Your full new UK State Pension is now worth £241.30 a week, or £12,547.60 over a 52-week year: £22.40 short of the frozen £12,570 personal allowance. That narrow gap is exactly why “state pension vs personal allowance” surged past 50,000 searches in Britain on 21 October 2026, with related queries on the new State Pension passing £13,000 and the 2027 triple-lock rise. For British pensioners living in France, the question behind the headlines is sharper than for pensioners who stayed in Britain: if the pension crosses the allowance, will HMRC start taking British tax from a pension paid to a French resident, and what must be declared in France? The short answer is that the France-UK double tax treaty of 19 June 2008 reserves most pensions to the country of residence, so a British pensioner domiciled in France is normally taxable in France only — but the exemption on the British side is not automatic, and the French declaration has to be done properly. This article explains, first, how the frozen allowance pulls a French-resident pensioner into the British net and where the treaty says each pension is taxed, and second, how to declare British pensions in France and how to challenge British tax wrongly deducted or a French credit wrongly refused.
I. My UK State Pension now exceeds the £12,570 personal allowance — will HMRC tax me even though I live in France?
The anxiety behind the search surge is easy to understand. Britain taxes pension income through the PAYE system — Pay As You Earn, the withholding mechanism by which the payer deducts tax before the money reaches you — as soon as your taxable income passes your personal allowance. When the full State Pension itself approaches and then crosses that allowance, even a pensioner with no other income discovers a British tax deduction on money paid to a French bank account. Whether that deduction is lawful depends on which pension you receive and on one form too few pensioners know about.
A. How does the frozen personal allowance pull a French-resident pensioner into UK tax?
The personal allowance is the amount of income you do not have to pay tax on. GOV.UK puts the standard Personal Allowance at £12,570 and describes it as the amount of income on which no tax is due, with the published rate table taxing only income above that line at 0% up to £12,570 — and the tax is normally collected at source through PAYE, using a tax code that reflects your allowance. Once your total taxable income exceeds the allowance, the payer applies the code and deducts British tax before payment.
On the pension side, GOV.UK gives the full rate of new State Pension as £241.30 a week. Multiplied over 52 weeks, that is £12,547.60 a year — a hair below the £12,570 allowance. Two consequences follow. First, the margin is now measured in pounds, not thousands: any triple-lock uprating — the annual increase guaranteeing the highest of earnings growth, inflation or 2.5% — that lifts the full rate by even a few pence a week pushes the headline pension above the allowance. That is precisely the scenario the British press described on 21 October 2027-war-gaming the 2027 rise, and it explains queries such as “new state pension over 13000”. Second, hundreds of thousands of pensioners already sit above the line because they reached State Pension age under the old basic State Pension plus additional State Pension (SERPS or State Second Pension), or because they add even a small private pension to the full new State Pension. For them, HMRC already collects tax through the PAYE code applied to the pension, or through the code applied to a private pension that absorbs the whole allowance first.
Living in France does not switch PAYE off by itself. A British pension payer applies the tax code it holds; if no treaty relief has been registered on your record, it deducts British tax exactly as if you lived in Leeds. The over-deduction typically appears in two guises: a reduced tax code that leaves part of the pension taxed at 20%, or a temporary code applied after you notified a change of address. The money has not vanished — it sits with HMRC — but recovering it requires the treaty procedure described below, and the French tax return must still show the full pension. A linked difficulty concerns health cover rather than tax: British State Pensioners who move to France generally rely on the S1 certificate to join the French health system and on the treaty route to stop British tax, and the two files are often handled in the same move, as explained in our companion guide for British State Pensioners sorting out the S1, the NT tax code and French healthcare after Brexit.
Three practical checks therefore come before any declaration. First, add up every British-source pension — State Pension, workplace pensions, personal pensions — and compare the total with £12,570: that tells you whether HMRC sees taxable income at all. Second, read the tax code on your pension payslips and P60: a code reduced below the full allowance, or tax deducted from a State Pension you believed fell below any taxable threshold, signals that no treaty exemption is recorded. Third, keep every payslip and P60: they are the proof of the British tax “effectively and definitively borne” that the treaty machinery will ask for, and they date your claim. None of this decides where you are taxable — that is the treaty’s job — but it decides whether you need to act on the British side this year rather than discovering the deduction at the next coding notice.
B. Where does the France-UK tax treaty say my pension is taxed?
The 2008 convention signed in London on 19 June 2008 between France and the United Kingdom allocates taxing rights pension by pension, and its wording rewards close reading. The general rule sits in Article 18 of the convention, which reserves pensions and similar remuneration paid for past employment to taxation in the pensioner's State of residence alone. In plain terms, a private-sector pension — a workplace pension, a personal pension, and any pension paid for past employment — received by a person resident in France is taxable only in France. The United Kingdom may not tax it. That single sentence covers the great majority of British pensioners in the Dordogne, Brittany and Paris alike.
The State Pension follows the same logic in practice through a dedicated HMRC procedure. HMRC's notes for the form reserved to individuals explain that form France Individual DT is the route to apply under the UK/France convention for exemption from UK Income Tax on a UK State Pension, and that the same form carries any claim to repayment of tax already taken. In other words, a French-resident Briton does not ask HMRC for a favour; they apply for the exemption the treaty provides, and the same form carries the repayment claim for tax already deducted. Until that form is processed and the record updated, PAYE keeps deducting — which is why the allowance crossover bites first and is corrected afterwards.
The exception that traps the unwary concerns government-service pensions — civil service, local government, police, fire service, teachers paid from public funds, and the armed forces. Article 19(2) reverses the rule: pensions paid by a State or local authority for services rendered to it are taxable only in that paying State, moving to the other State only where the pensioner is both resident and national there without also holding the paying State's nationality. A British local-government pension paid to a Briton living in France therefore remains taxable only in the United Kingdom; only a French national, resident in France and not also British, escapes to French taxation. Confusing a government pension with an ordinary occupational pension is the costliest classification error in this field: it leads pensioners to claim exemption where none exists, or to omit from the French return a pension that France must in fact take into account for its own calculations. Certain narrow exemptions exist at the margins — war-related and persecution pensions dealt with in Article 19(4) — but they concern specific histories, not the standard retirement case.
GOV.UK confirms the safety net for the general case: a pensioner resident in a country that holds a double-taxation agreement with the UK may not have to pay tax twice, with the treaty telling each side where to pay. The treaty then organises the mechanics: exclusive residence taxation for employment pensions, exclusive source taxation for government pensions, and a credit method in Article 24 for income that both States may touch. Knowing which box your pension falls into determines everything that follows — the form to send HMRC, the boxes to fill in France, and the remedy if either administration gets it wrong.
II. How do I declare my British pensions in France and get back UK tax wrongly deducted?
France taxes its residents on worldwide income, so the British pension must appear on the French return even where the treaty gives France the exclusive right to tax — and especially where it does not. The declaration follows a fixed chain: establish French tax residence, enter the pensions gross with the foreign-income annexe, apply the pension abatement, compute the scale charge, then apply the treaty credit. Each link has its own article, its own deadline and its own remedy.
A. How do I declare UK pensions on the French tax return and what relief does the treaty give?
Everything starts with domicile fiscal — the French concept of tax residence, which is broader than the immigration notion of residence. Article 4 A of the Code général des impôts (the French tax code) provides: “Les personnes qui ont en France leur domicile fiscal sont passibles de l’impôt sur le revenu en raison de l’ensemble de leurs revenus.” — persons whose tax domicile is in France are liable to income tax on all of their income. Article 4 B then defines that domicile, starting with the everyday case: “Sont considérées comme ayant leur domicile fiscal en France au sens de l’article 4 A : a. Les personnes qui ont en France leur foyer ou le lieu de leur séjour principal ;” — persons who have their household (foyer) or principal place of stay in France. A British pensioner living year-round in France, whose home, spouse and daily life are there, meets this test and is therefore taxable in France on worldwide income, including every British pension.
The filing duty is general and annual. Article 170 of the tax code states: “En vue de l’établissement de l’impôt sur le revenu, toute personne imposable audit impôt est tenue de souscrire et de faire parvenir à l’administration une déclaration détaillée de ses revenus et bénéfices, de ses charges de famille et des autres éléments nécessaires au calcul de l’impôt sur le revenu,” — every taxable person must file a detailed return of income and family circumstances. In practice the British pensions go on the main return (form 2042) with the foreign-income annexe (form 2047, déclaration des revenus encaissés à l’étranger), whose official form and notice are published by the tax administration at impots.gouv.fr. Report the gross pension in pounds converted to euros, keep the P60 as proof, and never net off British tax deducted: the French computation starts from gross, and the treaty credit does the rest.
French domestic law then treats pensions as ordinary global income with one targeted relief. Article 79 provides: “Les traitements, indemnités, émoluments, salaires, pensions et rentes viagères concourent à la formation du revenu global servant de base à l’impôt sur le revenu.” — pensions and life annuities go into the global income that forms the tax base. Article 158 then grants the pensioners’ abatement (abattement, a statutory reduction of the taxable base): “Les pensions et retraites font l’objet d’un abattement de 10 % qui ne peut excéder 4 439 €.” — pensions are reduced by 10%, capped at €4,439 — with a floor as well: “L’abattement indiqué au deuxième alinéa ne peut être inférieur à 454 €, sans pouvoir excéder le montant brut des pensions et retraites.” The scale itself sits in Article 197, whose first line sets the entry threshold: “L’impôt est calculé en appliquant à la fraction de chaque part de revenu qui excède 11 600 € le taux de : – 11 % pour la fraction supérieure à 11 600 € et inférieure ou égale à 29 579 € ;” So a modest British pension, once converted and abated, often produces little or no French tax — but the return must still be filed, because the treaty credit and the administration’s computation both depend on it.
The treaty’s elimination machinery then decides what happens to any British tax. Article 24(3)(a) of the convention organises France's elimination of double taxation through a tax credit: income taxable in the United Kingdom under the treaty is still taken into account for computing French tax, the British tax is not deductible as such, but the French resident receives a credit against French tax within the stated conditions and limits. For ordinary pensions covered by Article 18, the operative sub-paragraph grants a credit equal to the French tax attributable to that income, on condition that the French resident was subject to United Kingdom tax on it — a credit equal to the French tax on that income, provided the resident was subject to UK tax on it. Two consequences matter daily. First, where HMRC lawfully taxed a government pension under Article 19(2), France grants a credit wiping out the French charge on it, so the pension is economically taxed once, in Britain. Second, the Conseil d’État — France’s supreme administrative court — has held that this credit does not require tax to have been effectively paid in Britain: “cette condition n’exige pas que les revenus en cause aient été soumis à une imposition effective.” The court spelled out the test in its answer of 12 February 2020 (no. 435907): “la condition prévue à l’alinéa (i) du a) du paragraphe 3 de l’article 24 de la convention doit être regardée comme satisfaite s’il est établi par le résident de France qu’il a déclaré les revenus en cause au Royaume-Uni, parce que ces revenus étaient compris dans la base de l’un des impôts énumérés au a) du 1 de l’article 2 de la convention, alors même qu’il n’aurait acquitté dans cet Etat aucun impôt à raison de ces revenus.” — the condition is met if the French resident shows the income was declared in the United Kingdom and fell within the base of a listed British tax, even if no British tax was actually paid on it. For a pensioner whose State Pension sits inside the personal allowance and therefore bore no UK tax, that ruling protects the French credit position: declaration in Britain, not payment in Britain, is what counts.
B. HMRC took UK tax, or the fisc refused my credit — how do I challenge it?
Two administrations, two remedies, and they must not be confused. On the British side, the remedy for tax deducted from a pension the treaty reserves to France is the France-Individual procedure: file the exemption application and embed the repayment claim for tax already taken, as HMRC’s notes describe. Send the completed form to the address HMRC indicates, keep copies of the P60s proving the deduction, and chase the coding notice that follows: once the exemption is recorded, the pension should be paid gross or under a code recording no United Kingdom tax liability, and the withheld amounts come back by repayment. If HMRC disputes residence or the nature of the pension, answer with the treaty articles themselves — Article 18 for employment pensions, Article 19(2) for government pensions — and with proof of French residence: French tax assessment (avis d’imposition), residence permit or withdrawal-agreement card, and utility evidence. Do not let a British repayment claim drift: while no treaty deadline in the convention itself governs it, delay weakens proof and lets further PAYE deductions accumulate.
On the French side, the remedy against a wrong assessment is the réclamation — the formal complaint to the tax administration that must precede any court action. Article R*196-1 of the Livre des procédures fiscales (the French tax procedure code) sets the time limit: “Pour être recevables, les réclamations relatives aux impôts autres que les impôts directs locaux et les taxes annexes à ces impôts, doivent être présentées à l’administration au plus tard le 31 décembre de la deuxième 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 ;” — complaints must reach the administration by 31 December of the second year following assessment or payment. A credit refused, an abatement forgotten, or a government pension wrongly added to French taxable income without the Article 24 credit are all textbook subjects for this complaint, filed online through the secure messaging of the personal account on impots.gouv.fr or by recorded letter to the local tax office (service des impôts des particuliers), attaching the treaty articles, the P60s and the computation.
If the administration rejects the complaint expressly or stays silent, the dispute moves to the administrative court (tribunal administratif). Article R421-1 of the Code de justice administrative (the administrative justice code) gives the rule: “La juridiction ne peut être saisie que par voie de recours formé contre une décision, et ce, dans les deux mois à partir de la notification ou de la publication de la décision attaquée.” — the court must be seised within two months of the decision. Treaty-credit litigation is well trodden ground: in April 2025 the Paris administrative court of appeal heard a claim in which the taxpayer expressly sought the benefit of the Article 24 treaty credit under the Franco-British convention, contesting the Paris tax court contesting the Paris tax court’s earlier rejection (CAA Paris, 11 April 2025, no. 23PA02576). The lesson is procedural, not substantive: frame the claim on the treaty article from day one, quantify the credit precisely, and plead the Conseil d’État’s 2020 reading that declaration without effective payment suffices. Courts apply the convention as written; they cannot rewrite its allocation, so a case built on the wrong article — Article 18 invoked for a government pension, for example — fails whatever its equities.
Three files to assemble today, before any dispute arises: the last three French assessments proving residence and declaration; every P60 and pension payslip showing British deductions; and the completed or acknowledged France-Individual form. With that bundle, the allowance crossover becomes an administrative episode — British tax deducted, treaty exemption recorded, repayment received, French return showing gross with credit — rather than the double taxation the treaty was written to prevent.
Conclusion
The surge in British searches about the State Pension crossing the personal allowance is not a false alarm: at £241.30 a week against a frozen £12,570 allowance, PAYE deductions now touch pensioners who never paid tax in their working lives, including those who retired to France. But for a French-resident Briton the treaty answers first: employment pensions and, through the France-Individual procedure, the State Pension are taxable only in France; government-service pensions stay taxable only in Britain unless the pensioner is a French-only national resident in France. France then taxes worldwide pensions through the ordinary return — gross entry with the 2047 annexe, 10% abatement, scale computation — and neutralises lawful British tax through the Article 24 credit, which the Conseil d’État grants on proof of British declaration even without British payment. The method that never fails is classification first, paperwork second, challenge third: identify the treaty box for each pension, file the exemption and the return, and contest any refusal within the British repayment channel or, in France, by complaint before 31 December of the second year and by court action within two months. Done in that order, the frozen allowance costs a French-resident pensioner correspondence, not double tax.