Since Brexit, owning a holiday flat in Nice, a stone cottage in the Dordogne or a studio in Paris has become a more demanding project for British buyers. You are now a third-country national in France, limited to short stays, yet the French tax office treats your French bricks exactly as before: every year brings its bills, whether you spent the summer there or never crossed the Channel. The two annual property taxes, the possible surcharge in high-demand towns, the wealth tax above a high threshold, the strict rules on holiday lets and the 90-day Schengen cap form a single system, and a mistake on one front often triggers a bill on another. This guide works through each of them in the order a British second-home owner meets them, with the exact legal texts, two recent court rulings that directly concern second homes and holiday lets, and a practical method for challenging a bill you believe is wrong.

Two warnings frame everything that follows. First, French tax is assessed on facts as they stand on 1 January each year, so your position on New Year’s Day decides the whole year’s bill. Second, the demands of the tax office and the demands of the town hall are separate: paying your taxes does not authorise you to let the property to tourists, and registering a holiday let does not exempt you from any tax. Keep those two channels distinct and most nasty surprises disappear.

I. Do you still pay French property taxes on a second home after Brexit?

Yes. Brexit changed your right to stay in France, not the tax charge on French land and buildings. Two local taxes apply, each with its own logic, and a third charge can multiply the second one in the towns where housing is scarcest.

A. Taxe foncière: the annual bill every British owner pays

The taxe foncière sur les proprietes baties, the annual land tax on built property, is the bill that reaches every owner of a French house or flat, resident or not, British or French. Article 1380 of the Code général des impôts, the French general tax code, states that “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”, which means the tax is levied each year on all built property in France except property the code expressly exempts (article 1380, Code général des impôts, on Legifrance). An ordinary second home benefits from no such exemption. New houses sometimes enjoy a temporary two-year relief decided by the local council, but that is a local favour, never a right, and it must be checked commune by commune.

The person who pays is the owner as recorded on 1 January of the tax year. If you complete your purchase in March, the seller remains liable for that year’s bill, and notaries routinely adjust the price between buyer and seller on a day-count basis at completion; if you sell in November, you still pay the whole year’s tax. This single date governs everything, so diarise it: what you own on 1 January is what you are taxed on for the year.

The amount is built from the valeur locative cadastrale, the notional rental value the land registry attributes to your property and its outbuildings, multiplied by the tax rates voted each autumn by the commune, the intercommunal body and, in some cases, special-purpose syndicates. The cadastral value is increased every year by a national indexation coefficient voted in the Finance Act, so the bill creeps up even when local rates do not move. Because each council votes its own rate, two identical cottages a few miles apart can produce very different bills, and a change of municipal majority can raise your tax without any change in your property. The bill, called an avis d’imposition, arrives in your online tax account in the autumn, with payment due in October. If you have no French online tax account yet, create one as soon as the purchase completes: demands are now paperless by default and “I never received the letter” is not a defence.

Reliefs exist but they are narrow and aimed at modest owner-occupiers of a main home, not at second-home owners. Do not assume that age, disability or low income wipes out the bill on a holiday house; most of those concessions depend on occupying the property as your main residence. The practical discipline is therefore simple: check the cadastral description of your property for errors such as a wrong floor area, a swimming pool you do not have or an outbuilding that no longer exists, because the rental value, and with it the tax, follows the description. Keep the completion deed, the seller’s last bill and photographs of the property, and compare each autumn’s avis with the previous year’s line by line. A sudden jump usually comes from a rate vote, a revaluation or an administrative error, and only the paperwork lets you tell which.

One administrative duty is frequently missed by British owners. Since the removal of the residence tax on main homes, every owner of residential premises must file a declaration of occupation, the déclaration d’occupation, stating who lives in each property and in what capacity. The official guidance requires owners to complete it before 1 July whenever a property has never been declared or something has changed since the last declaration, and to state whether they keep the use of the property and the nature of that occupation (official guidance on the residence tax for second homes, service-public.fr). The return is filed online in the Gérer mes biens immobiliers section, the “manage my property” area, of the impots.gouv.fr account. Get the status wrong there, for example by leaving a holiday cottage declared as vacant when you use it every summer, and the wrong tax follows automatically.

In Paris and the inner suburbs, one local particularity deserves attention. The capital votes some of the lowest rates in France, so the taxe foncière on a Paris studio can look modest next to a Dordogne farmhouse, but the square metre values in the cadastral base are high and outbuildings such as parking spaces are taxed separately. Check each element on the avis rather than the total alone.

B. Taxe d’habitation on second homes and the 60% surcharge in tight housing zones

The taxe d’habitation sur les résidences secondaires, abbreviated THRS and usually translated as the residence tax on second homes, is the second annual bill, and the one that causes most confusion. The residence tax on main homes was abolished for all households from 1 January 2023, which leads many British buyers to assume no such tax exists any more. The opposite is true for second homes: the tax survives in full, and in high-demand areas the commune can multiply it. Article 1407 of the tax code provides that “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”, so every furnished dwelling used as somewhere other than a main home is caught, and premises used exclusively for business escape it only where the business use is genuinely exclusive (article 1407, Code général des impôts, on Legifrance).

As with the land tax, liability is fixed on 1 January. The official guidance states that the tax is set for the whole year according to your position on 1 January and that you owe it whenever you have the permanent disposal or enjoyment of a second home, meaning a furnished property that is not your main residence but that you can occupy at any time for your private use, whether as owner, yearly tenant or even free occupier (official guidance on the residence tax for second homes, service-public.fr). Note the breadth of that test: you do not need to have spent a single night in the house. If the keys are in your drawer and the beds are made, you have its disposal.

The sharpest recent authority on this exact point concerns owners of tourist gîtes, the furnished holiday cottages so many British buyers dream of, and it went against the owners. In a decision of 23 December 2024, the Conseil d’État, France’s supreme administrative court, case number 492174, the tax office had charged residence tax on two gîtes classed as tourist furnished accommodation and let for short stays through online platforms. The lower court had cancelled the bills, reasoning that the heavy letting activity proved the owners kept no personal use of the cottages. The Conseil d’État annulled that judgment and restated the rule: “lorsqu’un logement meublé fait l’objet de locations saisonnières ou de courte durée, le propriétaire du bien est redevable de la taxe d’habitation dès lors qu’au 1er janvier de l’année de l’imposition, il peut être regardé comme entendant en conserver la disposition ou la jouissance une partie de l’année”, which means that where a furnished dwelling is let seasonally or for short periods, the owner owes the residence tax whenever, on 1 January of the tax year, he can be regarded as intending to keep its disposal or use for part of the year (Conseil d’État, 8th chamber, 23 December 2024, no. 492174, on Legifrance). The court added that the very letting pattern proved the point, since arrangements set up from the start of the year that left the owners free to accept or refuse bookings “leur permettaient par là-même de conserver la disposition ou la jouissance de ces biens au cours de l’année”, meaning those arrangements by the same token allowed them to keep the disposal or use of the properties during the year. In plain terms, keeping control of the calendar is keeping the disposal of the house, and keeping the disposal means paying the tax. Only premises fitted out and reserved exclusively for letting escape, which is a far narrower shelter than “I let it most of the summer”.

On top of the base charge, many coastal, alpine and city communes add the surcharge. In municipalities located in a zone tendue, a statutorily defined tight housing area where demand structurally exceeds supply, the municipal council may vote a surcharge of between 5% and 60% on the commune’s share of the second-home residence tax. Article 1407 ter states that the council may “majorer d’un pourcentage compris entre 5 % et 60 % la part lui revenant de la cotisation de taxe d’habitation sur les résidences secondaires due au titre des logements meublés”, and the yield stays with the commune that voted it (article 1407 ter, Code général des impôts, on Legifrance). Paris, the inner Paris region, the Basque coast, much of Brittany’s shoreline, the Alps and the big Mediterranean resorts all sit inside such zones, so a British buyer in exactly the places British buyers prefer is the most likely to pay the top rate. Always read the back of the avis: the surcharge appears as a separate line and names the deliberation that created it.

The same article offers three narrow doors out of the surcharge, each claimed by formal objection, the réclamation. Relief is available for a dwelling near the workplace kept by someone forced to live apart from the main home for professional reasons, for the former main home of a person moved long-term into residential care, and, most useful in practice, for owners who “Les personnes autres que celles mentionnées aux 1° et 2° qui, pour une cause étrangère à leur volonté, ne peuvent affecter le logement à un usage d’habitation principale”, meaning persons other than those in the first two cases who, for a cause beyond their control, cannot use the dwelling as a main home (article 1407 ter, II, on Legifrance). Serious illness, a dwelling rendered uninhabitable by a natural event, or an administrative prohibition on occupation can qualify; mere convenience, distance from the Channel Tunnel or a slow renovation never do. The objection must be filed within the time limit set by article R. * 196-2 of the tax procedure code, the Livre des procédures fiscales, which article 1407 ter expressly cites, so check the deadline printed on the bill before doing anything else.

Two practical consequences follow. First, keep the evidence that ties your property to the right box: the letting diary, platform statements, the exclusive-use fitting of any unit you claim is purely commercial, medical certificates or works orders if you invoke a cause beyond your control. Second, never confuse this residence tax with the tax on vacant dwellings, the taxe sur les logements vacants, which hits homes left empty for over a year in the same tight zones under a different article; a genuinely vacant house can attract that tax instead, and a house you occupy each summer attracts the residence tax. Declaring the correct occupation status before 1 July each year is what steers the property into the right regime.

II. Can you rent it out, stay under 90 days and escape the wealth tax?

Many British owners hope that letting the house cover its costs, visiting within the Schengen allowance and staying below the wealth-tax threshold will make the second home self-financing. Each of those three hopes has a legal framework that needs to be understood precisely, because the frameworks interact: the way you let determines the residence tax, the value of the property determines the wealth tax, and the number of days you spend determines your immigration position.

A. Holiday lets, wealth tax above 1.3 million euros and the cost of selling

Start with the letting rules, because they are the most commonly broken. A meublé de tourisme, a classified tourist furnished letting, is defined by statute as a furnished villa, flat or studio for the exclusive use of the guest, offered to passing trade who do not live there, for stays billed by the day, week or month. Article L.324-1-1 of the Code du tourisme, the tourism code, states that “les meublés de tourisme sont des villas, appartements ou studios meublés, à l’usage exclusif du locataire, offerts à la location à une clientèle de passage qui n’y élit pas domicile et qui y effectue un séjour caractérisé par une location à la journée, à la semaine ou au mois”, and it requires that “Toute personne qui offre à la location un meublé de tourisme procède préalablement en personne à une déclaration soumise à enregistrement auprès d’un téléservice national”, meaning anyone offering a tourist furnished letting must first declare it in person through a national online registration service (article L.324-1-1, Code du tourisme, on Legifrance). That declaration, filed with the town hall, produces a registration number that the platforms must display. Letting without declaring is therefore an offence from day one, before any guest arrives.

In the communes where housing pressure is highest, a second authorisation stacks on top of the declaration. Article L.631-7 of the Code de la construction et de l’habitation, the building and housing code, subjects any change of use of residential premises to prior authorisation in designated communes (article L.631-7, Code de la construction et de l’habitation, on Legifrance). Repeated short lets of a dwelling to passing trade count as exactly such a change of use, and the Cour de cassation, France’s supreme civil court, confirmed the point on 27 June 2024 in case number 23-13.131: “Le fait de louer un local meublé destiné à l’habitation de manière répétée pour de courtes durées à une clientèle de passage qui n’y élit pas domicile constitue un changement d’usage au sens de ce texte”, meaning repeatedly letting a furnished residential property for short periods to passing trade that does not live there constitutes a change of use within the meaning of that article (Court of Cassation, 3rd civil chamber, 27 June 2024, no. 23-13.131, on Legifrance). The same ruling kills the most common excuse: a tourism classification does not replace the town hall’s permission, since a tourist-furnished classification “ne peut se substituer à l’autorisation de changement d’usage prévue à l’article L. 631-7 du code de la construction et de l’habitation”, meaning it cannot stand in for the change-of-use authorisation, and letting without that authorisation exposes the owner to the civil fine provided by article L.651-1-2. Before advertising, ask the mairie, the town hall, two questions: is my commune one where change of use needs authorisation, and what conditions, such as offsetting by converting other space back to housing, attach to it. In Paris the answers are famously strict: the capital enforces the authorisation block by block and fines undeclared listings heavily, so a Paris studio bought as a pure holiday-let investment needs its paperwork settled before completion, not after.

Turn next to the impôt sur la fortune immobilière, the IFI, France’s annual tax on property wealth, which worries British owners of high-value houses far more than the local taxes do. The charge applies where the value of the taxpayer’s property assets exceeds 1,300,000 euros. Article 964 states that “Sont soumises à cet impôt, lorsque la valeur de leurs actifs mentionnés à l’article 965 est supérieure à 1 300 000 €”, and it draws the key boundary for internationally mobile families: persons domiciled for tax in France are caught on worldwide property, while the article separately organises the position of newcomers and non-residents (article 964, Code général des impôts, on Legifrance). As a British owner living in the United Kingdom with a house in France, you sit in the second camp: your French property is within the tax, your British home is not. The base is wide, since article 965 counts not only bricks in your own name but also shares in companies to the extent their value represents underlying property, which catches the British family that holds the Dordogne house through a property company (article 965, Code général des impôts, on Legifrance).

Valuation follows the open-market price on 1 January, debts linked to the property are deductible within statutory limits, and one relief matters enormously by its absence. Article 973 grants that “un abattement de 30 % est effectué sur la valeur vénale réelle de l’immeuble lorsque celui-ci est occupé à titre de résidence principale par son propriétaire”, meaning a 30% reduction applies to the market value of a building occupied as the owner’s main residence (article 973, Code général des impôts, on Legifrance). A second home, by definition not the main residence, gets no such reduction, so the full market value counts. The rate scale in article 977 then runs from 0.50% on the slice between 800,000 and 1,300,000 euros, through 0.70%, 1% and 1.25%, up to 1.50% above 10,000,000 euros, with a small smoothing relief just above the entry threshold (article 977, Code général des impôts, on Legifrance). A British-owned Paris flat or Riviera villa valued at 2 million euros therefore produces a five-figure annual bill on top of the local taxes, and the return is filed with the income tax return each spring. If your property sits near the threshold, commission a proper valuation each January: estate-agent optimism in a rising market can push you over 1.3 million, and pessimism at the tax office’s end can be challenged only with a dated, reasoned appraisal.

Finally, price the exit before you need it. When a non-resident sells French property, article 244 bis A subjects the capital gain, the plus-value, to a French levy, stating that “Sous réserve des conventions internationales, les plus-values, telles que définies aux e bis et e ter du I de l’article 164 B , réalisées par les personnes et organismes mentionnés au 2 du I lors de la cession des biens ou droits mentionnés au 3 sont soumises à un prélèvement selon les taux fixés au III bis”, meaning gains on the disposal of the listed property rights are subject to a levy at the stated rates, subject to tax treaties (article 244 bis A, Code général des impôts, on Legifrance). The Franco-British treaty allocates the gain on French land to France, the levy is collected through the notaire, the French conveyancing official who handles completion, and the social charges add to the income-tax fraction. Relief grows with years of ownership and full exemption takes decades, so a quick resale after a short holding period is the most expensive possible exit. Our detailed guide to selling a former French home after leaving France works through the exemption windows and the treaty tail that returning owners often miss (selling a former French home after Brexit). Read it before instructing an agent, not after signing the sale agreement.

B. The 90-day Schengen cap and how to challenge a French tax bill

Immigration is the frame around the whole picture. Since the end of free movement, British citizens visit France under the short-stay rules for third-country nationals: a maximum of 90 days in any rolling 180-day period across the entire Schengen area, not 90 days per country. The British government’s travel guidance confirms the rule and advises travellers to check that their passport will be accepted for the full stay (France entry requirements, GOV.UK; travelling to the EU and Schengen area, GOV.UK). Three consequences follow that many owners discover too late. First, the 90 days are shared between France, Spain, Italy and every other Schengen state, so a spring in Andalusia eats into a summer in the Dordogne. Second, the count is rolling: on any given day you must look back 180 days and total the days spent inside the area. Third, overstaying can produce a removal decision and complicate every future crossing, which is a heavy price for one extra week by the pool. Paper stamping is progressively giving way to electronic recording of entries and exits, so the old art of counting stamps is dying; check the current GOV.UK advice on border checks before each trip and keep your own diary of travel dates with boarding passes to match.

Ninety days a year is thin for an owner who wants spring, summer and Christmas in the house. The lawful ways to spend longer are few and each has a cost. A long-stay visitor visa, applied for at the French consulate before departure with proof of income, health cover and accommodation, allows a stay beyond 90 days without conferring any right to work. Buying the house does not create any right to such a visa, and time spent under it does not count toward the residence history needed for a multi-year permit. Working remotely from the cottage for a British employer is not covered by a visitor visa at all and raises separate tax and social-security questions. Choose the pattern that fits the life you actually lead: short frequent trips inside the 90 days with the house professionally aired and watched between visits, or one long winter stay under a proper visa with the house closed up correctly. What does not work is drifting past day 90 and hoping the border computer will not notice.

When a bill arrives that looks wrong, work the challenge methodically rather than angrily. The French system rewards the taxpayer who writes early, precisely and with documents. Step one is to read the avis in full: the taxable person named, the property description, the occupation status used, the rates applied and any surcharge line with its council deliberation. Step two is to fix the facts at 1 January: deeds, leases, caretaker contracts, platform calendars, utility consumption records and dated photographs. Remember the Conseil d’État lesson on the residence tax and the civil courts’ lesson on holiday lets: control of the calendar proves disposal, and a tourism classification proves nothing about planning permission. Step three is to file the réclamation, the formal claim to the tax office, through your online account or by recorded letter to the service shown on the bill, inside the deadline printed on it. The surcharge relief in article 1407 ter expressly points to the time limit in article R. * 196-2 of the procedure code, and missing that limit ends the argument whatever its merits. Set out the legal basis article by article, attach the evidence in numbered order, and ask expressly for discharge or reduction of each contested line.

If the office rejects the claim or answers with a template that ignores your evidence, two further levels exist. The departmental tax mediator, the médiateur, can be seized for a fresh look, and the administrative court, the tribunal administratif of the place where the property sits, hears appeals against the implicit or express rejection. For a Paris property that means the Montreuil court; for the Dordogne, Bordeaux; for the Alpes-Maritimes, Nice. Court deadlines run from the rejection, are short, and require the same bundle reorganised as legal argument, so prepare the file as if for a judge from the start. Throughout, pay what is not in dispute if you can: enforced recovery runs separately from the dispute, and late-payment penalties accrue on the unpaid balance even while your claim is examined. A claim for suspension of payment, the sursis de paiement, exists but must be requested expressly with guarantees in some cases, so take advice before simply stopping a direct debit.

Three Paris and Ile-de-France particularities close this section, since so many British second homes cluster there. First, Paris applies the residence-tax surcharge at a high rate and enforces holiday-let authorisations street by street, so a Paris buyer should budget the surcharged tax and verify the change-of-use position before exchanging, not after. Second, co-owned buildings, the copropriété, often ban short lets in their by-laws, and breaching the by-laws adds a private-law dispute with the neighbours to the public-law dispute with the town hall. Read the building rules before reading the airline timetables. Third, keep a Paris-based document set: caretaker details, meter readings at each visit, and the registration number displayed on every advertisement. When the tax office or the town hall writes, the owner who answers within days with a complete file is treated very differently from the owner whose post piles up unopened behind the shutters.

Conclusion

A British second home in France is not a lightly taxed luxury but a managed annual cycle: the land tax every autumn on whatever you owned on 1 January, the residence tax with its possible surcharge in the places British buyers love most, the wealth tax once the property passes 1.3 million euros without the main-home reduction, the declaration before any holiday letting and the town hall’s separate permission where housing is tight, and the 90-day Schengen frame around every visit. None of these charges is a reason to sell on its own; together, misunderstood, they turn a beloved house into a stream of unwelcome letters. Reverse the order instead. Verify the cadastral description and the occupation declaration before 1 July, read each autumn’s avis against the January facts, diarise the objection deadlines, keep the letting within both the tax and the planning rules, and count Schengen days across all your European trips, not just the French ones. The owners who do this each year pay exactly what the law requires, challenge what it does not, and spend their summers on the terrace rather than on the telephone. The house deserves that discipline, and so does the investment it represents.