You moved to France after Brexit, kept your London job and work from your French home four or five days a week. Your UK employer still runs you through British payroll, deducts PAYE and National Insurance, and everyone assumes nothing has changed. Then the questions arrive: your visitor residence card says you may not work, the French tax office treats you as resident, and nobody has paid a euro of French social charges on a salary earned at a desk in France. This article explains, for a British citizen employed by a UK company while living in France, which residence papers you need, what your employer must set up in France, which country takes social security, where the salary is taxed, and how to challenge a refusal or a double bill. Every French term is explained on first use. French law is quoted in French, word for word, with official links.

I. Can a British citizen legally work remotely in France for a UK employer after Brexit?

A. Which French residence and work papers does a British remote worker need, and how do you challenge a refusal?

Since the end of the Brexit transition period, British citizens are third-country nationals in France. Living in France and working, even remotely for an employer based in London, requires both a right to stay and a right to work. The two must not be confused, because the most common residence card held by inactive Britons gives no right to work at all.

The carte de séjour visiteur, the visitor residence card, is issued for one year to foreigners who show they can live on their own resources. Article L. 426-20 of the Code de l’entrée et du séjour des étrangers et du droit d’asile, the Code on the Entry and Residence of Foreigners, states that the applicant must prendre l’engagement de n’exercer en France aucune activité professionnelle, give an undertaking not to carry on any professional activity in France, and adds that Par dérogation à l’article L. 414-10, cette carte n’autorise pas l’exercice d’une activité professionnelle, by way of exception to Article L. 414-10, this card does not authorise the exercise of a professional activity. Working your London job from your house in the Dordogne is work performed physically on French soil, so the visitor card is closed to you as a remote employee. A separate article on this site explains how a visitor card holder can change status rather than work in breach of it, and it is linked at the end of this section.

The general rule for employees is set by Article L. 5221-2 of the Labour Code: Pour entrer en France en vue d’y exercer une profession salariée, l’étranger présente : 1° Les documents et visas exigés par les conventions internationales et les règlements en vigueur ; 2° Un contrat de travail visé par l’autorité administrative ou une autorisation de travail. A foreigner coming to France to work as an employee must show the required documents and visas, plus either a contract approved by the administration or a work permit, the autorisation de travail. In practice the application for the work permit is filed by the employer, not by you, on the ANEF online portal, and the official Service-Public guidance confirms that depending on the residence permit requested, the employer will have to apply for a work permit, with detailed tables by card type available at service-public.fr, work permit for a foreign employee.

Once you hold the right card, the right to work follows. Article L. 414-10 of the foreigners Code provides that La possession d’une carte de séjour temporaire, d’une carte de séjour pluriannuelle ou d’une carte de résident par un étranger résidant sur le territoire métropolitain lui confère, sous réserve des exceptions prévues à l’article L. 414-11, le droit d’exercer une activité professionnelle, sur ce même territoire, dans le cadre de la législation en vigueur. Holding a temporary, multi-year or resident card gives the right to work, subject only to the statutory exceptions, which is exactly why the choice of card matters so much. British holders of a Withdrawal Agreement card keep the rights attached to that card, while newcomers typically need a visa valant titre de séjour, a long-stay visa that acts as a residence permit, followed by a carte de séjour salarié, an employee card, or a passeport talent card where the salary and profile fit.

If the prefecture refuses the work permit or the card, do not simply reapply with the same file. Ask for the written reasons, file a recours gracieux, an informal appeal to the authority that decided, and a recours hiérarchique to the minister within two months, and prepare a case before the tribunal administratif, the administrative court, which can suspend an imminent removal measure in urgent proceedings. Keep every payslip, every email showing where you actually work, and the employer’s filing receipts, because judges decide these cases on concrete evidence of real activity, not on intention letters. Readers facing a visa refusal before even moving will find the step-by-step appeal route in our guide to challenging a French long-stay visa refusal, and holders of a visitor card who want to become employees should read our guide to changing status out of a visitor card.

B. What your UK employer must set up in France: payroll with no office, payslips and inspections

Remote work from home is recognised by French law, but it does not free the employer from French employer duties. Article L. 1222-9 of the Labour Code defines the arrangement: le télétravail désigne toute forme d’organisation du travail dans laquelle un travail qui aurait également pu être exécuté dans les locaux de l’employeur est effectué par un salarié hors de ces locaux de façon volontaire en utilisant les technologies de l’information et de la communication. Telework is work that could have been done on the employer’s premises but is done elsewhere voluntarily using information technology. Your cottage office therefore counts as a real workplace, and the employer owes you a compliant payslip, paid leave, working-time limits and at least the SMIC, the French statutory minimum wage, where your salary would otherwise fall below it.

Where the UK company has no office, branch or subsidiary in France, it must still declare and pay French social charges. Article L. 243-1-2 of the Social Security Code states that L’employeur dont l’entreprise ne comporte pas d’établissement en France ou, s’il est un particulier, qui n’est pas considéré comme domicilié en France pour l’établissement de l’impôt sur le revenu et souhaite bénéficier de cette faculté, remplit ses obligations relatives aux déclarations et versements des contributions et cotisations sociales d’origine légale ou conventionnelle auxquelles il est tenu au titre de l’emploi de personnel salarié auprès d’un organisme de recouvrement unique, désigné par arrêté du ministre chargé de la sécurité sociale. An employer with no establishment in France registers with a single designated collection body. In practice this is the URSSAF service for foreign firms and the TFE scheme, the titre firmes étrangères, a streamlined foreign-employer payroll service described on urssaf.fr, foreign firms service. The employer files the DPAE, the pre-hiring declaration, issues French payslips showing French contributions, and pays the cotisations, the employee and employer social charges, each month. The official Cleiss guidance for employers from states sending staff to France confirms the principle in plain terms: Ce dernier doit être assujetti au régime français de protection sociale pour tous les risques. The employee must be covered by the French social protection scheme for all risks.

Do not present this setup as a posting, a détachement, unless it genuinely is one. Article L. 1262-1 of the Labour Code allows posting only on strict terms: Un employeur établi hors de France peut détacher temporairement des salariés sur le territoire national, à condition qu’il existe un contrat de travail entre cet employeur et le salarié et que leur relation de travail subsiste pendant la période de détachement. A foreign employer may only post employees temporarily, while the employment relationship continues. The three statutory posting cases all suppose a temporary assignment linked to a service, an intra-group move or the employer’s own account abroad, which does not describe a Briton permanently settled in France and working every day from home. Misusing the posting label to avoid French payroll is precisely what triggers reassessments.

French inspectors have strong powers over foreign-seat employers. In a 16 October 2025 ruling against a Portuguese company working in France, the Second Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation held, pourvoi No 23-14.039, that pour rechercher ou constater des infractions de travail dissimulé s’agissant de salariés exerçant une activité en France pour le compte d’un employeur ayant son siège social à l’étranger, les agents de contrôle des organismes de sécurité sociale et des caisses de mutualité sociale agricole, agréés à cet effet et assermentés, vérifient les déclarations qui doivent être faites par l’employeur aux organismes de protection sociale et de recouvrement des contributions et cotisations sociales en vertu des dispositions légales en vigueur en recueillant auprès de l’employeur les documents, quels que soient leur forme et leur support, qui permettent d’établir si l’employeur dispose d’une affiliation à la sécurité sociale française. To investigate concealed work involving employees active in France for an employer seated abroad, approved inspectors check the employer’s declarations by collecting any documents showing whether the employer is affiliated to French social security. The Court added that alors qu’à défaut de production de documents justifiant du rattachement des salariés de la société travaillant sur le sol français à la législation de leur pays d’origine, le redressement était justifié, where no documents prove the employees working on French soil remain covered by their home country’s legislation, the back-charge, the redressement, stands. Tell your employer to keep the registration certificate, every payslip and any posting certificate, because at an inspection the burden of proof is on the employer.

Concealed work is a criminal as well as financial risk. Article L. 8221-3 of the Labour Code provides that Est réputé travail dissimulé par dissimulation d’activité, l’exercice à but lucratif d’une activité de production, de transformation, de réparation ou de prestation de services ou l’accomplissement d’actes de commerce par toute personne qui, se soustrayant intentionnellement à ses obligations, lucrative activity carried on while deliberately evading registration or declaration duties counts as concealed work. Failing to declare a France-based employee to URSSAF, while deducting only British charges, is exactly the pattern this text targets, and it can lead to back-charges, penalties and prosecution alongside the employee’s own residence problems.

II. Which country takes social charges and income tax on the London salary earned from a French home?

A. French or British social security: the workplace rule, the posting certificate and the fraud warning

Social security follows the place of work, not the employer’s letterhead. European coordination starts from a single-legislation principle, and the French courts enforce it exactly that way, as the May 2026 A1 decision quoted below shows: a foreign certificate binds the host state, but only a genuine one survives scrutiny. Since Brexit the United Kingdom is no longer a Member State, and temporary postings are handled through a certificate system run on the British side by HMRC, while lasting work performed in France points to the French scheme.

The British side of that certificate system is run by HMRC. The official GOV.UK guidance for workers from the United Kingdom working in the European area states: You only need to pay National Insurance in the UK if HMRC has issued you with a certificate of coverage (also referred to as a PDA1). It adds that The certificate can be used as evidence that you do not need to pay social security contributions in the country you are working in. Read that sentence from the French end: without a certificate of coverage issued for a genuine temporary posting, you do need to pay French contributions. A permanent remote worker living year-round in France will not get such a certificate, because there is no temporary assignment to certify, so French affiliation applies from the first payslip.

French domestic law says the same thing in even broader terms. Article L. 311-2 of the Social Security Code provides that Sont affiliées obligatoirement aux assurances sociales du régime général, quel que soit leur âge et même si elles sont titulaires d’une pension, toutes les personnes quelle que soit leur nationalité, de l’un ou de l’autre sexe, salariées ou travaillant à quelque titre ou en quelque lieu que ce soit, pour un ou plusieurs employeurs et quels que soient le montant et la nature de leur rémunération, la forme, la nature ou la validité de leur contrat ou la nature de leur statut. Everyone working in France, whatever their nationality, whatever the contract, must be affiliated to the general scheme. The Cour de cassation reads employer contribution undertakings strictly: in a 13 October 2022 decision, pourvoi No 21-13.252, the Second Civil Chamber recalled that s’ils ne sont pas ou ne sont plus soumis à la législation française de sécurité sociale en vertu de conventions ou de règlements internationaux, les travailleurs détachés temporairement à l’étranger par leur employeur pour y exercer une activité salariée ou assimilée, rémunérée par cet employeur, sont soumis à la législation française de sécurité sociale à la condition que l’employeur s’engage à s’acquitter de l’intégralité des cotisations dues auprès de la caisse d’affiliation du salarié. Where no international instrument displaces French law, the worker stays in the French scheme and the employer must pay the full contributions to the employee’s fund. The case concerned French workers sent abroad, but the reasoning method is identical in reverse: check the applicable legislation first, and only a valid international certificate moves the worker out of it.

Workers who genuinely split their week between London and France need a formal, documented determination of which legislation applies, not an office assumption. The official British guidance says plainly: You should apply for a certificate of coverage from HMRC. You or your employer should file that application wherever a posting or a multi-state pattern might keep British coverage, and keep the application, the decision and a diary of days worked in each country together, because inspectors and funds decide these files on dated evidence. If you spend three days a week at the French home office and two in London, get that determination in writing before the first overlapping payslip, rather than reconstructing it during an inspection.

Finally, treat foreign posting certificates as fragile shields, not magic paper. On 27 May 2026 the Criminal Chamber of the Court of Cassation, pourvoi No 24-85.090, confirmed that A1 certificates benefit from a strong presumption: les certificats A1 délivrés par l’institution compétente d’un Etat membre créent une présomption de régularité de l’affiliation du travailleur concerné au régime de sécurité sociale de cet État et s’imposent à l’institution compétente et aux juridictions de l’État membre dans lequel ce travailleur effectue sa prestation, A1 certificates create a presumption that the worker is properly affiliated in the issuing state and bind the institutions and courts of the state where the work is done. But the Court restated the European fraud exception, following the Court of Justice in Altun and Vueling: a court may set the certificates aside where the issuing institution was given concrete evidence of fraud and failed to re-examine it. In the Court’s own words, le fait pour l’institution compétente de l’Etat membre d’émission de confirmer le bien-fondé de certificats A1 sans se prononcer sur les éléments concrets soumis par l’institution compétente de l’État membre d’accueil qui donnent à penser que ces certificats ont été obtenus ou invoqués de manière frauduleuse ne peut être assimilé à un réexamen effectif. Confirming A1 certificates without answering the concrete evidence of fraud put forward by the host state is not a genuine re-examination, and in that case the host court may discard them. For a British remote worker this is a warning in both directions: a UK certificate obtained for a posting that never genuinely existed will not survive a French inspection, and any French claim that you owe contributions must itself respect the dialogue procedure with HMRC where a real certificate exists.

B. French or British income tax: residence, the treaty salary article and how to fight double taxation

Living in France usually makes you a French tax resident, and working in France reinforces it. Article 4 B of the Code général des impôts, the French Tax Code, lists three alternative tests: 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 ; b. Celles qui exercent en France une activité professionnelle, salariée ou non, à moins qu’elles ne justifient que cette activité y est exercée à titre accessoire, persons with their home or principal place of stay in France, or who carry on a professional activity in France unless it is merely ancillary, are deemed domiciled in France for tax purposes. A full-time remote job done from your French house satisfies both the home test and the professional-activity test at once. The same article then gives way to tax treaties: Les personnes qui satisfont à l’un au moins des critères fixés aux a à c du présent 1 ne peuvent toutefois pas être considérées comme ayant leur domicile fiscal en France lorsque, par application des conventions internationales relatives aux doubles impositions, elles ne sont pas regardées comme résidentes de France. Meeting a domestic test is not the end of the story where a double-tax treaty deems you resident elsewhere. Couples who split their time between the two countries should also read our analysis of how British couples prove tax residence, which details the evidence the tax office actually weighs.

Where both countries claim you, the France-United Kingdom double-tax convention of 19 June 2008 breaks the tie. The official consolidated text is published on impots.gouv.fr, convention with the United Kingdom as amended. In substance, Article 4 treats a person with a permanent home in both states as resident only where their closest personal and economic ties lie, the centre of vital interests. Your French house, your children’s schooling, your daily life and your actual workplace all pull that centre toward France, even if you kept a flat in London and visit family there.

Once France is the residence state, Article 15 of the same convention, on employment income, allocates the salary to the state where the employment is exercised: for a French-resident Briton working from home in France, that is France, and only the days physically worked in London remain taxable in the United Kingdom, with France granting a foreign-tax credit, the crédit d’impôt, against French tax on the same income. The narrow exception keeping exclusive taxation in the residence state despite work abroad needs three conditions together, a stay abroad of no more than 183 days in any twelve-month period, pay by an employer not resident in the other state, and no charge of the salary to a permanent establishment there. A London employer paying a French-based remote worker fails this test in the normal case, because the employment is exercised in France itself.

In practice, declare the full worldwide salary on the French return, forms 2042 and 2047 for foreign-source elements, report the British PAYE already suffered, and claim the treaty credit rather than omitting the income. Keep boarding passes, calendar entries and a day-count diary proving where each working day was performed, because the 183-day analysis and the split of London days against French days are decided on that evidence. Employees seconded to France on higher packages should check whether the impatriate exemption applies to them in our guide to the French impatriate regime for British employees. If the tax office denies the credit or taxes the whole salary twice, file a réclamation contentieuse, a formal written tax complaint, through your online impots.gouv.fr secure messaging within the statutory time limit shown on the assessment, and appeal a rejection to the tribunal administratif within two months. Attach the treaty articles, the day-count table and the British P60 or payslips showing the tax already paid, and ask expressly for the treaty-based credit, because generic complaints without the treaty reference are routinely rejected as unfounded.

Conclusion

A British citizen can absolutely live in France and keep a London job, but the setup has three load-bearing walls and all three must stand. First, the residence papers must authorise work: a visitor card never does, and the employer must obtain the work permit before the employee card is issued. Second, the UK employer must join the French system through the foreign-firms payroll service, file the pre-hiring declaration and pay French contributions, because inspectors can demand any document proving affiliation and will back-charge where none exists. Third, lasting work from a French home means French social security without a genuine posting certificate, and French taxation of the salary under the treaty, with only the London working days escaping to the United Kingdom and returning through a documented foreign-tax credit. Readers who recognise their own situation in more than one of these warnings should act in this order: fix the residence and work papers first, because everything else depends on the right to be here; register the employer and regularise the contributions second, because penalties grow every month; and rebuild the tax file with a day-count diary and the treaty articles third, because a well-evidenced complaint is what gets double tax cancelled.

Need a quick opinion on your case

Teleworking from France for a British employer raises residence, payroll, social security and treaty questions that turn on your exact papers and working pattern. Our office offers a telephone consultation within 48 hours with a lawyer of the firm, to review your residence card, your employer’s French registration and your tax position, and to set the next steps.

Call +33 6 46 60 58 22 or write through our contact page with a short description of your situation and copies of your current residence papers.