The envelope from the notaire (the French public officer who settles the estate) arrives with a figure that looks like a purchase price. It is not. It is a claim for French inheritance tax — droits de succession, the duty on transfers at death — on a house in France that a parent in Kent, a spouse in Lyon or an unmarried partner in Manchester has just left behind. Three questions usually land together: does France tax a British heir who still lives in the United Kingdom, how much does each child or partner actually pay once allowances and rates are applied, and can the same bricks be taxed twice, once by HM Revenue and Customs and once by the Direction générale des finances publiques (the French tax authority)? Brexit did not repeal the French General Tax Code. It did make British nationals third-country nationals, so every cross-border step is read more closely. This article is not another guide to form 2705 or to late-filing penalties, which the firm has already covered. It answers the calculation that actually moves money: territorial scope under article 750 ter of the General Tax Code, the scale in article 777, the 1963 France–United Kingdom succession convention still listed by HMRC, and the claim that challenges a valuation or a rate. Every decisive sentence below is taken from an official text or from a judgment read in full for this run.

I. Does France tax a British heir of a French house after Brexit, and at what rate?

A. When does France tax only the house in France and when does it tax worldwide assets?

French inheritance tax is a duty on mutations à titre gratuit (transfers without payment). Its territorial reach is not a matter of nationality and is not a matter of the 183-day myth that still circulates in British forums. It is set by article 750 ter of the General Tax Code, which opens with the words: “Sont soumis aux droits de mutation à titre gratuit :” Three heads of charge then follow. They must be read in order, because a British family often sits under more than one of them at the same death.

The first head taxes the worldwide estate when the deceased was French tax-resident. Article 750 ter, 1°, reaches “Les biens meubles et immeubles situés en France ou hors de France” when “le donateur ou le défunt a son domicile fiscal en France au sens de l’article 4 B”. Tax residence, the domicile fiscal, is defined by article 4 B of the same code: “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”. The same article then adds, in b and c, those who exercise their profession in France or who have in France the centre of their economic interests. A British retiree who has made the Dordogne house the family home, who keeps the bank accounts and the daily life there, can be French tax-resident even if the passport is British. In that case France taxes the French house and, under domestic law, the UK accounts, the UK portfolio and the UK house as well. The 1963 convention, discussed in Part II, then has to be applied to strip that worldwide claim back to French-situs property when the deceased was domiciled in Great Britain for treaty purposes.

The second head is the one that catches the classic British second home. Article 750 ter, 2°, taxes “Les biens meubles et immeubles, que ces derniers soient possédés directement ou indirectement, situés en France” when the deceased “n’a pas son domicile fiscal en France”. The parent who died in Kent, who never moved the foyer (the household) to France, still leaves a French tax on the stone house, the furniture in it, and, in listed cases, on shares of a foreign company whose assets are mainly French land. The same paragraph of article 750 ter treats as French “les actions et parts de sociétés ou personnes morales non cotées en bourse dont le siège est situé hors de France et dont l’actif est principalement constitué d’immeubles ou de droits immobiliers situés sur le territoire français, et ce à proportion de la valeur de ces biens par rapport à l’actif total de la société”. A British family that wrapped the holiday house in an English company or a Channel Island vehicle does not, by that wrapping alone, take the walls outside article 750 ter. Land used for the company’s own industrial, commercial or agricultural business is carved out; a holiday cottage held through a company is not that carve-out.

The third head is the trap for the sibling who settled in France. Article 750 ter, 3°, taxes worldwide assets “reçus par l’héritier, le donataire, le légataire ou le bénéficiaire d’un trust” who has his tax domicile in France. The same paragraph adds: “Toutefois, cette disposition ne s’applique que lorsque l’héritier, le donataire ou le bénéficiaire d’un trust a eu son domicile fiscal en France pendant au moins six années au cours des dix dernières années précédant celle au cours de laquelle il reçoit les biens.” The French tax office’s own international pages restate the same test in administrative language, listing among taxable assets the French and foreign property received where one of the heirs was a French resident for at least six of the ten years before the death. A daughter who has lived in Lyon since 2016 and a son who never left Manchester do not file the same French return. She may be charged on her share of UK assets as well as on the French house; he, if he is not French tax-resident, is charged only on French-situs property under 2°. The six-of-ten-year test is counted in the ten calendar years before the year of receipt, not in a rolling 3,650 days, and it is a French domestic rule. Whether the 1963 convention, which looks at the deceased’s domicile rather than the heir’s residence, limits that third head is a point to take on the file. It is not a point to assume against the taxpayer, and it is not a point to concede without reading the convention articles quoted below.

The Cour de cassation, commercial chamber, has said what the generating event of the tax is. In its judgment of 18 November 2020, appeal no. 18-14.242, applying article 750 ter in the wording that followed the law of 30 December 1998, the Court held: “Selon ce texte, sont soumis aux droits de mutation à titre gratuit les biens meubles et immeubles situés en France ou hors de France lorsque le donateur ou le défunt a son domicile fiscal en France au sens de l’article 4 B et ceux reçus par l’héritier, le donataire ou le légataire qui a son domicile fiscal en France au sens de cet article.” It added that “le fait générateur des droits de mutation à titre gratuit est constitué par le transfert de propriété”. The 1998 wording did not yet contain today’s six-of-ten-year proviso in 3°; that proviso is in the text in force on 17 September 2026. The generating event remains the transfer of ownership. A trust that only closes after a second death can move the charge, as that judgment shows. A French house that passes at the first death is charged at that death. The current wording of 750 ter, not the 1998 wording, is the one a British heir must apply in 2026.

One recent decision of the same chamber shows how the tax base is built before any rate is applied. In its judgment of 17 June 2026, appeal no. 25-10.143, published in the Bulletin (F-B), the Court quashed a court of appeal that had allowed the tax office to ignore a clause de préciput (a contractual right of the surviving spouse to take specified community assets before the estate is divided). After citing articles 720 and 1397 of the Civil Code and article 750 ter, it held: “lorsque les époux ont régulièrement modifié leur régime matrimonial pour y insérer une clause de préciput, les prélèvements opérés par le conjoint survivant sur les biens de communauté en application de cette clause produisent leurs effets sur la composition de l’actif de la succession servant à la détermination de l’assiette des droits de mutation à titre gratuit, peu important la date à laquelle la modification du régime matrimonial a été transcrite en marge de l’acte de mariage.” A British couple who changed their French marriage contract, or who inserted a preciput on French community assets, cannot be treated as if the clause did not exist merely because the marginal note on the marriage certificate was late. The tax follows the property that still belongs to the deceased at death. What no longer belongs, because a valid preciput took it out, is not in the French inheritance-tax base.

B. What allowance and rate apply to a spouse, a child, a PACS partner or an unmarried partner?

Once the French base is known, the duty is not a single percentage on the house. It is a duty on the net share of each person entitled, “la part nette revenant à chaque ayant droit” in article 777 of the General Tax Code. The first table, for direct line, is: up to €8,072 at 5 per cent; between €8,072 and €12,109 at 10 per cent; between €12,109 and €15,932 at 15 per cent; between €15,932 and €552,324 at 20 per cent; between €552,324 and €902,838 at 30 per cent; between €902,838 and €1,805,677 at 40 per cent; above €1,805,677 at 45 per cent. Those bands apply after the allowance, not before it. A child does not pay 20 per cent on the whole house. A child pays 20 per cent on the slice of his or her own net share that sits between €15,932 and €552,324, once the €100,000 allowance has been deducted.

That allowance is in article 779, I: “il est effectué un abattement de 100 000 € sur la part de chacun des ascendants et sur la part de chacun des enfants vivants ou représentés par suite de prédécès ou de renonciation.” Each living child, and each child who takes by representation of a predeceased or renouncing child, has a €100,000 deduction on his or her own share. The same article, II, gives a further €159,325 to an heir “incapable de travailler dans des conditions normales de rentabilité, en raison d’une infirmité physique ou mentale, congénitale ou acquise”. Brothers and sisters have €15,932 under IV, nephews and nieces €7,967 under V. These figures are those of the text in force on 17 September 2026. They are not indexed every year in the way UK nil-rate bands sometimes are. A British family that last looked at a 2012 blog post is often using the right numbers, but the wrong structure: the allowance is per child, per death, and it is reduced by gifts from the same person in the previous fifteen years under article 784, which requires the parties to disclose earlier gifts and then provides that “La perception est effectuée en ajoutant à la valeur des biens compris dans la donation ou la déclaration de succession celle des biens qui ont fait l’objet de donations antérieures, à l’exception de celles passées depuis plus de quinze ans”.

The surviving spouse and the partner bound by a pacte civil de solidarité (PACS, the French registered partnership) are not on the scale at all for deaths. Article 796-0 bis is a single sentence: “Sont exonérés de droits de mutation par décès le conjoint survivant et le partenaire lié au défunt par un pacte civil de solidarité.” Service-Public, in fiche F17456, states the same exemption for the spouse and the PACS partner. Table II of article 777, which still prints rates between spouses and between PACS partners, is the table for lifetime gifts, not for deaths. A British widow of a French marriage, or a PACS partner of a British deceased, who is told by a well-meaning friend that she pays the same as a child is being given the wrong code. She pays nothing in French inheritance tax on what she takes as surviving spouse or surviving PACS partner. She may still need a declaration, and she may still face civil claims from reserved heirs; those are different questions, already treated in the firm’s pieces on the surviving spouse’s rights and on an English will facing French forced heirship.

The exemption is only as strong as the PACS. In its judgment of 29 May 2024, appeal no. 22-24.008, the commercial chamber of the Cour de cassation recalled that “l’article 796-0 bis du code général des impôts prévoit l’exonération des droits de mutation par décès au profit du conjoint survivant et du partenaire lié au défunt par un pacte civil de solidarité”, and then examined whether a PACS that the tax office called fictitious was sufficiently revealed by the inheritance declaration for the shorter limitation period to run. The Court rejected the tax office’s appeal. It held that the declaration of 1 August 2014, with the will and the codicil annexed, “permettait à l’administration de disposer des éléments de nature à établir l’absence de toute cohabitation”, and that the fictitious character of the PACS “apparaissait dès lors que les intéressés, âgés respectivement de 95 et 60 ans, avaient des domiciles distincts”. Two lessons follow for a British couple. A genuine PACS, with a shared household, is worth the exemption. A PACS signed in a notary’s office the week before death, between people who kept separate homes and who described each other in a will as parent and child, will be read against the exemption. The tax office can still challenge it; the only question in that case was how long it had to do so.

An unmarried partner who never married and never entered a PACS is treated as a stranger. Table III of article 777 charges “Entre parents au-delà du 4e degré et entre personnes non-parentes” at 60 per cent. The only allowance, if no other allowance applies, is the residual €1,594 in article 788, IV: “A défaut d’autre abattement, à l’exception de celui mentionné au III, un abattement de 1 594 € est opéré sur chaque part successorale.” A long-standing English common-law partner who inherits a French house under an English will can therefore face a 60 per cent French duty on almost the whole of his or her share, while a PACS partner of three years pays nothing. That is not a drafting accident. It is the code. The practical answer, if the couple is still alive, is a PACS or a marriage, or a structure that does not pass the walls through the estate. After death, the only levers are valuation, debts that the code actually allows, the treaty credit, and a claim against an assessment that has used the wrong table.

Service-Public fiche F35794, on the duty payable according to the link with the deceased, walks a French reader through the same two-step method: an abattement (a flat deduction from the share), then the scale. Village-Justice, in a practical piece on how an heir pays the duty, tells a domestic heir when to pay, what to do without cash, and what the notary does. Neither page tells a British child in Manchester and a British child in Lyon why their French bills differ, and neither page applies the 1963 convention to a Kent domicile. That is the gap this article is written to fill.

II. How do you stop double tax with HMRC and how do you challenge the French bill?

A. How does the 1963 France-UK succession treaty and article 784 A credit work after Brexit?

Double tax is the second envelope. HMRC may charge UK inheritance tax on a UK-domiciled estate, including a French house. France charges droits de succession on the same walls. The instrument that was written for that collision is not the 2008 income-tax treaty. It is the Convention of 21 June 1963 between France and the United Kingdom, published in France by decree no. 64-789 of 27 July 1964 and in the United Kingdom by The Double Taxation Relief (Estate Duty) (France) Order 1963 (SI 1963/1319). HMRC’s guidance Inheritance Tax: Double Taxation Relief, updated on 6 April 2025, still lists France among the pre-1975 estate-duty treaties that apply to Inheritance Tax and warns that the treaties with France, Italy, India and Pakistan were in place before 1975 during the estate-duty era, have different rules to eliminate double taxation, and do not include provision for deemed domicile. Brexit did not terminate that convention. Deemed UK domicile, including the long-term residence test that HMRC describes from 6 April 2025, is a UK domestic concept that this particular treaty does not copy.

Situs of the house is not a matter of opinion. Article IV(a) of the convention, in the English authentic text, locates land where it physically is, locates rights or interests (other than security interests) that constitute immovable property where the land to which they relate is located, and leaves to the law of that place the question whether those rights or interests are immovable property. A French house is in France. A usufruct or a bare ownership of that house is in France. UK shares, by contrast, are generally situated where the deceased was domiciled, under Article IV(e) of the same schedule. The convention is a situs code, not a polite request.

Taxing rights follow domicile of the deceased, not nationality of the heir. Article V(2) is the clause a British family actually needs: where a person was at the time of his death domiciled in some part of Great Britain, duty shall not be imposed in France on any property not situated in France, and in determining the amount or rate of duty payable on any property which is chargeable in France, any property not situated in France shall be disregarded. If the deceased was domiciled in England, Wales or Scotland for the treaty, France may tax the French house and must ignore the UK cottage when it sets the French rate. The mirror clause, Article V(1), stops Great Britain taxing property that is not in Great Britain and does not pass under a Great Britain disposition, where the deceased was domiciled in France. Article II(3) supplies a tie-breaker if each country would treat the deceased as domiciled in its territory: permanent home, then centre of vital interests, then habitual abode, then nationality, then mutual agreement. That ladder is close to, but not identical with, article 4 of the income-tax treaty. A file that copies the income-tax residence memo into the succession file is using the wrong convention.

Where both States still tax the same French house — France because it is land in France, the United Kingdom because the deceased was UK-domiciled — Article VI requires a credit. The domicile State must allow, against so much of its duty as is attributable to that property, a credit equal to so much of the other State’s duty as is attributable to the same property, not exceeding the domicile State’s own duty on it. In the ordinary Kent-domicile case, that credit is a UK credit for French tax on the French house, claimed from HMRC, not a French refund. Article VII(1) then sets a hard clock: any claim for a credit or for a refund of duty founded on the convention must be made within five years from the date of the death, or, where the event causing duty to be payable occurs later, within five years from that later date. A family that waits for UK probate to finish, then for the French notary to finish, then for a first HMRC letter, can miss that five-year window. The claim should be diarised at death, not at the end of the file.

French domestic law has its own credit, which does not replace the convention and does not apply to every head of article 750 ter. Article 784 A provides: “Dans les cas définis aux 1° et 3° de l’article 750 ter , le montant des droits de mutation à titre gratuit acquitté, le cas échéant, hors de France est imputable sur l’impôt exigible en France. Cette imputation est limitée à l’impôt acquitté sur les biens meubles et immeubles situés hors de France.” The credit exists when France taxes worldwide because the deceased was French tax-resident (1°) or because the heir meets the six-of-ten-year test (3°). It does not exist, in this article, when France taxes only French-situs property under 2°. It is limited to foreign tax on property outside France. A British heir cannot use article 784 A to wipe French tax on the Dordogne house with UK inheritance tax on that same house; that is the convention’s job on the UK side. He can use 784 A, in a 1° or 3° case, to impute UK tax on UK assets against the French charge on those UK assets. The two credits are not interchangeable. Mixing them is a frequent error, and it is an error the tax office will not correct of its own motion.

Domicile for the convention is not the same as article 4 B tax residence, and it is not the same as English common-law domicile in every case, because Article II(3)(a) says that whether a deceased person was domiciled at the time of his death in any part of the territory of one of the Contracting Parties is determined in accordance with the law in force in that territory. A person can be UK-domiciled for the treaty and French tax-resident under article 4 B. That is exactly the case in which Article V(2) is written to bite. The firm’s article on when a British person becomes French tax-resident deals with income tax. It is not a substitute for the succession-treaty analysis.

B. How do you contest the valuation, a notaire’s demand to pay, or the tax office assessment?

Most Franco-British disputes are not about the 45 per cent band. They are about the number to which the band is applied. Article 761 is the valuation rule: “les immeubles, quelle que soit leur nature, sont estimés d’après leur valeur vénale réelle à la date de la transmission”. Real market value on the date of death, declared in detail by the parties, without deducting charges except as the following articles allow. The second paragraph of the same article then settles a British argument that still appears in every other file: “Pour les immeubles dont le propriétaire a l’usage à la date de la transmission, la valeur vénale réelle mentionnée au premier alinéa est réputée égale à la valeur libre de toute occupation.” If the deceased used the house, the value is the value with vacant possession. The Cour de cassation had already reached that result. In its judgment of 11 February 2003, appeal no. 01-12.301, it held that “l’immeuble ne peut pas être considéré comme occupé lorsque son propriétaire en était le seul occupant au moment de son décès” and that, the son not living there, “l’immeuble dans lequel celle-ci résidait devait être évalué comme un immeuble libre de toute occupation”. A discount for the fact that the deceased still lived in the house is not available. A discount for a tenant in place under a genuine lease can be. A discount because the house is damp, listed, landlocked or unsaleable without works can be, if the comparables support it. The tax office will compare the declaration with local sales. An estate-agent letter written after a first rejection is weaker than three signed comparables gathered before the declaration is filed.

Furniture is a second silent uplift. Article 764, I, 3° provides that, failing a sale or an inventory, “pour les meubles meublants, et sans que l’administration ait à en justifier l’existence, la valeur imposable ne peut être inférieure à 5 % de l’ensemble des autres valeurs mobilières et immobilières de la succession, la preuve contraire étant aussi réservée.” On a €400,000 house with no inventory, the office can add €20,000 of furniture that nobody listed. The contrary proof is an inventory in the forms of article 789 of the Civil Code, or a public sale. A British family that skips the inventory to save the notary’s time is often buying a 5 per cent ghost asset.

Where the surviving spouse keeps a life interest, usufruit, and the children take the bare ownership, nue-propriété, the tax is not charged as if each had the whole house. Article 669, I splits the value by the usufructuary’s age: under 21, usufruct 90 per cent and bare ownership 10 per cent; then the usufruct falls by 10 points every ten years, down to 10 per cent after 91. A surviving spouse who is exempt under 796-0 bis pays nothing on the usufruct. The children pay on the bare ownership only, after their €100,000 allowances. That is why the civil choice between usufruct and a quarter in ownership, explained in the widow’s-rights article, is also a tax choice.

Payment is not optional and is not postponed by a dispute about the amount. Article 1701 states: “Les droits des actes et ceux des mutations par décès sont payés avant l’exécution de l’enregistrement, de la publicité foncière ou de la formalité fusionnée, aux taux et quotités réglés par le présent code. Nul ne peut en atténuer ni différer le paiement sous le prétexte de contestation sur la quotité, ni pour quelque autre motif que ce soit, sauf à se pourvoir en restitution s’il y a lieu.” The notary who refuses to complete the land-registry formalities until the duty is paid is applying that article, not inventing a private rule. The Conseil d’État quoted article 1701 in its decision of 11 February 2022, no. 454999, 8th and 3rd chambers combined, in a case on a historic-monument exemption. The declaration clock itself is in article 641: “Les délais pour l’enregistrement des déclarations que les héritiers, donataires ou légataires ont à souscrire des biens à eux échus ou transmis par décès sont : De six mois, à compter du jour du décès, lorsque celui dont on recueille la succession est décédé en France métropolitaine; D’une année, dans tous les autres cas.” A death in Kent therefore has a twelve-month declaration clock, not a six-month clock. The French tax office’s international pages say the same, in administrative language: six months if the death was in France, twelve months if the death was abroad. How to complete form 2705, and what happens if that clock is missed, is the subject of the firm’s guide to form 2705, deadlines and penalties. This article does not repeat that procedure. It adds the point that payment and contest are sequential, not alternative.

There is a statutory safety valve for cash. Article 1717, I provides: “Par dérogation aux dispositions de l’article 1701, le paiement des droits d’enregistrement et de la taxe de publicité foncière peut être fractionné ou différé selon des modalités fixées par décret.” The Conseil d’État, in the same decision 454999, quoted that derogation immediately after article 1701. Instalments are not a refusal to pay. They are a request made on time, with the guarantees the decree requires, usually when the estate is mainly the house and the house has not yet been sold. A British heir who simply ignores the notary’s request for funds, hoping that a later claim will unwind the charge, is not in article 1717. He is in article 1701, and the land registry will not move.

The claim against an excessive assessment is an administrative claim, not a letter to the notary. Article L. 190 of the Tax Procedure Book, still in force until 1 January 2027, places before the tax courts “Les réclamations relatives aux impôts, contributions, droits, taxes, redevances, soultes et pénalités de toute nature” that seek “la réparation d’erreurs commises dans l’assiette ou le calcul des impositions” or “le bénéfice d’un droit résultant d’une disposition législative ou réglementaire”. Inheritance tax is in that list. Article R.* 196-1 of the same book, in the wording in force since 30 July 2026, requires that, to be admissible, claims relating to taxes other than local direct taxes “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 ; b) Du versement de l’impôt contesté lorsque cet impôt n’a pas donné lieu à l’établissement d’un rôle ou à la notification d’un avis de mise en recouvrement ; c) De la réalisation de l’événement qui motive la réclamation.” For a duty paid to the notary without a separate collection notice, limb b is the usual clock: 31 December of the second year after the year of payment. A valuation fight started in the third year is often already out of time. Payment under article 1701 does not waive the claim; that article itself says the taxpayer may then seek restitution if there are grounds.

In Paris and Île-de-France the civil file and the tax file do not travel to the same building. The notaire who settles a Paris flat will usually be a Paris notary; the land-registry formalities run through the Paris land registry. A tax claim under L. 190 is lodged with the service that collected the duty, then, if it is rejected or left unanswered, with the tribunal administratif (administrative court) of Paris, with appeal to the Paris administrative court of appeal and, on points of law, to the Conseil d’État. A UK-resident heir who has no French address for service should appoint a person in France to receive tax mail. Notices sent to an old holiday-home letterbox, or to a UK address that is no longer checked, are how limitation periods die quietly. The pieces to assemble before the claim are not mysterious: the death certificate, the inheritance declaration, the comparables, the marriage or PACS certificate, the English will with a certified translation, the 1963 convention articles relied on, the UK inheritance-tax computation if a 784 A or Article VI credit is in play, and the proof of payment. Those are the documents a Paris file actually uses. They are also the documents a British second-home owner in the Dordogne or the Var will need, because the code is national. The local difference is the court and the notary, not the rate.

What the French public pages do not do, and what a British desk has to do, is to hold these texts in one view. Service-Public F14198 explains how to inventory, split the estate, apply allowances and apply the scale. Impots.gouv.fr explains, for a French-resident heir of a non-resident deceased, the six-of-ten-year worldwide charge and the six- or twelve-month clock. Village-Justice explains cash-flow and the notary’s role to a French reader. None of them applies Article V(2) of the 1963 convention to a Kent domicile, none of them warns that article 761 values a lived-in house at vacant possession, and none of them cites the 2026 precipit clause decision or the 2024 PACS decision. A British heir who copies a French blog’s 60 per cent “stranger” rate onto a PACS partner, or who copies a spouse exemption onto an unmarried partner, will either overpay or under-declare. Both errors are expensive. The cheaper file remains the one that values the house as article 761 requires, uses the table that matches the real family link, claims the treaty on time, pays or instalment-pays under 1701 and 1717, and then claims under R.* 196-1 against the figure that is actually wrong.

Conclusion

French droits de succession on a British family’s French house are a territorial tax, a personal tax and a treaty tax at the same time. Article 750 ter charges worldwide assets if the deceased was French tax-resident, French-situs assets if he was not, and, where an heir has been French tax-resident for six of the previous ten years, worldwide assets received by that heir. Article 777 then applies a scale to each net share. A child has a €100,000 allowance under article 779. A spouse or a genuine PACS partner is exempt under article 796-0 bis. An unmarried partner is a stranger at 60 per cent after €1,594. The 1963 convention, still applied by HMRC to inheritance tax, stops France taxing non-French property when the deceased was domiciled in Great Britain, and it gives the domicile State a credit for the other State’s tax on property situated there, if the claim is made within five years of death. Article 784 A is a different credit, limited to foreign tax on foreign assets in 1° and 3° cases. Valuation follows article 761: real market value, vacant possession if the deceased used the house, as the Cour de cassation held in 2003. Payment precedes registration, under article 1701, unless instalments are granted under article 1717. A claim must reach the tax office by 31 December of the second year after payment or collection, under article R.* 196-1. Brexit changed the immigration status of the British heir. It did not rewrite those articles, and it did not repeal the 1963 convention. The file that wins is the file that quotes the head of 750 ter that actually applies, the table that matches the family link, and the convention article that actually credits the tax.

Need a quick opinion on your case

If you have just received a French inheritance-tax computation on a house in France, have been charged as a stranger though you were a spouse or PACS partner, face a worldwide assessment under article 750 ter, 3°, or need to claim the 1963 convention or a restitution before the R.* 196-1 deadline, our firm offers a telephone consultation within 48 hours with a lawyer of the firm. Call +33 6 46 60 58 22 or write via our contact page. The firm advises clients in Paris and Île-de-France as well as British heirs throughout France.