Your British family already owns its French house through a société civile immobilière, the non-trading French property company everyone calls an SCI. The purchase is behind you, the statuts (the company’s written constitution) are signed, the house belongs to the company, and each family member holds parts sociales (shares in a company whose capital is not divided into actions). Now comes the part nobody explained at the signing table: how this small company must be run year after year, which French tax returns it must file, how children can later buy, receive or give up shares, how a parent who wants out actually leaves, and what to do when the tax office or a co-shareholder says no. Since Brexit, British shareholders are third-country nationals, so every filing, every declaration and every proof of transparency matters more than it did when the United Kingdom was still in the European Union. This guide takes over where our companion guide on setting up an SCI for a French holiday home stops: it explains, in plain English and with the French statutes quoted word for word, how a British family runs its SCI, pays its yearly taxes, moves shares between generations, leaves the company, and challenges a refusal or a tax bill, with practical pointers for Paris and the Île-de-France where many British families base their French life.
I. How Does a British Family Run Its French SCI Year by Year After Brexit?
A. Who decides what inside your SCI, and what papers prove it?
An SCI is first and foremost a société, a contract between people. The Civil Code states that “La société est instituée par deux ou plusieurs personnes qui conviennent par un contrat d’affecter à une entreprise commune des biens ou leur industrie en vue de partager le bénéfice ou de profiter de l’économie qui pourra en résulter.” (Article 1832 of the Civil Code). That opening sentence explains why judges treat the SCI as a genuine company rather than a mere label stuck on a house: at least two associés (partners or shareholders) put property into a common venture, and they share the profit or the saving that results. For a British couple, that usually means husband and wife; for a wider family, it means parents and children holding different proportions of the shares from the start.
The rules that govern this company sit in the chapter of the Civil Code devoted to civil companies, and the Code says so expressly: “Les dispositions du présent chapitre sont applicables à toutes les sociétés civiles, à moins qu’il n’y soit dérogé par le statut légal particulier auquel certaines d’entre elles sont assujetties.” (Article 1845 of the Civil Code). In practice this means your SCI lives under general company law plus whatever your own statuts add. The statuts are the single most important document in the life of the company: they name the gérant (the manager who represents the company day to day), they fix how decisions are taken, they organise the approval of newcomers, and they set what happens when someone wants to leave. British families often sign statuts drafted in a hurry at the time of purchase, sometimes on a template the agent or the developer supplied. Years later, when children are adults, when parents separate, or when one branch of the family wants to sell, those few pages decide everything. If your statuts are thin, have them reviewed and amended by formal decision before the dispute arises, because once positions harden every amendment needs wider agreement.
Daily management belongs to the gérant. He or she signs the insurance contract, instructs the plumber, opens the bank account, collects any rent, and represents the SCI before the tax office. But the gérant is not the owner of the house and cannot do whatever he or she likes. The Code provides that “Les décisions qui excèdent les pouvoirs reconnus aux gérants sont prises selon les dispositions statutaires ou, en l’absence de telles dispositions, à l’unanimité des associés.” (Article 1852 of the Civil Code). Selling the house, borrowing against it, granting a lease for an unusually long term, or carrying out major works normally exceeds routine management and therefore requires a collective decision taken as the statuts provide, or unanimously if the statuts say nothing. For a British family this rule has a very concrete consequence: the parent who lives nearest the property and handles everything informally should still seek written authority for big steps, because an informal habit never replaces a vote.
Collective decisions are taken by the associés meeting together. The current wording of the Code is short: “Les décisions sont prises par les associés réunis en assemblée.” (Article 1853 of the Civil Code), while the statuts may also allow written consultation, including by electronic means, under conditions they define. The practical lesson is simple: hold a real yearly meeting, even if the whole family sits around one kitchen table in Kent or in the Dordogne, and write a procès-verbal (signed minutes) recording who was present, what accounts were approved, what use of the house was agreed, and what powers were given to the gérant. British families sometimes ask whether an English-language note of a family discussion is enough. It is better than nothing, but a short French procès-verbal signed by all associés carries far more weight before a bank, a notaire (the French public officer who handles conveyancing and successions), or a court. Keep these minutes with the accounts, the tax returns and the bank statements in one file, paper or digital, so that any heir, buyer or tax inspector can follow the life of the company without gaps.
Two money questions dominate family life inside an SCI. The first is who pays for what. Repairs, insurance, taxe foncière (the yearly local property tax paid by the owner, here the SCI), and loan repayments are company expenses, normally funded by contributions in proportion to shares unless the statuts or a unanimous decision provide otherwise. When one family member advances money, record it as a compte courant d’associé (a shareholder loan account in the company’s books), with the amount, the date and the repayment terms, rather than as a vague family gift. Undocumented payments between relatives are the classic source of SCI litigation: one side later calls the money a gift, the other calls it a loan, and the company cannot prove either. The second question is who may use the house and on what terms. A mise à disposition without rent charged (use of the property by one or more associés with no rent payable) is lawful and common in family SCIs, but it should be authorised in the statuts or by collective decision, so that a child who never visits cannot later claim that the parent who lived there rent-free owes the company years of back rent. Conversely, if the SCI lets the house to paying tenants, even to relatives, the rent belongs to the company, must pass through its account, and will be taxed as explained below. Our real estate law practice in Paris regularly sees British families whose SCI works perfectly on paper but whose money flows bypass the company account entirely; putting every euro through the SCI account is the cheapest insurance policy a family company can buy.
Family conflict inside an SCI deserves frank treatment, because the Cour de cassation (France’s highest civil court) has shown how far a breakdown can go. In a 2017 case about an SCI that owned a clinic building, a shareholder who was also manager of the tenant company asked to withdraw while the two companies were suing each other over rent and works, and the SCI resisted. The Court of Appeal authorised his withdrawal, and the Cour de cassation upheld that outcome, holding that the appeal court had been able to conclude from all the evidence that the shareholder had justifiable grounds for leaving and that its decision was legally justified: the judgment records that the court found “que M. [Z] avait de justes motifs de se retirer de la SCI” and had “légalement justifié sa décision” (Cass. 3rd civil chamber, 23 March 2017, appeal no. 16-13.649). The lesson for British families is not that anyone can walk out at will, but that persistent divergence of interests, parallel litigation and genuine animosity, properly documented, can amount to the justes motifs (justifiable grounds) the statute requires. Keep calm written records of disagreements, meeting invitations, refusals and proposals: if withdrawal ever has to be authorised by a judge, that paper trail becomes the case.
B. Which French tax returns must your SCI file every year?
The yearly tax life of a family SCI has three layers: the income tax layer, the 3 per cent tax layer for entities, and the wealth and local tax layer. Each layer has its own return, its own deadline and its own penalties, and British shareholders must treat all three seriously even if they are not French tax residents.
The starting point is that the classic family SCI is transparent for income tax. The Tax Code treats certain property companies as having no separate personality from their members for direct taxes: they are, in the statutory language, “réputées, quelle que soit leur forme juridique, ne pas avoir de personnalité distincte de celle de leurs membres pour l’application des impôts directs”, and, crucially, “les associés ou actionnaires sont personnellement soumis à l’impôt sur le revenu ou à l’impôt sur les sociétés, suivant le cas, pour la part des revenus sociaux correspondant à leurs droits dans la société.” (Article 1655 ter of the General Tax Code). In plain English: if the SCI rents out the house, each associé is taxed personally on his or her slice of the rental profit, under French income tax rules, whether that person lives in France or in the United Kingdom. The SCI itself files the annual return known as form 2072, which declares the company’s income and allocates it between the associés, and each individual then reports his or her share on the personal French return, with the France-United Kingdom double tax treaty available to relieve double taxation through the mechanisms our guide on dual tax residence and the treaty tie-breaker explains. If nobody rents the house out and nobody lives in it for payment, the 2072 still has to be filed: a nil or loss return is still a return, and repeated failures to file draw penalties and invite closer attention. Families who let through holiday platforms should be especially careful, because platform data now reaches the tax authorities, and undeclared rents are among the easiest adjustments to raise. The official filing instructions and calendars are published each year on impots.gouv.fr, which is the reference British owners should check rather than relying on forum summaries.
The second layer is the annual 3 per cent tax on the market value of French property held through entities. The statute casts its net very wide: “Les entités juridiques : personnes morales, organismes, fiducies ou institutions comparables qui, directement ou par entité interposée, possèdent un ou plusieurs immeubles situés en France ou sont titulaires de droits réels portant sur ces biens sont redevables d’une taxe annuelle égale à 3 % de la valeur vénale de ces immeubles ou droits.” (Article 990 D of the General Tax Code). Three per cent of the property’s valeur vénale (open-market value) every single year is a heavy charge, and it exists precisely to push entities holding French property into the open. The good news is that ordinary family SCIs whose members are identified can escape it: the Code lists exemptions, including for entities established in France, in the European Union or in a state that has an administrative assistance treaty with France and that disclose their members each year (Article 990 E of the General Tax Code). Since Brexit the United Kingdom is no longer in the European Union, but the exemption route through disclosure remains the practical path for British family structures, which is why the yearly 3 per cent declaration, form 2746, must name the persons behind the company completely and consistently. The Cour de cassation has underlined how strict this regime is: in a 2024 case about a Liechtenstein foundation holding a French villa, it recalled that “Il résulte de la combinaison de ces textes que toute entité est redevable de la taxe de 3 % sur la valeur vénale des immeubles qu’elle possède en France, sauf à justifier relever d’un des cas énumérés par le dernier.” (Cass. commercial chamber, 10 May 2024, appeal no. 21-11.230). In that case the foundation, which by its very legal nature had no shareholders and could only name a hypothetical future beneficiary, failed to meet the disclosure conditions set by Article 990 E, and the Court approved the tax charge for the years 2010 to 2014 with surcharges and interest. The judgment even quotes the disclosure standard word for word: entities must declare or undertake to disclose “la situation, la consistance et la valeur des immeubles possédés au 1er janvier, l’identité et l’adresse de l’ensemble des actionnaires, associés ou autres membres qui détiennent, à quelque titre que ce soit, plus de 1 % des actions, parts ou autres droits, ainsi que le nombre des actions, parts ou autres droits détenus par chacun d’eux.” A British family SCI is nothing like an opaque foundation, but the message applies directly: declare every holder above 1 per cent, every year, with names, addresses and numbers of shares that match the company’s own registers. A family that leaves a child off the form, or reports round numbers that do not match the statuts, hands the administration the very argument it needs.
The third layer is wealth and local taxation. France abolished the old wealth tax on all assets but kept a yearly tax on property wealth, the impôt sur la fortune immobilière, universally called IFI. The Code opens with the words: “Il est institué un impôt annuel sur les actifs immobiliers désigné sous le nom d’impôt sur la fortune immobilière.” and makes liable those whose qualifying assets exceed 1,300,000 euros (Article 964 of the General Tax Code). SCI shares held by individuals count towards IFI on the fraction of their value representing French property, which surprises British families who thought that putting the house into a company removed it from wealth tax. If you live in France, your worldwide property counts; if you live in Britain and are not French tax resident, only your French property counts, but the SCI shares are still in the base. Debts taken out to buy or improve the property can generally be deducted under strict conditions, so keep the loan contracts and the works invoices with the IFI file. Alongside IFI, the SCI as owner pays the taxe foncière each autumn, and the family must check the position on taxe d’habitation (the occupier’s tax, now kept mainly for second homes with possible surcharges in tight housing areas): a house kept empty or used only for holidays can attract notices that look wrong but follow from the way the local council recorded the occupation. Read every avis d’imposition (tax bill) line by line, compare the named taxpayer, the address and the stated use with reality, and query anything odd quickly rather than filing the bill away until penalties accrue. British owners settling in the Paris region should note that their file will typically sit with the Paris tax offices and that any in-person appointment, like any formal complaint, will run entirely in French: bring translations of the English documents and keep copies of everything handed over.
II. How Do You Sell or Give Away SCI Shares, Leave the SCI, or Fight a Tax Bill?
A. How do you sell or give SCI shares and leave the SCI without breaking it?
Shares in an SCI move in three main ways: sale to a relative or an outsider (cession de parts), gift, often to children (donation de parts), and withdrawal from the company with repayment of the value of the shares (retrait). Each route has its own paperwork, its own tax, and its own traps, and choosing the wrong one is expensive. Start with the statuts every time: most family SCIs require the agrément (prior approval) of the existing associés before shares can be transferred to anyone, sometimes even to other family members, and the clause sets the majority, the timetable and the fallback if approval is refused. A sale agreed privately over Christmas and announced to the notaire in January can collapse in February if the agrément clause required a registered letter, a meeting and a three-month window that nobody observed. Read the clause, follow it to the letter, and keep proof of each step.
A sale of shares is taxed in the hands of the seller and registered by deed. Because a family SCI that owns a French house is normally a personne morale à prépondérance immobilière (an entity whose assets are mainly property), the Tax Code applies its special rate: “2° A 5 % : – pour les cessions de participations dans des personnes morales à prépondérance immobilière.” (Article 726 of the General Tax Code). Five per cent of the price of the shares is a material cost that families often discover late, especially where parents sell to children for a modest stated price while the true value of the underlying house is far higher: the administration can challenge an understated price and reassess on the real value of the shares, which follows the real value of the property. Add to this the capital gains tax on the sale of the shares themselves, computed under the property gains rules for individuals where the seller is an individual, with holding-period relief that runs for decades rather than years, and with the seller’s residence position deciding how the France-United Kingdom treaty applies. Anyone selling shares while living in Britain should therefore model three figures before signing anything: the 5 per cent registration duty, the capital gains charge with social charges where applicable, and the treaty relief available on the United Kingdom side, using the official guidance on gov.uk for British citizens in France alongside French sources. The deed of transfer must be in writing, registered within the statutory time limit, and served on the company or accepted by it, after which the share register, the statuts if they name the holders, and the 3 per cent tax declarations must all be updated consistently. One inconsistent name across these documents is all it takes to trigger questions the following year.
Gifts of shares to children are the standard way British families bring the next generation into the SCI, and they work best when planned as gifts of nue-propriété (bare ownership) with the parents keeping the usufruit (the right to use the property and take any income from it). This split, called démembrement, lets children become associés immediately while parents keep control and use of the house, and it can reduce gift tax because only the bare ownership is taxed on a scale that depends on the parents’ ages. But gifts interact with the forced heirship rules that protect children, the réserve héréditaire (the slice of the estate the law reserves to children) and the quotité disponible (the free slice the owner may give to anyone). The Code sets the arithmetic without ambiguity: “Les libéralités, soit par actes entre vifs, soit par testament, ne pourront excéder la moitié des biens du disposant, s’il ne laisse à son décès qu’un enfant ; le tiers, s’il laisse deux enfants ; le quart, s’il en laisse trois ou un plus grand nombre.” (Article 913 of the Civil Code). A British parent with three children who gives nearly all the SCI shares to the eldest may therefore face a claim from the younger ones at succession, and since 2021 a child whose foreign applicable law gives no reserved-share protection can levy a compensatory claim on French assets to restore the French reserved rights. Gifts of shares must pass before a notaire, be valued honestly with a proper valuation of the underlying house, and be disclosed to all the children; a secret gift of shares discovered after death poisons the succession and can end in court. Where the family includes children from different relationships, or a child with disabilities needing protected arrangements, take advice on the gift programme before the first deed, not after the third.
Leaving the SCI without selling to anyone is the retrait, and the statute offers two doors. The Code states: “Sans préjudice des droits des tiers, un associé peut se retirer totalement ou partiellement de la société, dans les conditions prévues par les statuts ou, à défaut, après autorisation donnée par une décision unanime des autres associés.” and adds: “Ce retrait peut également être autorisé pour justes motifs par une décision de justice” (Article 1869 of the Civil Code). The first door is agreement: check what the statuts say about withdrawal, convene the meeting, and record the unanimous authorisation and the repayment terms in the minutes. The second door is the court, and it requires justes motifs, which the Saint-Blancard case discussed above illustrates: lasting divergence of interests, parallel lawsuits, and documented hostility can qualify, while mere convenience or a better personal plan generally does not. The withdrawing associé is entitled to the value of the shares, and where the parties disagree on that value the Code sends them to an independent expert: “la valeur de ces droits est déterminée, en cas de contestation, par un expert désigné, soit par les parties, soit à défaut d’accord entre elles, par jugement du président du tribunal judiciaire ou du tribunal de commerce compétent, statuant selon la procédure accélérée au fond et sans recours possible.” (Article 1843-4 of the Civil Code). That expert is bound to apply any valuation rules the statuts or the parties’ agreements lay down, which is another reason to write a clear valuation clause into the statuts now: a clause fixing, for example, that shares are valued by reference to the market value of the property less net debt, with an independent valuer chosen jointly, saves a fortune in expert proceedings later. After withdrawal, update the share register, the RCS file, the bank mandates and the tax declarations, and make sure the departing member is released from guarantees he or she gave for company borrowing, because lenders do not release guarantors automatically.
B. How do you challenge a refusal, a valuation or a 3% tax bill?
Challenge methods differ depending on who said no. Start with refusals inside the company. If the other associés refuse the agrément of your buyer, the statuts and the law organise a way out: typically the company or the remaining associés must buy the shares themselves or find another purchaser, within a set period and at a price fixed by agreement or, failing agreement, by the Article 1843-4 expert. Do not treat a refusal as the end of the story, and do not sell in breach of the clause either: a transfer made without a required agrément can be annulled, leaving the seller liable to the disappointed buyer and still a member of the company. Write to the gérant by registered letter referring to the exact clause, set out the proposed transfer with the price and the identity of the buyer, and ask for the meeting to be convened within the clause’s time limit. If the gérant is also your opponent in the dispute, have the letter sent by recorded delivery and keep the receipt, because proof of notification decides these cases. Where the statuts are silent or contradictory, a short formal letter before action (a mise en demeure) followed by an application to the tribunal judiciaire (the civil court that hears company disputes) will usually move matters: judges in Paris, who see many SCI cases, expect the claimant to show that every internal route was tried first.
Valuation fights follow their own track. Whether the dispute concerns a withdrawal price, a buyout after refused agrément, or a gift the tax office calls understated, the same discipline applies: commission an independent written valuation of the house from a qualified local agent or surveyor, gather comparable sales for similar properties in the same commune, adjust openly for condition, tenure and any tenancy, and disclose the report to the other side before positions freeze. The Article 1843-4 expert appointed by the president of the court works under a fast-track procedure with no appeal against the appointment itself, and must apply the valuation rules in the statuts or the parties’ agreements where they exist. Families weaken their own case by advancing round figures with no workings, by valuing the shares as a simple fraction of a guessed house price without deducting company debt or allowing for tax latent on gains, or by producing valuations dated years before the relevant event. A valuation file with a dated report, photographs, comparables, loan statements and the expert’s terms of reference is the standard the courts expect, and it also settles most disputes without a judge: once both sides see reasoned numbers, agreement usually follows.
Tax bills require a different reflex: read, check the taxpayer name, then complain in the right order. A 3 per cent assessment, an IFI rectification or a capital gains reassessment always arrives with explanations of how to contest it, and the first step is invariably a written complaint (réclamation) to the tax office that issued the notice, within the time limit printed on it, setting out the facts, the law and the evidence. For the 3 per cent tax, the winning file is usually a disclosure file: coherent statuts, up-to-date share register, every 2746 declaration for the years at issue, proof of filing, and identification of every holder above 1 per cent, matching the company’s own records to the euro and the letter. The Beaux-Arts saga shows what happens when disclosure fails, but its mirror image is equally instructive: a family SCI that declares fully, consistently and on time is exactly the transparent entity the exemption was written for. For IFI and capital gains, the file turns on valuation and on proof of residence and treaty position: dated valuation reports, works invoices, loan documents, tenancy agreements, and evidence of where each associé actually lived during the year. The official portal impots.gouv.fr and the general guidance on the official service-public.fr portal explain the complaint routes, and British taxpayers should use the secure messaging in their online tax account so that every exchange is timestamped. If the administration rejects the complaint in whole or in part, the next step is the administrative court (tribunal administratif), with strict time limits running from the rejection, express or implied. For families in Paris and the Île-de-France, the relevant offices are the Paris directorates of public finances (DRFiP) and, on appeal, the Paris courts; hearings run in French, documents in English need certified translation, and representation by a lawyer admitted in France is the norm rather than the exception. Throughout, pay what is formally due under protest where the law requires it to stop surcharges running, while stating expressly that payment is made under dispute and continuing the challenge: paying to stop interest is not the same as accepting the bill.
Two final cautions apply to every challenge. First, respect the hierarchy of norms: the statuts bind the associés between themselves, but they never bind the tax administration, which applies the statutes and the treaty as written. An internal agreement that one branch of the family bears all the tax does not stop the Treasury from pursuing the company or each taxpayer for what the law demands; it only creates a claim between family members afterwards. Second, watch the clock from day one. Company actions, tax complaints and court applications all carry time limits, and the administration’s own notices state them clearly. Diarise every deadline on receipt, reply by the channel the notice specifies, and keep every receipt, because in both company and tax litigation the party with the complete dated file usually prevails over the party with the better story told too late.
Conclusion
A family SCI is a machine for holding, sharing and passing on a French house, but like any machine it needs servicing: yearly meetings with signed minutes, money flowing through the company account, honest tax returns on income, on the 3 per cent tax where it applies, and on IFI, and share movements carried out by the book with proper approval, proper deeds and proper valuations. British families who run their SCI in this disciplined way rarely need a judge: buyers accept their shares, children receive them without quarrel, leavers are paid their value, and the tax office finds the disclosure file it was written to reward. When a refusal or a bill does arrive, the same discipline becomes the challenge file: the clause invoked to the letter, the valuation reasoned to the euro, the complaint filed in time and in the right order. The statutes quoted in this guide, from the definition of a company to the withdrawal of a member, from the transparency of the family SCI to the 3 per cent tax and its exemptions, give British owners the framework; careful paperwork supplies the proof. Keep both in order, and the French house can remain what it was meant to be: a family home, not a family dispute.