Every autumn, British owners of a French holiday home receive the envelopes that matter more than any Brexit headline: the French local tax bills. If you own a flat in Paris, a cottage in the Dordogne or a villa on the Côte d’Azur that is not your main home, France sends you two annual property taxes — the taxe foncière (property tax on built property, paid by the owner) and the taxe d’habitation sur les résidences secondaires (council-type tax on second homes, known as THRS). Since the 2023 finance law, a growing number of communes in tight housing areas (zones tendues) add a surcharge of 5% to 60% on the second-home tax, and many British owners discover the increase only when the avis d’imposition (tax bill) lands. This guide explains, for a British reader and in plain English, what each bill is built on, who the law treats as liable, which reliefs genuinely exist for a second home, and the exact procedure for challenging a bill that is wrong — with the statutory texts and two Conseil d’État decisions quoted word for word. It covers how the taxe foncière is computed from the cadastral rental value and who pays it when ownership changes hands, how the second-home tax and its surcharge work and how to check whether your commune lawfully voted it, the vacancy relief that can cut taxe foncière and the court ruling that protects owners who put a let property up for sale, and the step-by-step challenge route from online complaint to the administrative court, including a Paris and Île-de-France section. A companion overview on this site covers the full yearly cost picture for British second homes, from double taxation to wealth tax and rental income; this guide goes deep on the two bills themselves and on the challenge procedure.

I. What France Bills You Each Year on a Second Home

A. How Is Your Taxe Foncière Bill Built, and Who Has to Pay It?

The taxe foncière sur les propriétés bâties (TFPB, property tax on built land and buildings) is the owner’s tax. The starting rule is short: “La taxe foncière est établie annuellement sur les propriétés bâties sises en France à l’exception de celles qui en sont expressément exonérées par les dispositions du présent code.” That is Article 1380 of the Code général des impôts (CGI, the French tax code). Because the tax attaches to the building rather than to the person, Brexit changed nothing about who pays: a British owner, resident in the United Kingdom or in France, is liable in exactly the same way as a French owner. What matters is ownership of a built property in France, not nationality or residence.

Liability is fixed once a year, on 1 January. Two provisions combine here. First, Article 1400 of the tax code provides that “Sous réserve des dispositions des articles 1403 et 1404 , toute propriété, bâtie ou non bâtie, doit être imposée au nom du propriétaire actuel.” In practice the person who owns the house or flat on 1 January pays the whole year’s bill, even if the property is sold in February. Second, Article 1415 states the annual rule in one sentence: “La taxe foncière sur les propriétés bâties, la taxe foncière sur les propriétés non bâties et la taxe d’habitation sur les résidences secondaires sont établies pour l’année entière d’après les faits existants au 1er janvier de l’année de l’imposition.” If you complete your purchase on 5 January, the seller pays that year’s taxe foncière; if you sell on 20 January, you pay it. Notaires (the French conveyancing officials who handle completions) normally apportion the bill between buyer and seller in the completion accounts, but that apportionment is a private arrangement between the parties: facing the tax office, the 1 January owner is the debtor. The official service-public guidance confirms the same point in plain terms: you pay TFPB if you are owner or usufruitier (holder of a life interest or right of use over the property) of a built property on 1 January of the tax year, and the same bill also carries the household waste collection charge, the taxe d’enlèvement des ordures ménagères (TEOM). See the official TFPB page for the current presentation.

The amount itself comes from the valeur locative cadastrale (cadastral rental value), an administrative estimate of the annual rent the property could theoretically produce, fixed by the land registry records rather than by the market. Article 1388 of the tax code gives the computation in one line: “La taxe foncière sur les propriétés bâties est établie d’après la valeur locative cadastrale de ces propriétés déterminée conformément aux principes définis par les articles 1494 à 1508 et 1516 à 1518 B et sous déduction de 50 % de son montant en considération des frais de gestion, d’assurances, d’amortissement, d’entretien et de réparation.” In other words, the taxable base is half of the cadastral rental value, and the commune’s and intercommunal body’s voted rates (taux d’imposition) are applied to that halved base. The general framework for that rental value sits in Article 1494: “La valeur locative des biens passibles de la taxe foncière sur les propriétés bâties, de la taxe d’habitation sur les résidences secondaires ou d’une taxe annexe établie sur les mêmes bases est déterminée, conformément aux règles définies par les articles 1495 à 1508 , pour chaque propriété ou fraction de propriété normalement destinée à une utilisation distincte (1).” Because both taxes share the same base, an error in the cadastral description of your flat — wrong floor area, a garage that was demolished years ago, a swimming pool the previous owner filled in — inflates both bills at once, and correcting it pays twice. The tax office updates the base each year for new buildings, extensions, conversions and changes in the property’s characteristics, a rolling review organised by Article 1517 of the tax code, so a loft conversion or an extension declared for planning can lawfully push the next bill upward.

One yearly duty that British second-home owners often miss is the occupation return. Article 1418 requires owners to tell the tax office, before 1 July each year, who occupies each dwelling: “A des fins de gestion des impositions prévues aux 1406 bis, 1407 et 1407 ter , les propriétaires de locaux affectés à l’habitation sont tenus de déclarer à l’administration fiscale, avant le 1er juillet de chaque année, les informations relatives à la nature de l’occupation de ces locaux, s’ils en réservent la jouissance, ou s’ils sont occupés par des tiers.” In practice this is the Gérer mes biens immobiliers (Manage my properties) declaration on impots.gouv.fr. If you bought during the year, changed the use of the property, started letting it furnished, or left it empty, file the update: the tax office builds both the second-home tax and the vacancy taxes from this return, and a stale record is the most common cause of a wrongly issued bill. Readers who also hold higher-value French property should note that these annual local taxes sit alongside the national wealth tax on French real estate, the impôt sur la fortune immobilière (IFI); a companion guide on this site explains how the IFI threshold, declaration and challenge rules apply to British owners, and the two regimes must be checked separately because paying one never exempts you from the other.

B. How Does the Second-Home Tax Work, and When Does the 60% Surcharge Apply?

The taxe d’habitation (occupation tax) on main homes was abolished for all households from 1 January 2023, which is why some British buyers wrongly assume the tax has disappeared. It has not: it survives on second homes under the name THRS. Article 1407 of the tax code states the chargeable event plainly: “La taxe d’habitation sur les résidences secondaires est due pour tous les locaux meublés conformément à leur destination d’habitation autre qu’à titre principal, y compris lorsqu’ils sont imposables à la cotisation foncière des entreprises.” Any furnished dwelling kept for your own use — even used only a few weeks a year — is caught, and the only internal exception in the same paragraph concerns premises used exclusively for business. Unlike the old main-home tax, second homes get no income-linked rebates: the finance ministry’s own explainer confirms that since the reform, second homes benefit from no abatement, with 2026 bills issued from early November for most taxpayers. See the official THRS explainer for the current calendar and computation.

The liable person for THRS is, as a rule, the person who can occupy the dwelling on 1 January — owner, tenant or person housed there without a lease — rather than the owner as such. That distinction produces mistakes, and the tax code anticipates them: Article 1413 of the tax code organises what happens when the bill for a year was issued in the wrong name, allowing the correct taxpayer to be assessed within the limit of the relief granted to the person wrongly billed. So if you let your flat unfurnished year-round to a tenant whose main home it is, the tenant pays the old-style occupation tax position and you should not be billed THRS on top; if the flat is let furnished to holidaymakers or kept for your own stays, THRS falls on whoever holds the right to occupy on 1 January, which for most British second homes is the owner. Check the name, the occupancy box and the valeur locative line on the bill before paying: a flat wrongly coded as available to you all year when a long-term tenant lived there on 1 January is challengeable on that ground alone.

The surcharge is where bills have jumped. Article 1407 ter of the tax code lets councils in designated areas vote an increase, and the Conseil d’État itself recites the provision in these terms: “Dans les communes classées dans les zones géographiques mentionnées au I de l’article 232, le conseil municipal peut, par une délibération (…), majorer d’un pourcentage compris entre 5 % et 60 % la part lui revenant de la cotisation de taxe d’habitation sur les résidences secondaires et autres locaux meublés non affectés à l’habitation principale due au titre des logements meublés”. Three points follow. First, the surcharge applies only to the communal share of the bill, but at 60% it still transforms the total. Second, it requires a formal council vote (délibération): without a published délibération, the increase has no legal basis. Third, it is confined to communes listed in the tight-market zones defined by reference to Article 232 of the tax code, the same geography that governs the annual tax on vacant dwellings (TLV). The 2023 finance law widened that geography well beyond the original fifty-thousand-inhabitant urban areas, which is why mountain resorts, coastal towns and many Paris-region communes can now vote the surcharge. The official service-public page confirms the mechanics: only communes in a tight zone may apply the increase, it takes effect after the council vote, it has applied since 1 January 2024 in communes identified notably by a high proportion of dwellings used as something other than a main home, and exemptions exist — for example where your job obliges you to live in tied accommodation or a second home away from your family’s main dwelling. See the official THRS page for the current list logic and the exemption route.

Owners sometimes ask whether the surcharge itself can be attacked in court. The answer, on the current case law, is discouraging for blanket challenges and encouraging for targeted ones. In Conseil d’État, 21 December 2023, No 488601 (Federation of mountain-resort residents), second-home owners asked the court to annul the decree extending the tight-zone list and to send the underlying statutes — Articles 232 and 1407 ter — to the Constitutional Council. The court refused both. On the priority constitutional question it held that the applicants, offering only two examples of increases and general remarks about resort communes, brought nothing showing that Parliament had used anything other than objective and rational criteria or imposed an excessive burden, so the question was not serious: “Il n’y a, dès lors, pas lieu de la renvoyer au Conseil constitutionnel.” On the decree itself, it rejected the pleas of missing countersignature and manifest error of assessment, holding that the extension to smaller communes came directly from the statute and that the applicants directed no useful criticism at the listed communes against the statutory criteria. The operative part is blunt: “La requête … est rejetée.” Read the full ruling here: CE, 21 December 2023, No 488601. The lesson is practical rather than theoretical. Do not spend money arguing that the 60% surcharge is unconstitutional in itself; spend it checking the two points that decide real cases — whether your commune appears on the zone list for the year billed, and whether its council actually voted a délibération fixing the rate. Either defect kills the increase on your bill. Also keep the categories straight: a furnished second home that you occupy, even briefly, pays THRS and is not a vacant dwelling, so the vacancy taxes (TLV and THLV) do not stack on top of it. The administration’s own guidance states that a furnished second home liable for the occupation tax is outside the vacancy taxes; see the official TLV/THLV page. If your bill shows both THRS and a vacancy tax on the same furnished flat, one of the two lines is wrong.

II. Paying Less Lawfully and Challenging a Wrong Bill

A. Which Relief Genuinely Cuts Taxe Foncière When the Property Stands Empty?

French local tax is not generous to empty second homes, so precision matters: the valuable relief sits on the taxe foncière side, not on THRS. Article 1389 of the tax code allows a reduction of taxe foncière where a house normally intended for letting stands vacant, or where business premises the taxpayer uses directly lie unused, running “à partir du premier jour du mois suivant celui du début de la vacance ou de l’inexploitation jusqu’au dernier jour du mois au cours duquel la vacance ou l’inexploitation a pris fin.” The Conseil d’État restates the three cumulative conditions in its leading judgment: the vacancy must be independent of the owner’s will, last at least three months, and affect either the whole building or a separately lettable part — “que la vacance (…) soit indépendante de la volonté du contribuable, qu’elle ait une durée de trois mois au moins et qu’elle affecte soit la totalité de l’immeuble, soit une partie susceptible de location (…) séparée” (CE, 5 June 2020, No 423066, point 3, read the full ruling via the linked decision).

The facts of that case read like many British files. The owner of a house in Darnétal, billed for taxe foncière for 2014 and 2015, had given a letting mandate, then signed a sale mandate on 3 June 2014, and finally sold on 30 January 2015. The Rouen administrative court refused all relief, reasoning that once put up for sale the house was no longer exclusively intended for letting. The Conseil d’État quashed that reasoning twice over. First, “la seule circonstance qu’un bien demeurant effectivement proposé à la location soit mis en vente n’est pas de nature à priver le contribuable du bénéfice du dégrèvement prévu au I de l’article 1389 du code général des impôts” — putting a property on the market does not by itself end the relief; the lower court should have asked whether the owner had actually kept looking for tenants. Second, relief is monthly and divisible: “la taxe est dégrevée du premier jour du mois suivant celui du début de la vacance jusqu’au dernier jour du mois au cours duquel la vacance a pris fin”, so the owner could in any event claim it for 1 January to 30 June 2014. The operative part follows: “Le jugement du 22 mai 2018 du tribunal administratif de Rouen est annulé”, the case was sent back to Rouen, and the State was ordered to pay 3,000 euros under Article L. 761-1 of the administrative justice code.

For a British owner, the method to take from this judgment is concrete. If your French house stands empty between lets, or a sale drags on while the property is genuinely offered for rent, keep the paper trail from day one: the letting mandate with the local agent, dated advertisements, viewing records, correspondence showing refused or failed tenancies, and evidence that the vacancy comes from the market rather than from your choice — works you commissioned, a tenant who left unexpectedly, a sale process that froze viewings for identified weeks. Three months of involuntary vacancy opens the right, and even a partial period inside the year counts, as the Darnétal ruling shows. Conversely, do not expect the equivalent on the THRS side: a furnished flat kept at your disposal is taxable as a second home whether you sleep there twice a year or twenty times, and choosing to leave it empty does not convert it into a vacant dwelling for relief purposes. Owners who move to short-term letting should also check the registration and planning position before calculating anything, because many communes now condition furnished letting on prior registration; a companion guide on this site explains how registration, change-of-use permission and fines work for British second homes let on platforms.

B. How Do You Challenge a Bill Step by Step, Including in Paris and Île-de-France?

Start with the bill itself, not with the payment. On the taxe foncière notice, verify the cadastral base against the property’s reality (surface, outbuildings, pool, number of rooms used for the assessment), the rates applied, and any exemption line you should have received. On the THRS notice, verify the occupancy coding as of 1 January, the rental value, and the surcharge line: does a majoration appear, at what percentage, and did your commune actually vote it for that year? Cross-check the commune’s délibérations, published on the commune website or available from the mairie, and confirm the commune’s presence in the tight-zone list for the year. Photograph or save everything: bills, the Gérer mes biens immobiliers return, mandates, meter readings showing low consumption, and the délibération or its absence.

The first formal step is the administrative complaint, the réclamation contentieuse. The deadline is statutory and strict. Article R*196-2 of the tax procedure book provides: “Pour être recevables, les réclamations relatives aux impôts directs locaux et aux taxes annexes doivent être présentées à l’administration des impôts au plus tard le 31 décembre de l’année suivant celle, selon le cas : a) De la mise en recouvrement du rôle, de la notification d’un avis de mise en recouvrement ou de l’émission d’un titre de perception” — with further limbs covering the event giving rise to the claim and tax paid without assessment. Concretely, for 2026 bills the complaint must reach the tax office by 31 December 2027, a date the administration itself publicises; see the official how-to-challenge page, which also gives the online route step by step: log in to your espace Finances publiques on impots.gouv.fr, open the secure messaging, choose the complaint motive for the relevant tax and year, set out the request with the references shown on the bill, and attach the evidence. A paper letter to the tax centre shown on the bill, or a visit to the counter, remains valid; whatever channel you use, state the tax, the year, the references, the precise correction sought and the legal basis — wrong rental value, wrong occupant on 1 January, surcharge without délibération, vacancy relief under Article 1389 — and keep proof of sending. Paying the bill first does not close the door: the same Article R*196-2 expressly contemplates claims after payment of tax collected without assessment, and in local-tax practice a timely complaint followed by a court action preserves your position while the file is examined.

If the administration rejects the complaint expressly or lets six months pass without answering, the dispute moves to the administrative court (tribunal administratif) for the place of taxation — the court covering the commune where the property sits. For a Paris flat that is the Paris administrative court; for the inner and outer suburbs it is the court of the department concerned (for example Montreuil, Cergy-Pontoise, Melun or Versailles depending on the property’s location), so address the claim to the right registry from the start. Paris and Île-de-France owners face two local realities worth building into the file. First, tight-zone coverage and voted surcharges are now the norm rather than the exception across the capital and much of the Petite Couronne, so the délibération check is decisive: download the council’s vote for the exact year billed and compare its rate with the percentage printed on your notice. Second, Paris files move faster when the complaint attaches the complete cadastral picture — the completion deed (acte de vente) showing areas and outbuildings, the DPE or floor plans, dated photographs of any demolished annexe or filled pool, and the letting or occupancy history for the 1 January reference date — because most Paris corrections turn on base errors and occupancy coding rather than on grand legal theory. File in French, number the exhibits, and keep every exchange in the secure messaging thread so the court sees a complete record.

One final cross-border note for British readers who let their French house: France taxes the rents under its own rules first, and British residents must also consider the United Kingdom side. The GOV.UK overview of tax on foreign income, including residence and reporting is the starting point for checking what the United Kingdom expects from a United Kingdom resident with French rental receipts. That is a separate exercise from the French local-tax challenge, and it should not delay the French complaint: French deadlines run regardless of what you file in Britain, and a French claim filed late is inadmissible however strong the substance.

Conclusion

A British second home in France carries a predictable annual load — taxe foncière on the halved cadastral rental value as owner on 1 January, THRS as holder of a furnished dwelling kept for your own use, TEOM on the same notice — plus, in a growing number of tight-zone communes, a voted surcharge of up to 60% on the communal share of the second-home tax. Each line of the bill answers to a checkable text: Article 1380 for the annual charge, Articles 1400 and 1415 for the 1 January rule, Articles 1388 and 1494 for the base, Article 1407 for the second-home charge, Article 1407 ter for the surcharge with its mandatory council vote, Article 1418 for the July occupation return, and Article R*196-2 for the 31 December of the following year complaint deadline. Where the property genuinely stands empty and is offered for letting, Article 1389 opens a monthly vacancy reduction whose conditions the Conseil d’État reads strictly but fairly — a sale mandate alone does not defeat it. Where the bill is simply wrong, the route runs from the notice’s own lines to the online or paper complaint and, if needed, to the administrative court of the property’s location. Work through the lines in that order, keep the documents the judges actually read, and treat every surcharge percentage as guilty until its délibération proves it innocent.