administratif, within two months of the refusal, asking for discharge of the double charge and repayment with interest. Third, on larger files, consider asking the court to seek the Conseil d’État’s view on a difficult treaty point, as happened in the 2020 opinion itself, rather than litigating the same question twice. Throughout, pay what is prudently due or secure a stay properly: interest and surcharges accrue while the file travels, and a win on the principle with two years of penalties attached is a half-win. And keep everything: the treaty credit the court described turns entirely on proof of declaration, and proof kept at home beats memory in every hearing.

Three files go wrong more often than any others, and each maps to a rule in this guide. The first is the cashed-out transfer: the saver who drew the whole SIPP as a British lump sum, paid no British tax thanks to the 25 per cent tax-free slice, moved the cash to France, and discovered the French office taxing the entire receipt as a capital-form retirement benefit under article 79, with the British 25 per cent slice fully taxable in France because article 18 gives France the right. The fix is prevention, direct trustee-to-trustee movement only, or, once done, careful analysis of the lump-sum taxation options and the treaty credit, argued line by line. The second is the undeclared contract: years of correct income declaration with no 3916, followed by a review, a presumption of taxable income on every movement, and penalties. The fix is immediate regularisation and full yearly filing going forward. The third is the credit claimed without proof: a Crown pension correctly taxed in Britain, French credit claimed, but no British declaration exhibited, so the office refuses and the court can only shrug. The fix is one envelope kept from day one. None of these is fatal if handled early. All three become expensive when discovered late.

Conclusion

The QROPS question has a shorter answer than the industry suggests. Move the pot only if the receiving scheme is a genuine QROPS, only if you live in the scheme’s country within your allowance so the 25 per cent charge stays away, only if you will stay there five years, and only by direct transfer with every form filed inside sixty days. Otherwise leave the SIPP where it is. France will tax the pension when it is paid, wherever the pot sits: worldwide income under article 158, pensions in the global base under article 79 with the lump sums included, the 10 per cent deduction to soften the scale, and the foreign contracts declared every year under article 1649 AA. The treaty then splits the bill fairly: France alone for the ordinary pension under article 18, Britain alone for the Crown pension under article 19 unless the nationality proviso moves it, and a French credit for British-taxed income under article 24 that needs declaration in Britain but not actual payment, as the Conseil d’État held. Declare in 2047 and 2042, prove the British declaration, check the social-contributions lines against the S1, and challenge a double charge early with the file complete. Done in that order, the pension that followed you across the Channel behaves like any well-kept French file: declared once, taxed once, and closed.