You bought the stone cottage in the Dordogne, or the two-bedroom flat in the 11th arrondissement, years before Brexit, and you have kept it as your French second home. Every autumn two envelopes, now two online notices, arrive from the French tax administration. One is the taxe foncière, the French property tax on built properties, which the owner pays. The other is the taxe d’habitation sur les résidences secondaires, universally shortened to THRS, the housing tax that survives solely on second homes since the tax on main homes was abolished. Both are assessed on your situation on 1 January, both must be paid even if you dispute them, and both can now carry a surcharge of up to 60 percent voted by the commune. A December 2024 ruling of the Conseil d’Etat, the supreme administrative court, confirmed that owners who let holiday gîtes through online platforms still owe the second-home tax, and an October 2024 ruling recalled that a challenge filed on 24 November 2020 against 2019 taxes was still in time. This article explains, for a British owner after Brexit, which tax is which, how each bill is calculated, how to pay from a British bank account, and how to challenge a bill before the 31 December deadline, with the official texts and the court decisions that prove each point.
I. The two taxes Brexit did not remove: who pays and on what basis
French local taxes follow the property, not the passport of its owner. Brexit changed your residence status, your visa position and the tax treatment of some of your income, but it changed nothing about who pays taxe foncière or THRS. The only test is whether you owned or occupied a French dwelling on 1 January of the tax year. The France-United Kingdom convention published by Decree No 2010-20 of 7 January 2010 is a convention for the avoidance of double taxation with respect to taxes on income and on capital gains, as its official title states, and it is within that frame, pensions, rental income, capital gains, that treaty relief operates. The two taxes in this article sit outside that frame: they are French local taxes on French buildings, assessed and collected in France whether you live in London, Leeds or Lyon.
A. Taxe foncière: the owner’s tax, fixed every 1 January
The taxe foncière sur les propriétés bâties, usually shortened to TFPB, is the owner’s tax. Article 1380 states the rule directly: “La taxe foncière est établie annuellement sur les propriétés bâties sises en France” — the property tax is assessed every year on built properties in France — and British owners are caught in exactly the same way as French owners. The tax is assessed in the name of the person who owns the building on 1 January, and the usufructuary, the person who holds a life interest or right of use known as usufruit, pays where the ownership is split between a bare owner and a usufructuary. If you sell during the year, the administration does not apportion the bill. The tax is assessed in the name of whoever owns the building on 1 January, with no apportionment for a sale during the year, so a vendor who completes in spring still receives the autumn notice and pays the whole year, recovering the seller-to-buyer share privately, typically through the prorata clause the notaire inserts in the sale deed. British sellers who complete in spring and assume the French bill follows the buyer to the autumn notice are caught out by this rule every year. If you sold a French home and left France, read also our analysis of the exemption windows and the treaty tail on the sale itself: Left France for Britain and Now Sell Your Old French Home.
The base of the tax is administrative, not market value. Article 1388 provides that the tax is assessed on the cadastral rental value of the property, “sous déduction de 50 % de son montant en considération des frais de gestion, d’assurances, d’amortissement, d’entretien et de réparation” — after deducting 50 per cent for management, insurance, depreciation, maintenance and repair costs. The cadastral rental value, valeur locative cadastrale, is a notional annual rent computed for each property from standardised characteristics, surface area, comfort elements, upkeep, location, and revalued each year by the finance Act. The commune, and any intercommunal body, then votes a rate, the taux, which is multiplied by that base. Two identical cottages in neighbouring communes can therefore produce very different bills, and a British owner cannot estimate the bill from the purchase price. The notice, avis d’imposition, is issued in September in the owner’s name, and the deadline printed on it is the only date that counts. Reductions and exemptions exist for some new buildings, some energy renovations and some elderly or disabled owners on modest incomes, but none is automatic: each requires a declaration with supporting documents sent to the tax office of the place where the property sits. Check the notice line by line, because an error in the rental value or in the person named follows you every year until you challenge it.
Three practical consequences follow for British owners. First, buying on 2 January rather than 30 December saves a full year of taxe foncière, because liability turns entirely on the position at 1 January. Second, holding through a British company, an SCI, a société civile immobilière, the French property-holding company many British families use, does not shift the tax to the shareholders: the company, as owner, is the taxpayer. Third, letting the property during the summer does not move the taxe foncière to the tenant. Short-stay guests never become the taxpayer for this tax. Only the THRS, examined below, moves between owner and occupier.
B. THRS: the second-home tax, and why holiday lets do not escape it
The taxe d’habitation, the old occupier’s tax, was abolished on main homes with effect from 1 January 2023. It survives on one category only: furnished dwellings that are not someone’s main home. The old occupier’s tax was abolished on main homes with effect from 1 January 2023. It survives on one category only: furnished dwellings that are not someone’s main home. For British readers, that surviving tax is the one that matters, and its French initials THRS are worth memorising: taxe d’habitation sur les résidences secondaires.
Liability turns on occupation, not ownership. The tax is assessed for the whole year on the position at 1 January: it catches anyone who has the disposition or permanent enjoyment of a furnished second home, meaning a furnished dwelling that is not their main residence but that they can occupy at any time, privately, whether as owner, tenant or even free occupant. Three words do the heavy lifting: furnished, at any time, privately. An unfurnished ruin you cannot sleep in is not caught. A flat you lend free of charge to friends all August is caught, because a free occupant with the keys at 1 January is expressly listed. A flat let year-round to a sitting tenant is caught too, but the tenant pays, not you: a year-round tenant has the disposition, and the notice goes in the tenant’s name.
British owners who let their house as a gîte, the classic furnished holiday let, need to read the next ruling carefully, because it was written for facts exactly like theirs. On 23 December 2024 the Conseil d’Etat decided case No 492174, ECLI:FR:CECHS:2024:492174.20241223, concerning a couple who owned three gîtes classified as meublés de tourisme, furnished tourist accommodation, in Brittany, offered for short stays through online booking platforms. The tax administration had assessed them to THRS for 2022 on two of the gîtes, considering they had the disposition of the properties on 1 January. The administrative tribunal of Rennes had discharged the assessments, reasoning that the heavy letting pattern showed the couple had not intended to keep the use of the gîtes. The Conseil d’Etat reversed. It first restated the statute, quoting Articles 1407, 1408 and 1415 of the General Tax Code, the code général des impôts, including this principle: “Il résulte de ces dispositions qu’est en principe redevable de la taxe d’habitation le locataire d’un local imposable au 1er janvier de l’année d’imposition.” In English: the person liable for the housing tax is in principle the tenant of the taxable premises on 1 January of the tax year. It then stated the exception that decides the fate of every gite owner: “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.” In English: where a furnished dwelling is the subject of seasonal or short-term lets, the owner is liable for the housing tax where, on 1 January of the tax year, he can be regarded as intending to keep its disposition or use for part of the year.
The court then explained why active letting proves, rather than defeats, that intention: owners who advertise on platforms and remain free to accept or refuse each booking request keep control of the calendar, and that freedom is precisely what keeping the disposition means. The tribunal had therefore committed an error of law, the judgment of 29 December 2023 was annulled, and the discharge claims were rejected on the merits. For a British owner the message is blunt. Letting your second home for twenty weeks a summer does not convert it into business premises outside THRS. High occupancy rates do not help: the court treated them as evidence against the taxpayer. The only escape the guidance recognises is narrow: premises arranged and reserved exclusively for letting, a gite you never use yourself, never lend, and keep permanently on the rental market, fall outside your name. Everything else, the house you lend to family at Christmas, the flat you keep off the market in February, the gite you block for your own August fortnight, stays in your name. If letting is a serious part of your plans, check the registration and tax consequences in our companion pieces: British Second-Home Owner Beating the 90-Day Limit and British Landlord Letting Your French Property Within the Rules.
The bill itself is computed like the taxe foncière, from the cadastral rental value multiplied by the commune’s rate, and the guidance is honest about the opacity: the amount depends on so many characteristics of the property that no owner can estimate it alone, and an estimate must be requested from the local property tax office. On top of that base, many communes now add the surcharge. Article 1407 ter of the General Tax Code allows the municipal council, by délibération, to increase its share of the THRS bill, and the Conseil d’Etat, in its ruling of 21 December 2023, case No 488601, ECLI:FR:CECHR:2023:488601.20231221, quoted 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” In English: in listed communes the council may, by délibération, increase by between 5 percent and 60 percent its share of the second-home housing tax on furnished dwellings. Before assuming a 60 percent figure is a mistake, check whether your commune voted it: the surcharge is lawful wherever the commune sits in a listed tense area and the council has deliberated.
The list of tense areas grew sharply with Decree No 2023-822 of 25 August 2023, which extended the vacant-housing tax and the THRS surcharge mechanism to thousands of additional communes, including mountain and coastal resorts where British second homes cluster. Mountain residents challenged the decree, and the Conseil d’Etat rejected the challenge on 21 December 2023: it declined to transmit the constitutional question to the Constitutional Council and dismissed the application, so the extension stands. But the lists are not untouchable. On 14 October 2024, in case No 491740, ECLI:FR:CECHR:2024:491740.20241014, the court annulled the refusal to remove the commune of Boege from the list, holding that the continuous urban area linking it to the Annemasse-Geneva conurbation rested exclusively on a construction standing on a rubbish tip, and that, according to an uncontested letter from the national statistics institute, only a light structure stood there: “Une telle construction ne permettant pas, à elle seule, d’assurer la continuité d’une zone d’urbanisation, c’est en méconnaissance des dispositions du 1° du I de l’article 232 du code général des impôts que la commune de Boëge a été classée” A light shed cannot create an urban area, and the listing was unlawful. An individual owner cannot bring that kind of list challenge directly, but the lesson travels: check the commune’s status, ask the mairie whether a surcharge délibération was voted and at what percentage, and keep the Boege reasoning for the day a bill looks geographically wrong.
Exemptions from the surcharge exist but are narrow, and each must be claimed; none applies automatically. The guidance lists three situations: your work obliges you to live in accommodation near your job while your family keeps the main home elsewhere, your former main home became a second home because you moved into long-term residential care, or the dwelling cannot be lived in for reasons beyond your control, such as works needed to make it decent. A British retiree who simply prefers the Dordogne house in summer and the Surrey house in winter fits none of them. The claim goes to the tax centre of the place where the second home sits, online, in person or by simple letter, and the details matter, as the next part shows.
II. Paying from Britain and challenging the bill within the deadlines
None of the machinery assumes you live in France. The administration writes to the address it holds, increasingly to the online personal account, and expects payment by the printed deadline from wherever you bank. The procédure for disputing a bill is the same contentious claim, réclamation contentieuse, that French taxpayers use, with the same strict deadline. Miss it, and the substance of your argument no longer matters.
A. Paying on time from a British bank account
Start with the occupation declaration, because the administration taxes what it thinks you do with the property. Owners of dwellings must file a declaration of occupation with the tax services, before 1 July wherever something is new or has changed: a dwelling never declared, or a change since the last return, and you must state the nature of the occupation, main home, second home or vacant, and identify any third-party occupier such as a year-round tenant. File it through your online account on impots.gouv.fr, the French tax portal, in the property section. A British owner who bought in March and never declared anything may find the property classified by default, and the THRS notice that follows will reflect that classification until corrected. Declare first, dispute second.
Payment itself follows the notice. The rule every British owner should pin above the desk is that filing a challenge does not suspend collection: you must pay by the printed deadline even if you have claimed. If paying immediately would cause difficulty, the remedy is a formal request for a stay of payment, sursis de paiement, addressed to the tax office, which the administration may grant while the claim is examined. Do not simply stop the direct debit: an unpaid bill accrues a 10 percent surcharge and the recovery machinery, saisie, third-party notices, does not pause for correspondence.
For amounts above 300 euros, and both taxes on a second home will almost always exceed that threshold, the payment channels narrow. The official payments page limits payment to online payment or direct debit once a bill exceeds €300. In practice the online route is the British owner’s friend: the impots.gouv.fr personal account accepts card payment, and the notice carries the references needed. Direct debit, monthly or at maturity, requires a bank account the French system can debit, which most British high-street accounts are not. Keep the payment confirmations with the notice: if you later claim, the file must identify the tax, the year and the amount, and a missing reference slows everything. And where the bill covers a house you sold during the year, remember the September rule quoted above: you pay the whole bill and recover the seller-to-buyer share privately, so settle the prorata with the notaire at completion rather than chasing the buyer from London.
B. Challenging the bill: the 31 December deadline, the six-month reply and the two-month court limit
The contentious claim is the doorway to every remedy: correction of the rental value, recognition of an exemption, cancellation of a surcharge, discharge of a wrongly assessed THRS. It must be filed with the tax administration, and the deadline is strict. For local taxes, the claim must reach the administration by 31 December of the year following the year shown on the notice. In French procédure this is Article R. 196-2 of the Tax Procedure Book, the Livre des procédures fiscales, and the Conseil d’Etat applied it to a taxe foncière and taxe d’habitation dispute in its ruling of 29 October 2024, case No 473319, ECLI:FR:CECHS:2024:473319.20241029. The taxpayers, assessed in the commune of Poissy for 2016 to 2020, had claimed on 24 November 2020. The tribunal of Versailles had thrown out even the 2019 claim as late. The court recalled the text: “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 ou de la notification d’un avis de mise en recouvrement”. In English: to be admissible, claims concerning local direct taxes must reach the tax administration by 31 December of the year following, as the case may be, the collection of the assessment roll or notification of the recovery notice. A claim lodged on 24 November 2020 against 2019 taxes was therefore in time, the tribunal had committed an error of law, and its judgment was annulled so far as 2019 was concerned, with the case sent back to Versailles. Count the deadline from the notice in your hand: for a 2026 bill, the claim must reach the administration by 31 December 2027. Send it online through the Contact us section of your personal account, where the status of the claim is shown and email notification follows, or by post with proof of sending. A letter dated 30 December but received in January is late.
Once filed, the administration must answer. The administration has six months to process the claim. You are notified by email and the reply appears in your personal account. If the reply is wholly or partly negative, it comes as a reasoned decision, and the clock for the court starts on receipt: you then have two months to challenge it before the courts. The competent court is the tribunal administratif of the place where the property sits, and the application must repeat the claim, attach the notice, the claim and the rejection, and state precisely what discharge or reduction is sought. Two months means two months: a British owner who discovers the rejection letter after a summer absence has no extra time because the post sat unopened. Nominate someone, or activate electronic notification, so that a decision received in March is not discovered in August.
If six months pass with no answer at all, do not treat silence as victory. Diarise the six-month mark from the acknowledgement of your claim and take advice before it expires, because court deadlines run from decisions and delay is fatal to even the best file. An unanswered claim needs a litigation strategy, not patience.
One substantive remedy deserves separate mention because British owners ask for it constantly: the relief for empty property, properly called dégrèvement. Article 1389 of the General Tax Code allows relief for the vacancy of a house normally offered for rent, or for business premises left unused, and the Conseil d’Etat restated its triple condition on 29 October 2024 in case No 472934, ECLI:FR:CECHS:2024:472934.20241029, concerning a Strasbourg industrial site: “Le dégrèvement est subordonné à la triple condition que […] l’inexploitation 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 […] d’exploitation séparée” In English: relief is subject to the triple condition that the non-use is independent of the taxpayer’s will, lasts at least three months, and affects either the whole building or a separately usable part. The company in that case blamed supply problems for closing its plant, and the court upheld the tribunal: the firm had not shown, or even alleged, that it was impossible to keep using the site, whether by changing operating or supply conditions or by carrying on a different activity there, so the non-use was not independent of its will. Apply that test honestly to a second home. A house you keep furnished for your own holidays, however rarely you visit, is used exactly as you intend: its emptiness between stays is your choice, not a constraint. Relief fits the genuinely unusable house, major works imposed by the authorities, a dwelling legally barred from letting, or a property genuinely offered for rent that finds no tenant, each documented, each lasting, each beyond your control. Everything else is a valuation or classification argument, and those go through the standard claim before 31 December.
Conclusion
A British-owned second home in France carries two annual local taxes that Brexit left untouched. The taxe foncière follows ownership at 1 January, half the cadastral rental value times the commune’s rate, payable in full by whoever owned the property that morning even if the sale completed in spring. The THRS follows occupation at 1 January, and since the Conseil d’Etat’s gîtes ruling of December 2024, letting through platforms while keeping control of the calendar confirms liability rather than defeating it. Where the commune has voted it, a surcharge of 5 to 60 percent attaches to the THRS, under zone lists the courts have upheld in principle and corrected in detail. Pay by the printed deadline, online where the bill exceeds €300, claim your occupation status before 1 July, and challenge any error by 31 December of the following year with the notice, the claim and the rejection in a complete file. Those five dates, 1 January, 1 July, September, and 31 December, plus the two months to the tribunal, are the whole calendar of the French second home. Keep them, and the two taxes stay an affair of arithmetic. Miss one, and they become an affair of litigation.