You live in Lyon, Toulouse or a village in the Dordogne. Back in Britain you still own a flat in Manchester, Leeds or London, and every month a letting agent sends you the rent, minus fees, minus tax withheld in the United Kingdom. Then the French tax return arrives, and the same rent appears again in your worldwide income. Two countries, one rent, and an obvious fear: paying full tax twice on the same money. Since Brexit this question has become sharper, because British landlords living in France can no longer rely on European Union coordination rules and must work entirely through domestic law and the Franco-British double tax treaty. The good news is that the treaty gives a precise answer. The United Kingdom is allowed to tax rent from property on its soil, France taxes you again as a French resident, and then France must give you a tax credit that wipes out the French tax on that rent, calculated under French rules. This article explains where your UK rental income is taxed, how the French credit is calculated, what to declare and when, and how to challenge the bill when the administration gets it wrong. It is written for a British reader and every French term is explained at first use.
I. Where Your UK Rental Income Is Taxed When You Live in France
A. France Taxes Your Worldwide Income, Including the Rent From Your British Property
Once you are a French tax resident, France taxes you on everything you earn anywhere in the world, and rent from a British house or flat is no exception. The rule is short: “Les personnes qui ont en France leur domicile fiscal sont passibles de l’impôt sur le revenu en raison de l’ensemble de leurs revenus.” That is article 4 A of the Code général des impôts, the French Tax Code. The word to understand is domicile fiscal, which means tax residence, not nationality and not the address on your passport. You are a French tax resident if your home (foyer) or your main place of stay is in France, if you carry on your main professional activity in France, or if the centre of your economic interests is in France. The statute lists the tests in these terms: “Sont considérées comme ayant leur domicile fiscal en France au sens de l’article 4 A : a. Les personnes qui ont en France leur foyer ou le lieu de leur séjour principal”, and the same article adds “Celles qui ont en France le centre de leurs intérêts économiques.” Meeting any one of these tests is enough, and for a British retiree, employee or remote worker settled in France with a French home, French bank accounts and daily life organised around France, the answer is normally straightforward: you are a French tax resident and your British rent falls inside the French tax net.
For French tax purposes that rent is classified as revenus fonciers, meaning rental income from unfurnished property. The classification comes from article 14 of the Tax Code, which covers “1° Les revenus des propriétés bâties, telles que maisons et usines”, in other words income from built property such as houses. A British assured shorthold tenancy of an unfurnished flat therefore produces revenus fonciers in France, even though the property, the tenancy agreement and the letting agent are all English. The classification matters because France computes the taxable profit under its own rules, not under the rules used by HM Revenue and Customs. British deductions, British allowances and the British tax year do not travel across the Channel. If your gross annual rent, calculated under the French definitions, does not exceed 15,000 euros, the simplified micro-foncier regime can apply, under which “le revenu imposable correspondant est fixé à une somme égale au montant de ce revenu brut diminué d’un abattement de 30 %.” In plain English: a flat 30 per cent allowance replaces all actual expenses. Above that threshold, or if you choose to do so, you are taxed under the régime réel, the actual-expenses regime, where letting-agent fees, insurance, repairs, local taxes comparable to deductible charges, mortgage interest on the loan used to buy or repair the let property, and management costs reduce the taxable profit. Keep every invoice, because the French administration will want proof in euros, and convert sterling amounts at an official annual rate that you apply consistently.
One timing trap deserves attention. The French tax year is the calendar year, while the British tax year runs from 6 April to the following 5 April. Your French return for a given year reports the rent actually received during that calendar year, whatever the British year says. Exchange-rate movements between receipt and declaration do not create a separate taxable gain here; they simply feed into the euro amount you declare. The same worldwide logic extends to the French social charges, the contributions sociales made up mainly of the CSG and the CRDS, which fund French social protection. The statute provides that “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”, and the list expressly includes “Des revenus fonciers”. Your British rent therefore enters the base of French income tax and of French social charges alike. That sounds like double taxation within France itself, but it is precisely why the treaty credit, examined in Part II, applies to both levies, as the Conseil d’État, the supreme administrative court, has confirmed for British-source income. A related question, what happens when you sell the British property rather than letting it, follows different treaty rules on capital gains and is examined in our companion analysis of a British resident selling a UK home while living in France; this article deals only with the rent.
Finally, the obligation to declare is personal and annual. The Tax Code states that “toute personne imposable audit impôt est tenue de souscrire et de faire parvenir à l’administration une déclaration détaillée de ses revenus et bénéfices”, and foreign income must appear in that return even where a treaty ultimately neutralises the French charge. Declaring is not optional, and silence is treated as concealment rather than as treaty planning. The practical declaration steps are set out in Part II, but the principle belongs here: declare everything first, then claim the credit.
B. The United Kingdom Taxes the Same Rent at Source Under Article 6 of the Treaty
The treaty signed in London on 19 June 2008 between France and the United Kingdom, explained in the official tax doctrine on the Franco-British treaty of 19 June 2008 (BOI-INT-CVB-GBR), gives the United Kingdom the first right to tax. Article 6 of that treaty, on income from immovable property, provides that rent from a building standing in one of the two States may be taxed in that State. In ordinary language: rent from a building standing on British soil may be taxed by Britain. The treaty confirms the breadth of the rule by extending it to direct use, letting, farm leases and every other form of exploitation of the property, so a standard residential letting falls squarely inside.
On the British side, that treaty right is exercised through ordinary UK taxation of landlords. If you live abroad, the Non-Resident Landlords Scheme operated by HM Revenue and Customs normally requires your letting agent or tenant to withhold basic-rate tax from the rent before sending it to you, unless HMRC has approved payment of the rent in full with tax settled later through a UK Self Assessment return. The official GOV.UK guidance on what the Non-Resident Landlords Scheme is explains who counts as a non-resident landlord and how the withholding works. You then file a UK return for the property income, deducting allowable expenses under British rules, and the official GOV.UK page on personal allowance for people living abroad confirms that British citizens and certain other categories can still claim the UK personal allowance against that rental profit, meaning a slice of the rental profit bears no UK tax. Keep the British computation, the withholding certificates and the Self Assessment statements: you will need them as evidence in France, even though, as Part II explains, the French credit does not depend on the amount of British tax you actually paid.
Two misunderstandings should be cleared up at this stage. First, paying British tax does not exempt you from declaring the rent in France. The treaty allocates taxing rights; it does not create an exemption from paperwork. Second, the fact that the United Kingdom taxes the rent does not cap what France may do before the credit. France computes its tax on the rent under French rules, at your French marginal rate, and only then subtracts the treaty credit. The computation of that credit is where most disputes arise, and it is the subject of Part II. Readers who also receive British dividends or interest alongside their rent should note that those categories follow different treaty articles with different credit mechanics; mixing them into the same calculation is one of the commonest errors the administration makes, and unpicking it is often the first step of a successful challenge.
II. How France Eliminates the Double Tax and How to Challenge the Bill
A. How the Article 24 Credit Wipes Out the French Tax and Social Charges
The double tax is eliminated in France by a treaty tax credit, and the treaty describes the mechanism in detail. Article 24 of the 19 June 2008 treaty, on elimination of double taxation, provides that “le résident de France a droit, sous réserve des conditions et limites prévues aux alinéas (i) et (ii) et au paragraphe 4, à un crédit d’impôt imputable sur l’impôt français.” For rental income, which falls outside the listed categories of sub-paragraph (ii), the credit rule is that it equals “(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”. Read that sentence twice, because it contains the whole secret of the system. The credit equals the French tax on the rent, not the British tax you paid. If the French tax on the rent is 3,000 euros and you paid 2,000 pounds of British tax, the credit is 3,000 euros and the French charge disappears. If the British tax is higher than the French tax, France still only credits the French amount; the surplus British tax is neither refunded nor carried forward by France. France taxes, then France un-taxes, and the British levy remains your definitive cost on that income.
The leading judicial explanation of this mechanism for British-source income is the opinion given by the Conseil d’État on 12 February 2020, appeal number 435907, published at Conseil d’État, avis du 12 février 2020, n° 435907 under reference ECLI:FR:CECHR:2020:435907.20200212. The court was asked how article 24 of the Franco-British treaty works for French residents receiving British-source income, and its answers are directly useful to British landlords in France. On the scope of the credit, the court held that the treaty’s opening words do not allow France to carve social charges out of the deal. On the computation, it confirmed that the treaty provides both a proportional method and a progressive method for measuring the French tax corresponding to the income, so the credit adapts to how the income is taxed in France rather than being limited to one style of taxation. On the conditions, the court gave landlords the two most practical rulings in the whole field. First, “cette condition n’exige pas que les revenus en cause aient été soumis à une imposition effective.” In other words, you do not need to prove that you actually paid British tax on the rent; what matters is that the rent falls within the base of a British tax covered by the treaty. Second, “la condition prévue à l’alinéa (i) du a) du paragraphe 3 de l’article 24 de la convention 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, parce que ces revenus étaient compris dans la base de l’un des impôts énumérés au a) du 1 de l’article 2 de la convention, alors même qu’il n’aurait acquitté dans cet Etat aucun impôt à raison de ces revenus.” A landlord whose British personal allowance wipes out any British tax bill, or whose British deductions leave no profit in a particular year, still qualifies for the full French credit, provided the rent was declared in the United Kingdom within a covered tax base. That ruling alone defeats a whole family of incorrect reassessments in which the French administration refuses the credit because little or no British tax was paid.
The same opinion settles the social-charges question, which is worth a fortune to landlords. Because the CSG and CRDS on revenus du patrimoine form part of the French tax covered by the treaty, the credit equal to the French tax on the rent also neutralises the social charges on that rent. Landlords who accepted a bill for social charges on British rent without a matching credit should therefore have the file reviewed: the treaty credit applies to both the income-tax line and the social-charges line of the French assessment.
How is the credit amount actually computed? The treaty defines the French tax corresponding to the income in two ways: where the income bears tax at a proportional rate, the product of the net income and the rate actually applied; where the income is taxed under the progressive scale, the product of the net income and the average rate resulting from the ratio between the tax actually due on the total net taxable income under French law and that total income. In practice the French software performs the calculation automatically once the return is correctly completed, and the progressive method means the credit reflects your real average rate, which is why the statute recalls that “il est fait application des règles suivantes pour le calcul de l’impôt sur le revenu” for taxpayers covered by article 4 B. The net income figure itself is determined under French computation rules, a point illustrated by a further ruling of the Conseil d’État, decision of 10 July 2019 number 412624, published at Conseil d’État, 10 juillet 2019, n° 412624 under reference ECLI:FR:CECHR:2019:412624.20190710. That case concerned a taxpayer with foreign-source income, including income connected with a company governed by British law, claiming a treaty credit, and the court described the mechanism as “une convention fiscale bilatérale prévoyant d’éliminer les doubles impositions par l’octroi d’un crédit égal au montant de l’impôt français correspondant à ces revenus.” The outcome, “Le pourvoi de M. B… est rejeté.”, confirmed the lower court’s computation approach, including that French adjustments to the foreign income base stand where the statute so provides. For landlords, the lesson is concrete: compute the French net rent correctly in the first place, because the credit simply mirrors whatever French tax that net figure produces.
B. Declaring the Rent, Paying on Time, and Challenging a Refusal or Double Charge
Declaration comes before credit, and the forms have a fixed logic. Each spring you file the main income return, form 2042, and you attach the foreign-income schedule, form 2047, whose official page on impots.gouv.fr: formulaire n° 2047, déclaration des revenus encaissés à l’étranger states that it must be filed by taxpayers domiciled in France who received income from outside France and joined to the overall return. In practice, British rent is entered on the foreign schedule 2047 with the country code for the United Kingdom, then carried to the revenus fonciers section with the foreign-source detail, using form 2044 for the actual-expenses computation where the régime réel applies. The detailed official doctrine on the Franco-British treaty, published by the tax administration in the Bulletin officiel des finances publiques at BOI-INT-CVB-GBR-10-30, convention fiscale entre la France et le Royaume-Uni, should be consistent with the return software, but software is not law: always check that the credit line for British rental income actually appears on the assessment notice (avis d’imposition), for income tax and for social charges separately. For the calendar mechanics around this treaty analysis, filing dates and which boxes to complete first, see our step-by-step guide to UK rental income forms and deadlines in France after Brexit. The five documents to keep every year are the British letting accounts, the UK Self Assessment return or withholding certificates, proof of the exchange rate used, the French 2047 and 2044 copies, and the French assessment notice showing the credit.
When the assessment is wrong, the challenge follows the standard French tax-dispute ladder, and the first rung is the administrative claim known as a réclamation. The statute gives the rule in these terms: “Les réclamations relatives aux impôts, contributions, droits, taxes, redevances, soultes et pénalités de toute nature, établis ou recouvrés par les agents de l’administration, relèvent de la juridiction contentieuse”, which is article L 190 of the Livre des procédures fiscales, the procedural tax code. In practice you write to the tax office that issued the assessment, normally within 31 December of the second year following the year of the assessment, setting out the facts, attaching the British and French returns, quoting article 6 and article 24 of the treaty, and asking for discharge (décharge) of the French tax and social charges on the rent with recognition of the full credit. Formulate the claim as a treaty-credit claim from the start, because an argument raised for the first time only before the court can face admissibility difficulties. If the administration rejects the claim expressly or stays silent for six months, which counts as an implied rejection, you may take the case to the administrative tribunal (tribunal administratif) of your home area, which will apply the treaty as interpreted by the Conseil d’État opinions cited above.
Three recurring errors are worth challenging systematically. The first is the missing or halved credit: the rent is taxed in France but no credit, or only a credit against income tax without the social-charges credit, appears on the notice. The 2020 Conseil d’État opinion answers both points. The second is the effective-taxation argument: an officer refuses the credit because your British personal allowance or British expenses meant you paid little or no UK tax. The opinion answers that no effective taxation is required and that declaring the rent in the United Kingdom within a covered tax base is enough. The third is the wrong-base argument: the administration computes the French net rent using British figures, or refuses French deductions for agent fees and interest, which shrinks the credit base. The 2019 ruling confirms that the credit mirrors the French tax on income computed under French rules. In complex files, especially where residence itself is disputed or where both States claim you as their resident, the treaty also offers a mutual agreement procedure (procédure amiable) under which the two tax administrations negotiate the outcome; the official BOFiP doctrine describes its scope and steps, and the request must be filed within the treaty time limit, so do not let the domestic claim timetable make you miss it.
For readers in Paris and the Île-de-France, two practical points strengthen the file. First, declare and pay through the Paris personal-tax offices that already handle large numbers of foreign-income files, and keep the French-language paper trail complete, because officers process treaty credits faster when the 2047 country coding and the 2044 computation are transparent. Second, jurisdiction for litigation follows your tax domicile: assessments issued to Paris residents are challenged before the tribunal administratif de Paris or, for parts of the inner suburbs, the tribunal administratif de Montreuil, and the same treaty arguments apply there as everywhere else in France. Local specificity changes the counter and the courtroom, never the treaty rule itself.
Conclusion
A British landlord living in France after Brexit faces two tax systems but should only ever bear one economic burden on the same rent. The United Kingdom taxes the rent because the property stands on its soil, under article 6 of the 19 June 2008 treaty. France taxes the same rent because you are a French tax resident, under articles 4 A and 4 B of the Tax Code, classifying it as revenus fonciers and computing it under French rules. Then article 24 of the treaty requires France to grant a credit equal to the French tax on that rent, covering income tax and social charges together, without demanding proof that British tax was effectively paid, as the Conseil d’État confirmed in its opinion of 12 February 2020. Declare the rent every year on forms 2042, 2047 and where needed 2044, check that both credit lines appear on the assessment, and challenge any missing or reduced credit by réclamation and then before the administrative tribunal within the time limits. Prepared files win these cases, because the treaty text and the case law are on the landlord’s side.