You have lived in France for three years, filed your French tax returns every spring, and assumed the hardest part of Brexit paperwork was behind you. Then the post brings a thick envelope from the direction générale des finances publiques (the French tax administration, universally known as the DGFIP): a proposition de rectification, a formal proposal to correct your tax. It says your taxable income should have been higher, sets out additional tax, adds interest for late payment, and tops it all with a surcharge of 40 per cent. Your first thought is probably that the matter is already decided. It is not. In French tax law, this letter opens a discussion, not a final bill, and the discussion follows one of the most protective audit procedures in Europe. The catch is that the procedure runs on strict clocks: the most important one gives you only thirty days to answer, and every step you miss narrows what you can argue later. This article explains, for a British resident of France, what that letter is, how to answer it within the deadline, what the administration can still go back to, how interest and penalties are capped by law, and how to challenge the final bill from the complaint stage to the courtroom.
I. The Letter on Your Doormat: What a Proposition de Rectification Is and How to Answer It Within Thirty Days
A. A reasoned proposal you can argue with, not a final tax bill
A proposition de rectification (proposal of correction) is the document by which the French tax administration tells you, in writing, that it considers your declared tax base too low and that it intends to increase it. It generally arrives after a contrôle sur pièces (a desk audit conducted from the administration’s offices using your returns and the information it holds) or, less often for a private individual, after an examen contradictoire de la situation fiscale personnelle (a full personal tax audit in which the inspector checks the consistency between your declared income, your bank movements and your lifestyle). Whatever the type of audit, when the administration finds what the code calls an insufficiency, an inaccuracy, an omission or a concealment in the figures used to calculate your tax, the resulting corrections must follow the procédure de rectification contradictoire (the adversarial correction procedure), which is the standard protective track defined by statute: article L. 55 of the Livre des procédures fiscales (the Tax Procedures Code) provides that where the administration establishes such a gap, “les rectifications correspondantes sont effectuées suivant la procédure de rectification contradictoire définie aux articles L. 57 à L. 61 A”. The word contradictoire is the key to everything that follows: the administration may not simply tax you and leave you to complain afterwards; it must put its cards on the table first and let you reply.
That duty to show its cards is not a courtesy, it is a legal condition of the whole correction. Article L. 57 of the Tax Procedures Code states: “L’administration adresse au contribuable une proposition de rectification qui doit être motivée de manière à lui permettre de formuler ses observations ou de faire connaître son acceptation.” In plain terms, the letter must explain itself well enough that you can either accept it knowingly or answer it usefully. A proposal that states a final figure without showing how it was computed fails that test. For British readers, this matters twice over: first, because audit letters aimed at expatriates often turn on unfamiliar French mechanics such as the treatment of UK rental income or the exchange-rate conversion of sterling pensions, and you cannot check the inspector’s maths if the maths is not shown; second, because an insufficiently reasoned proposal can be annulled by the courts, which wipes out the correction it carried.
The courts take this requirement seriously, down to the arithmetic. In a leading decision, the Conseil d’État (the supreme court for tax disputes) examined a proposal that had added more than 1.1 million euros to a taxpayer’s income without mentioning that part of the increase came from a statutory 25 per cent uplift applied to certain business profits. The court held that although that uplift is a matter of tax base rather than a penalty, “elle doit toutefois apparaître dans la motivation de cette proposition conformément aux prescriptions de l’article L. 57 du livre des procédures fiscales”, and it annulled the appeal court’s decision because the omission had deprived the taxpayer of “la faculté de retracer le calcul de l’assiette afin de formuler utilement ses observations ou de faire connaître, de manière éclairée, son acceptation de la rectification proposée”: see Conseil d’État, 26 July 2018, No. 408480. The practical lesson for you is immediate: read the proposal with a calculator in hand, reconcile every figure with your own returns, and if a component of the increase appears from nowhere, that gap is not a detail, it is potentially a ground for annulment that your reply should identify precisely, politely and in writing.
Before Brexit, none of this applied to you any differently than to a French national, and that remains true today: as a British resident you are audited under exactly the same procedure, with the same guarantees and the same deadlines. What has changed is only the background noise the inspector sees on screen: sterling-denominated income, a UK letting, accounts still open in Britain, a pension paid from Leeds or Glasgow. Two forms deserve your first check because they recur constantly in British files. The déclaration 2047 is the annexe to your French return on which foreign-source income must be detailed, and the foreign bank account statement (the formulaire 3916) is where every account opened, held or closed abroad during the year must be declared, including the ordinary UK current account you kept “just in case”. If either was forgotten, the correction is rarely about the principle of French taxation; it is about completing the picture, and your reply should treat it that way. Readers who want to get the underlying declarations right from the start will find the full walk-through of the 2042, the 2047 and the 3916 in our guide to the first French tax return after Brexit, which is the companion to this article.
B. Your thirty-day reply, the extra thirty days, and the senior officer who can overrule the inspector
The single most important deadline in the whole procedure is short. Unless the code provides otherwise, taxpayers have thirty days from receipt to answer any notification from the tax administration: article L. 11 of the Tax Procedures Code fixes the period in these terms: “le délai accordé aux contribuables pour répondre aux demandes de renseignements, de justifications ou d’éclaircissements et, d’une manière générale, à toute notification émanant d’un agent de l’administration des impôts est fixé à trente jours à compter de la réception de cette notification.” Your reply to the proposal is therefore due within thirty days of receiving it, and receipt means the date you actually received the letter, not the date it was posted. Send your observations by a method that proves both content and date: registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt remains the gold standard, and the administration’s own doctrine accepts replies on any medium, including email, provided they reach the right officer in time. Never let the deadline pass in silence: an unanswered proposal becomes, in practice, an accepted one, and the additional tax is then assessed on the inspector’s figures alone.
If thirty days are not enough to gather UK payslips, bank statements or a P60 from across the Channel, the code gives you a once-only lifeline. The same article L. 57 provides: “”Sur demande du contribuable reçue par l’administration avant l’expiration du délai mentionné à l’article L. 11 , ce délai est prorogé de trente jours.”” Ask in writing before the first period expires and you gain a further thirty days as of right; ask one day late and the extension can be refused. Use the extra time productively. A strong reply does four things: it identifies each disputed adjustment separately, because the courts assess each head of correction on its own; it attaches the supporting documents, translated where the inspector cannot fairly be expected to read English; it corrects what is genuinely wrong, because conceding an obvious omission strengthens your credibility on the points you contest; and it states, where relevant, that you request a recours hiérarchique (a hierarchical appeal to the inspector’s superiors), which brings us to the second weapon in your file.
The hierarchical appeal is a free, pre-litigation review by a fresh pair of eyes inside the administration, and it is one of the most underused guarantees available to an audited individual. As the administration’s own published doctrine explains, a taxpayer who disagrees with the officer in charge of the audit may request a hierarchical appeal, a pre-litigation administrative review conducted by that officer’s hierarchical superiors. See the official doctrine at BOI-CF-PGR-30-10, section IV on hierarchical appeals. Since the 2018 reform for a trustworthy administration, this guarantee has been extended, under conditions, to every proposal issued under the adversarial procedure, including proposals following a simple desk audit, which is precisely the situation most British residents face: the same doctrine confirms that the facility, initially reserved for full on-site audits, has been extended, under conditions, to every proposal issued under the adversarial procedure since 12 August 2018, including proposals following a desk audit. The proposal itself names the senior officer who will hear the appeal, and your request can be made in your reply to the proposal or in a separate letter; in either case put it in writing, address it to the named officer, and summarise why a new look at the file should reach a different figure.
II. What the Bill Can Reach and How to Fight It: Time Limits, Interest, Penalties and the Courts
A. How far back the administration can go, and what the correction really costs
The administration cannot reopen your whole French life: its right to correct, called the droit de reprise (the right to reassess), expires at a date the statute fixes. For income tax, the ordinary limit is the end of the third year following the year for which the tax is due: article L. 169 of the Tax Procedures Code provides that “le droit de reprise de l’administration des impôts s’exerce jusqu’à la fin de la troisième année qui suit celle au titre de laquelle l’imposition est due.” In practice, as the administration’s own English-language guidance illustrates, if you receive a proposed correction in November 2026 concerning your 2023 income tax, the administration has until 31 December 2029 to claim the amounts you should have paid: see service-public.fr, time limit for an additional income tax assessment. Check this date before anything else: a correction notified after the reprise has expired is time-barred, and time-bar is a complete defence, not a discount.
There is one major exception, and British newcomers should understand it exactly as written, because it turns on filing failures. The same article extends the reprise to the end of the tenth year following the tax year where the taxpayer carries on a hidden activity, which the statute deems to exist where the taxpayer failed to file the returns he was legally required to file on time and either never registered his activity or engaged in an unlawful one: article L. 169 sets this ten-year extension for cases where “le contribuable exerce une activité occulte”, deemed to exist where he “n’a pas déposé dans le délai légal les déclarations qu’il était tenu de souscrire”. For a British resident, the realistic trigger is not some shadowy business but the mundane: years in which no French return was filed at all, for example because you assumed that taxed-at-source UK income or a year split between London and Lyon did not require a French declaration. Filing late is always better than never filing, and if you have unfiled years, regularising them before any audit notice arrives is the single most effective way to keep the ordinary three-year window rather than handing the administration ten.
On top of the additional tax itself, the correction carries interest for late payment, and the rate is set by statute, not negotiated. Article 1727 of the General Tax Code states: “Le taux de l’intérêt de retard est de 0,20 % par mois. Il s’applique sur le montant des créances de nature fiscale mises à la charge du contribuable ou dont le versement a été différé.” At 0.20 per cent per month, the interest compounds into real money over several years, which is why answering quickly and, where the correction is justified, paying promptly rather than letting the file drift will always reduce the final pain. Note, however, that the same article spares interest in defined good-faith situations, notably where you expressly flagged the uncertain point on your return by indicating the legal or factual reasons for your position; another reason to annotate doubtful positions on the return itself at filing time, especially in the first years of French residence when the treaty treatment of a pension or a capital gain is genuinely debatable.
Then come the surcharges, and here the scale depends entirely on what the administration can prove about your behaviour. Start with the simplest case: a return or statement filed late or not at all. Article 1728 of the General Tax Code applies a surcharge on the resulting tax of 10 per cent where there was no formal demand or where you filed within thirty days of receiving one, 40 per cent where you did not file within thirty days of the formal demand, and 80 per cent where a hidden activity is discovered. Next, where the return was filed but contains inaccuracies or omissions, article 1729 of the General Tax Code imposes a surcharge of “40 % en cas de manquement délibéré”, rising to 80 per cent for abuse of law, fraud or concealment of part of a contract price. The 40 per cent deliberate-failure surcharge is the one most often proposed against expatriates, typically on the theory that omitting UK rental income or a UK account must have been intentional; but the theory is not self-proving, and the burden lies squarely on the administration.
That burden is real, and the supreme court enforces it. In a 2024 decision concerning VAT surcharges for deliberate failure, the Conseil d’État recalled the governing principle: “Pour établir l’existence d’un manquement délibéré de la part d’un contribuable, l’administration doit apporter la preuve, d’une part, de l’insuffisance, de l’inexactitude ou du caractère incomplet de ses déclarations et, d’autre part, de l’intention de l’intéressé d’éluder l’impôt.” See Conseil d’État, 23 July 2024, No. 489235. In that case the court rejected the minister’s appeal and left in place the discharge of the 40 per cent surcharges, precisely because intention to evade had not been established. For your file, the message is concrete: an error, even a large one, is not by itself a deliberate failure. A first French return completed in good faith, a misunderstanding of which country taxes what in the first year after the move, reliance on a UK accountant unfamiliar with French forms, or figures the administration already held through other filings all argue against intention to evade. Put that evidence in your reply and, later, in your complaint: the surcharge is the part of the bill most worth fighting, because unlike the underlying tax it can be cancelled in full while the principal remains due.
B. From the complaint to the courtroom: commissions, claims and judges
Once the administration answers your observations, or once the procedure moves past the discussion stage, the dispute enters its formal phase, and the first formal step is a written complaint to the tax office. The code gives this complaint a wide scope: article L. 190 of the Tax Procedures Code covers claims seeking “soit la réparation d’erreurs commises dans l’assiette ou le calcul des impositions, soit le bénéfice d’un droit résultant d’une disposition législative ou réglementaire”. As a British resident, the second limb is often your strongest: the France–United Kingdom double tax treaty of 2008 allocates taxing rights between the two countries article by article, so where the French correction taxes income the treaty reserves to the United Kingdom, or denies a treaty credit you are entitled to, the complaint is not a plea for mercy but a demand for a statutory right. Attach the treaty article, the HMRC documents and the Franco-British calculation; the officer deciding the complaint applies the law, and a well-documented treaty point is frequently where files are won.
Where and when to complain are both fixed by regulation, and both are traps for the unwary. As a rule you must first write to the local office of the DGFIP for the place of taxation, which issues you a receipt: article R*. 190-1 of the Tax Procedures Code requires the taxpayer who wishes to challenge all or part of a tax to “d’abord adresser une réclamation au service territorial” of the competent administration, and confirms that “Les réclamations font l’objet d’un récépissé adressé au contribuable”. Keep that receipt: it proves the date of your complaint if the office later claims never to have received it. As for timing, complaints must reach the administration no later than 31 December of the second year following the year of the collection notice, the payment, or the event giving rise to the claim, as the case may be: article R*. 196-1 of the Tax Procedures Code states that to be admissible, claims “doivent être présentées à l’administration au plus tard le 31 décembre de la deuxième année suivant celle” of the relevant starting event. A complaint filed on 2 January is inadmissible, however strong its merits, so diary the deadline the day the assessment arrives. The administration’s English-language guidance confirms the mechanics and adds two practical points: filing the complaint does not exempt you from paying, but you may ask for payment to be deferred, and if you receive no answer within six months, or an unsatisfactory one, you may go to court: see service-public.fr, tax claims and court appeals.
Between the complaint and the courtroom there is also a middle path worth knowing: the advisory commissions. Where disagreement persists over the notified corrections, the taxpayer may ask the administration to submit the dispute for an opinion, depending on the tax at stake, to the commission for direct taxes and turnover taxes, the national commission, or the departmental conciliation commission: article L. 59 of the Tax Procedures Code provides that “Lorsque le désaccord persiste sur les rectifications notifiées, l’administration, si le contribuable le demande, soumet le litige à l’avis” of the competent body. The opinion does not bind either side, but it is reasoned, it is given by a collegiate body including taxpayer representatives and, in practice, administrations follow it more often than not; asking for it costs nothing and signals that you will litigate if needed, which concentrates minds. If the complaint nevertheless ends in refusal, in whole or in part, the courts take over, and the correct court depends on the tax: decisions on complaints about income tax and other direct taxes go to the tribunal administratif (the administrative court), while registration duties, wealth tax and similar levies go to the civil courts: article L. 199 of the Tax Procedures Code directs direct-tax disputes to the administrative court and duties such as registration and real-estate wealth tax to the tribunal judiciaire (the ordinary civil court). Most British files concern income tax, social charges and penalties, so the administrative court of your place of residence is normally the destination; allow for a long timetable, proceed stepwise, and never miss the two-month time limit for the court application stated in the refusal letter.
Conclusion
A French tax audit letter is a procedure with rules, clocks and exits, and a British resident who knows them stands on exactly the same footing as a French neighbour. Answer the proposal within thirty days of receipt and claim the extra thirty days in writing before the first period expires if you need it; check that every figure in the proposal is reasoned, because an unexplained component can overturn the whole head of correction; ask for the hierarchical appeal so a senior officer reviews the inspector’s position; verify the three-year reassessment window before conceding anything, since a time-barred correction falls entirely; fight the deliberate-failure surcharge on the administration’s burden of proof rather than accepting intention as read; and diary the 31 December of the second year for the formal complaint, requesting deferred payment in the meantime. Worked through in that order, most audit files end not with a disaster but with a corrected, contained and comprehensible bill.