You have settled in France, your working life was in Britain, and now a UK pension lands in your bank account every month. The first question every British retiree in France asks is the same: where is my pension taxed, France or the United Kingdom, and do I really have to pay twice? Since Brexit changed nothing in the tax treaty but everything around it, the answer depends on one distinction that the French tax office applies strictly: a private pension earned in a British company is taxed in the country where you live, while a pension earned serving the British State is, in most cases, taxed only in the United Kingdom. Confuse the two and you either pay tax you do not owe or you omit income you must declare, with penalties on top. This guide explains, for a British reader with no French legal training, how the France-United Kingdom double tax treaty of 19 June 2008 sorts your pensions, how France taxes what it is allowed to tax, what happens when you move a pension to an overseas scheme known as a QROPS (qualifying recognised overseas pension scheme), and how to challenge the bill when both countries claim the same income. Every French term is explained the first time it appears, and every decisive statement is anchored to the treaty text, the statute, the official guidance, or a court decision you can open yourself.
I. Is my UK private pension taxed in France or the UK now that I live in France?
If your pension comes from private employment, a personal pension contract, or a company scheme such as a defined contribution pot or a final salary scheme run by a private employer, the treaty gives the right to tax to France, the country where you live. That single sentence governs the State pension top-up, workplace pensions, and personal pensions alike, but it leaves four practical problems: proving where you live for tax purposes, declaring the income on the right French forms, computing the French charge correctly, and deciding whether to transfer the pot abroad.
A. Which country taxes your State, workplace and personal pensions, and how France relieves double taxation
The starting point is your tax home, called in French the domicile fiscal (the place whose tax law treats you as its resident). Article 4 B of the French General Tax Code, the Code général des impôts, treats as French tax residents the persons who meet any one of three tests: “Les personnes qui ont en France leur foyer ou le lieu de leur séjour principal” (persons who have their household or their principal place of stay in France), persons who work in France unless that work is merely incidental, and persons whose centre of economic interests is in France. In the Bordeaux case on foreign public pensions, the administrative court of appeal recalled the consequence in plain terms: “M. B… est, en principe et sous réserve de stipulations conventionnelles particulières, passible en France de l’impôt sur le revenu en raison de l’ensemble de ses revenus, y compris ses revenus de source étrangère” (CAA Bordeaux, 3 October 2023, no. 21BX02149). Once you are French resident under these tests, France taxes your worldwide income, including every British pension, unless the treaty says otherwise.
For private pensions the treaty does not say otherwise: it confirms French taxation. Article 18 of the convention published by Decree no. 2010-20 of 7 January 2010 reserves pensions for past employment to the pensioner’s State of residence: such pensions are, in the treaty’s own words, taxable “only in that State”. In ordinary English: a pension earned in Britain and paid to someone living in France is taxed in France, not in Britain. A British retiree living in France is a resident of France for treaty purposes, so a pension from Tesco, British Airways, a bank, a personal pension provider, or the British State pension scheme falls to France. The United Kingdom must then give up its taxing right, and if tax was operated at source through the British PAYE (pay as you earn) payroll system, you reclaim it from HMRC (His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs) with the treaty claim form, keeping the French assessment as your single charge.
That French charge is computed in three layers. First, income tax, called impôt sur le revenu, applies to the pension after a statutory reduction: “Les pensions et retraites font l’objet d’un abattement de 10 % qui ne peut excéder 4 439 €” (Article 158-5-a of the Code général des impôts). The 10 per cent allowance, capped and floored by statute each year, works like the British personal allowance in reverse: it is taken off the pension before the progressive scale is applied. Second, the social charges, called contributions sociales, apply on top of income tax. Pensions paid to French residents bear the general social contribution known as the CSG (contribution sociale généralisée) and its companion the CRDS (contribution au remboursement de la dette sociale): “Sont assujetties à la contribution au taux de 8,3 % les pensions de retraite, et les pensions d’invalidité” (Article L. 136-8 of the Social Security Code, the Code de la sécurité sociale). Reduced rates of 6.6 per cent and 3.8 per cent exist for households whose reference income, the revenu fiscal de référence, sits below annually adjusted thresholds, and the very lowest pensions can be exempt; the rate printed on your French assessment therefore depends on the income shown two years earlier. Third, where the treaty leaves a residual British charge on the same income, France eliminates the double burden through a tax credit, called a crédit d’impôt. Article 24 of the treaty states the credit rule for ordinary income: the credit equals the French tax attributable to that income, provided the French resident is liable to United Kingdom tax on it (Article 24(3)(a)(i) of the France-United Kingdom treaty). In practice the credit equals the French tax on that income, so you never pay more than the higher of the two national bills, but you must still declare everything in France first.
Declaration is where many British residents go wrong. The French return has a main form, the form 2042 (déclaration d’ensemble des revenus), and a foreign-income annex, the form 2047 (revenus encaissés à l’étranger). The official guidance on the impots.gouv.fr portal on taxing foreign income instructs taxpayers to declare gross foreign income before foreign tax on annex 2047, carry it to the main 2042 return, and enter the treaty credit on the familiar 8VL to 8UM lines of the complementary 2042-C return. Declare the gross British pension before British tax, carry it to the main return, and claim the treaty credit on the complementary return 2042-C. Income that the treaty exempts in France, such as a British government pension discussed in part II, does not travel the same road: it is shown only for the progressive rate calculation, the taux effectif (effective-rate mechanism), on the special lines of the return. Mixing the two channels, credit versus effective rate, is the most common reason the computer produces a bill that looks like double taxation when it is really a coding error on the return.
When the assessment is genuinely wrong, the courts apply a strict method that protects you if you invoke it correctly. The Paris court of appeal restated the classic rule: “Si une convention bilatérale conclue en vue d’éviter les doubles impositions peut, en vertu de l’article 55 de la Constitution, conduire à écarter, sur tel ou tel point, la loi fiscale nationale, elle ne peut pas, par elle-même, directement servir de base légale à une décision relative à l’imposition” (CAA Paris, 10 June 2022, no. 21PA01586, concerning the France-United Kingdom treaty of 19 June 2008). Translated: the treaty can block the French statute, because treaties rank above statutes under Article 55 of the Constitution, but it cannot itself create a tax; the judge first checks whether the French statute validly charges the income, then whether the treaty forbids that charge. A claim that says only “the treaty exempts me” without identifying the French charge and the treaty article that removes it will fail, while a claim that walks through statute then treaty, with the British P60 (annual pay and tax certificate), the French assessment, and proof of British tax paid, gives the judge the complete chain to grant discharge, called décharge (cancellation of the charge).
B. Should you move your British pension to a QROPS, and what does the 25 per cent transfer charge really cost?
Advisers in Spain, Portugal, and France routinely propose moving a British pension to a QROPS, often based in Malta or Gibraltar, promising gross roll-up and freedom from British lifetime limits. Before signing, understand what the British side charges and what the French side then taxes, because the transfer itself can cost a quarter of the pot and the French treatment of the funds afterwards is no lighter than for a pension left in Britain.
On the British side, the transfer rules are set by HMRC and published on gov.uk. The starting warning on gov.uk about transferring to an overseas pension scheme is blunt: where the receiving scheme is not a QROPS, the British scheme may refuse the transfer, or an unauthorised-payment charge of at least 40 per cent of the value applies. Even when the receiving scheme is a genuine QROPS, a further charge called the overseas transfer charge may apply: without an exemption, 25 per cent of the whole transfer value is charged. Exemption depends on both where you live and where the QROPS sits, on whether the scheme is provided by your employer, and on residence stability over five tax years: move country within five years of a supposedly exempt transfer and HMRC claws the 25 per cent back. The detailed exemptions are set out in the HMRC overseas transfer charge guidance. A British resident of France who moves a pension to a Maltese QROPS while living in France is typically outside the same-country exemption, so the realistic assumption is a 25 per cent British charge on the whole transfer value, deducted by the British scheme before anything reaches Malta. The transfer form also carries a trap: fail to supply the required information within 60 days of requesting the transfer and the transfer is taxed at 25 per cent by default.
On the French side, the transfer does not buy exemption. France taxes QROPS pensions paid to French residents exactly like pensions still in Britain: Article 18 applies by reference to residence, not to the location of the fund, so the Maltese or Gibraltarian wrapper changes nothing about which country taxes the pension once you are French resident. Lump sums need particular care. British law lets most members take up to a quarter of the pot as a tax-exempt pension commencement lump sum; France has no equivalent blanket exemption for a foreign lump sum received by a French resident. A one-off capital payment is caught by the progressive scale in the year of receipt unless a smoothing mechanism applies, which is why large QROPS commutations can push a retiree into the top French band for a single year. French law offers two relief valves. Where the capital by its nature cannot be collected yearly and exceeds the average net income of the previous three years, the taxpayer may elect for the quotient system, the système du quotient: “l’intéressé peut demander que l’impôt correspondant soit calculé en ajoutant le quart du revenu exceptionnel net à son revenu net global imposable et en multipliant par quatre la cotisation supplémentaire ainsi obtenue” (Article 163-0 A-I of the Code général des impôts). Where the capital represents several years of arrears received at once through no choice of the recipient, a spreading mechanism over the years of normal maturity can apply instead. Neither mechanism is automatic: each must be expressly claimed on the return, with the British P45 or provider certificate showing the nature and maturity dates of the payment, and each is audited closely because advisers routinely label ordinary commutations as exceptional income.
The honest comparison therefore runs as follows. Leave the pension in Britain: no transfer charge, French taxation of each pension payment under Article 18 with the 10 per cent allowance and treaty credit for any residual British tax, French social charges at the applicable CSG rate, and a straightforward annual 2047 and 2042 cycle. Move it to a QROPS: a likely 25 per cent British transfer charge on the capital, possible adviser and scheme fees, identical French taxation of everything the QROPS later pays you, and a lump-sum year that needs quotient planning. The transfer can still make sense for consolidation, currency, succession, or investment reasons, but it is never a French tax saving on its own, and any adviser who presents it as one should be asked to put that claim in writing with the treaty article cited. Keep every transfer document, the HMRC overseas transfer charge account reference, and the QROPS manager’s annual statements: if the French office later treats the transfer capital itself as taxable income rather than a mere change of wrapper, those papers are the evidence that only the subsequent pension payments, not the transfer, constitute taxable income.
II. My NHS, teacher, civil service or forces pension is taxed in the UK: can France tax it again now that I live in France?
Public-service pensions obey the opposite rule from private pensions, and this is where British retirees in France most often overpay. If your pension rewards service to the British State itself, the treaty reserves it to the United Kingdom even though you live in France. The French office may still want to see it on your return, but seeing it and taxing it are different things, and the difference is worth real money every year.
A. Which public pensions Article 19 reserves to the United Kingdom, and the dual-nationality exception that sends them back to France
Article 19 of the treaty, headed Fonctions publiques (government service), draws a fence around State pay. For pensions it provides that pensions paid by a treaty State or one of its local authorities for services rendered to that State are taxable “only in that State” (Article 19(2) of the France-United Kingdom treaty). In plain terms: pensions paid by a treaty country, or one of its local authorities, for services rendered to that State are taxable only in that State. A pension paid by the British Government for work as a civil servant in Whitehall, a teacher in a State school paid from public funds, an NHS (National Health Service) employee whose pension comes through the public scheme, a police officer, a firefighter, a member of the armed forces, or a local council officer falls inside this fence and stays taxable only in the United Kingdom while you live in France.
Three boundaries matter. First, the payer must be the State acting as State, not as business. Article 19(3) sends pensions for services performed in connection with a commercial activity carried on by the State back to the ordinary rules, so a pension from a publicly owned company operating commercially is tested under Article 18 like a private pension. Second, the treaty adds a nationality exception that surprises dual nationals: where the pensioner is both a resident of France and a French national without also holding British nationality, the pension becomes taxable only in France instead. The exception applies where the pensioner is a resident of France and holds French nationality without also holding British nationality, in which case the pension becomes taxable only in France (Article 19(2), second sentence). A British-only national living in Lyon with an NHS pension therefore stays taxable only in Britain; a French-only national living in Lyon with the same career history is taxable only in France; a dual British-French national keeps the British-only taxation because the exception requires French nationality without British nationality. Third, war and injury pensions have their own niche in Article 19(4), which exempts qualifying French and British service-related pensions in one country when exempt in the other, by cross-reference to Article 81(4) of the French Code on one side and to sections of the British Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003 and the Personal Injuries (Emergency Provisions) Act 1939 on the other. Anyone with a forces injury or war-disablement pension should check that paragraph before accepting any charge.
The courts illustrate how strictly these fences are policed. In the Bordeaux litigation the court worked through the two-step test on facts close to many British cases: first worldwide taxation under domestic law, then the treaty’s government-service reservation, quoting the treaty’s rule that qualifying public pensions “ne sont imposables que dans cet Etat” and then testing whether the claimant’s Norwegian State pension met that definition (CAA Bordeaux, 3 October 2023, no. 21BX02149). The comparison is instructive rather than decisive for a British pension, because the wording of each treaty must be read on its own, but the method is identical under the Franco-British text: identify the payer, prove the service was rendered to the State, and only then claim exclusive taxation. Documentary proof carries the case: the pension award letter naming the public employer, the P60 showing the payer, the contract or posting history for teachers and health staff whose employer changed status over the years, and, for forces personnel, the service record. Where the file is thin, the French office reclassifies the pension as private and taxes it under Article 18, which is exactly the reassessment to challenge with the papers above.
B. Declaring each pension on the right line and challenging the bill when France taxes what the treaty reserves to Britain
Correct declaration differs by pension type, and the return must show the office which rule you invoke. Private pensions taxable in France go through the 2047 annex and the main 2042 with the treaty credit on the 2042-C as described in part I. Public pensions taxable only in Britain go through the effective-rate path: they are declared so that France can compute the rate applicable to any remaining French-taxable income, but they attract no French tax themselves. Concretely, the exempt British government pension appears on the special effective-rate lines of the return and not in the taxable base, which preserves the progressivity of the French scale on your other income without charging the pension. The treaty credit lines 8VL to 8UM are not for these pensions, because there is no French tax to credit against; using the credit lines for an Article 19 pension signals to the computer that the pension is taxable with relief, and the assessment that follows will look like lawful double taxation when it is really a misclassification. When in doubt, attach an explanatory note, called note annexe (supplementary statement), identifying each pension, its payer, and the treaty article claimed, and keep a copy with the filing receipt.
If the assessment taxes an Article 19 pension, the challenge follows the standard French tax dispute ladder, and each rung has a deadline. First, the prior claim to the tax office, the réclamation contentieuse (formal objection), must reach the office by 31 December of the second year following the assessment year, asking for discharge of the wrongly charged portion with the treaty article, the pension papers, and the computation of the overcharge. Second, if the office rejects expressly or stays silent for six months, an appeal lies to the administrative court, the tribunal administratif, within two months of the rejection. Third, appeal goes to the administrative court of appeal, the cour administrative d’appel, and finally to the supreme administrative court, the Conseil d’État. The lead authority on the credit machinery you will rely on comes from the Conseil d’État itself: interpreting the treaty’s opening words “nonobstant toute autre disposition de la présente Convention”, the court held that “qu’alors même que d’autres stipulations de la convention prévoient que certains revenus sont imposables ou ne sont imposables qu’au Royaume Uni, ces revenus peuvent néanmoins être pris en compte pour le calcul de l’impôt français” (CE, 12 February 2020, no. 435907). In English: even where the treaty says income is taxable only in Britain, France may still count it to set the rate on your other income. That sentence cuts both ways: it authorises the effective-rate mechanism on your Article 19 pension, but it forbids France from charging full tax on it, and any assessment that charges more than the rate effect is vulnerable on this exact ground.
Two further defences complete the file. Social charges on an Article 19 pension follow the income-tax fate: where France has no right to tax the pension, it has no right to levy CSG and CRDS on it either, and the 8.3 per cent charge quoted in part I applies only to pensions within French taxing jurisdiction, which an Article 19 pension is not. And where the office argues that you never proved British taxation, answer with the treaty’s own condition, as restated by the Conseil d’État (CE, 12 February 2020, no. 435907): for ordinary private-pension credit under Article 24(3)(a)(i), the credit is due “(i) pour les revenus non mentionnés à l’alinéa (ii), au montant de l’impôt français correspondant à ces revenus à condition que le résident de France soit soumis à l’impôt du Royaume-Uni à raison de ces revenus”, so produce the HMRC tax calculation or P60 alongside the French assessment rather than debating in the abstract. File the claim even while negotiating with HMRC over a British refund, because the French deadline does not wait for the British process, and mention the parallel HMRC claim in the French papers so the judge sees one coherent double-taxation story rather than two separate complaints.
Conclusion
For a British resident of France, the pension map has two territories and a toll bridge between them. Private pensions, including the State pension, workplace schemes, and personal pots, belong to France under Article 18, with the 10 per cent allowance, the CSG scale, and a treaty credit for any residual British tax, declared through forms 2047, 2042, and 2042-C. Public-service pensions for work rendered to the British State belong to Britain under Article 19, visible on the French return only through the effective rate, with the dual-nationality exception as the one gate back to French taxation. Moving a pot to a QROPS changes the wrapper, not the map, and usually pays a 25 per cent British toll for the privilege, with French quotient relief available only if expressly claimed for a genuinely exceptional lump sum. When the French assessment crosses these lines, challenge it rung by rung, prior claim, administrative court, court of appeal, Conseil d’État, with the treaty article, the payer’s letter, and both countries’ assessments in the bundle. The distinction repays the effort every year the pension is paid.
Need a quick opinion on your case
For a telephone consultation within 48 hours with an advocate of the chambers, the first consultation is billed at 80 EUR including tax. To arrange it, call +33 6 46 60 58 22 or write through our contact page. Bring your latest French assessment, your British P60 or pension statements, and any QROPS transfer papers so the advice can be given on the complete file.