You moved to France from the United Kingdom after Brexit, or you kept your French house while returning to live in Britain, and now both tax offices seem interested in the same income. This is the most common Franco-British tax dispute of the post-Brexit years: two countries, two residence tests, and one bilateral treaty that decides who taxes what. The applicable treaty is the Convention signed in London on 19 June 2008 between France and the United Kingdom for the avoidance of double taxation and the prevention of fiscal evasion with respect to taxes on income and on capital gains, published in France by Decree No 2010-20 of 7 January 2010, in the consolidated version amended by the Multilateral Instrument as published by the French tax administration (treaty text, impots.gouv.fr). The French tax administration comments on it in detail in the BOFiP section INT-CVB-GBR. On the British side, the practical gateway is the GOV.UK guide If you’re taxed twice, which explains how to claim relief before or after the foreign tax is levied. This article explains, for a British reader, how France decides that you are its tax resident, how the treaty breaks the tie when both countries claim you, which country taxes your pension, your dividends and your French house, and which remedies exist when double taxation nevertheless happens: the French prior claim (réclamation, the compulsory first-step complaint to the tax office), the strict time limits, the French administrative court (tribunal administratif, the first-level judge for tax disputes), the British claim channels, and the mutual agreement procedure between the two tax administrations. Every French term is explained at first use. The long quotations below are reproduced word for word from the official texts, each placed alongside its official source link.

I. Am I a French tax resident or still a UK resident after Brexit?

Everything starts with residence, because residence decides the scope of taxation. A French tax resident pays French income tax on worldwide income; a non-resident pays French tax only on French-source income. Before Brexit, many British people living in France never examined this question closely, because European Union law smoothed over most frictions. Since 1 January 2021, United Kingdom nationals are third-country nationals in France: the residence permit (carte de séjour, the document authorising a foreigner to live in France) and the tax residence are two separate questions, and holding a Withdrawal Agreement card does not by itself make you, or stop you from being, a French tax resident. Tax residence follows facts, not immigration status, and the two tax administrations may each consider you theirs at the same time. That overlap is precisely what the treaty exists to resolve.

A. The French domicile test: your home, your stay and your work

French domestic law uses the expression domicile fiscal (tax domicile, the connecting factor that makes a person fully liable to French tax). Article 4 A of the French General Tax Code (Code général des impôts, the main French tax statute, usually shortened to CGI) states the consequence in one sentence: “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.” In plain English: persons whose tax domicile is in France are liable to income tax on all of their income, wherever it arises. The same article adds the mirror rule for non-residents, who are taxable only on French-source income, and Article 164 B lists what counts as French-source income, starting with “Sont considérés comme revenus de source française : a. Les revenus d’immeubles sis en France ou de droits relatifs à ces immeubles”, which is why a British non-resident who lets a French house remains taxable in France on that rent. Article 4 B of the same code then gives three alternative residence criteria, and meeting any single one is enough: “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 ;” followed by criterion (c), the centre of economic interests (centre des intérêts économiques, roughly where your main financial affairs are managed). The word foyer means the family home in the broad sense: where you normally live with your family. The lieu du séjour principal (place of your main stay) is essentially a day-count test, used mainly when there is no family home anywhere. Professional activity in France counts too, unless you prove it is merely ancillary. Crucially, Article 4 B ends with a treaty safety valve: “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.” In other words, even if French domestic law catches you, the treaty can take you back out if its tie-breaker makes you a United Kingdom resident. This is why the treaty analysis is never optional for a British person with feet in both countries.

The Conseil d’État (the French supreme court for administrative and tax cases) has defined the foyer test in terms every British household in France should memorise. In a decision of 21 June 2022, No 449408, it recalled: “Pour l’application de ces dispositions, le foyer s’entend du lieu où le contribuable habite normalement et a le centre de ses intérêts familiaux, sans qu’il soit tenu compte des séjours effectués temporairement ailleurs en raison des nécessités de la profession ou de circonstances exceptionnelles, et que le lieu du séjour principal du contribuable ne peut déterminer son domicile fiscal que dans l’hypothèse où celui-ci ne dispose pas de foyer.” The family home is where the taxpayer normally lives and has the centre of family interests; temporary stays elsewhere for professional needs or exceptional circumstances are disregarded; and the main-stay test only applies where the taxpayer has no family home at all. In that case, the taxpayer argued that his tax residence was in Bulgaria, but the court of appeal had noted that he kept a flat in Paris where his wife and their young son lived, a second house in Seine-et-Marne used occasionally, several French bank accounts, works of art, and that the couple had declared their income in France, while he produced nothing capable of establishing the reality of daily life in Bulgaria. The Conseil d’État held that this was a sovereign assessment of the facts and rejected the appeal on that point. The lesson for British readers is direct: if your spouse and children live in the French house, if your bank accounts and daily life are in France, and if you declare yourself resident in France, asserting a purely formal residence in the United Kingdom afterwards will fail for lack of evidence. Conversely, if your family life genuinely remains in Kent while you work a few days a week in Paris, that evidence must be gathered and kept from day one: tenancy agreements, school records, travel records, utility bills, and consistent tax filings on both sides of the Channel.

A frequent misunderstanding must be cleared up at this stage. The British Statutory Residence Test and the French domicile fiscal test are not mirror images, and each country applies its own test first. You can be resident under both domestic laws simultaneously; that is called dual residence, and HM Revenue and Customs publishes dedicated helpsheets for dual residents (HS302) and for non-residents claiming treaty relief (HS304). Dual residence is not double taxation yet, but it is the doorway to it, and the treaty tie-breaker examined below is the key that closes that door. Another misunderstanding concerns split years: arriving in or leaving France mid-year does not automatically split the year for French purposes the way the United Kingdom system sometimes does, so the year of the move needs separate analysis in each country, ideally before the move.

B. When both countries claim you: the treaty tie-breaker and the 183-day employment rule

Article 4 of the Franco-British Convention first defines a resident of a contracting state as any person who, under that state’s law, is liable to tax there by reason of domicile, residence, place of management or any similar criterion. Then, for individuals who are residents of both states, paragraph 2 lays down a strict cascade, to be applied step by step until one step gives a single answer. First, the person is deemed resident only of the state where they have a permanent home (foyer d’habitation permanent, a dwelling continuously available to them, whether owned or rented); if there is such a home in both states, only of the state with which personal and economic ties are closest, known as the centre of vital interests (centre des intérêts vitaux, covering family, social life, occupation, property management and cultural links); if that centre cannot be determined, or if there is no permanent home in either state, only of the state of habitual presence; and if presence is habitual in both states or in neither, only of the state of nationality (Article 4, consolidated treaty text). Each step is a question of fact, and the tax administration that challenges your residence will test each step in order. A British retiree who sold the United Kingdom house, bought outright in the Dordogne, joined local associations, and keeps only a child’s spare room in London will normally be decided at step one in favour of France. A consultant who kept the family house in Surrey, whose children attend school there, and who rents a studio in Lyon for a three-day working week will normally be decided at step two in favour of the United Kingdom, provided the evidence of those ties is real and documented. The difficult cases are the genuinely balanced lives: a house in each country, family moving between the two, income from both sides. There, habitual presence and day counts become decisive, which is why keeping a contemporaneous diary of nights spent in each country is one of the most valuable habits a Franco-British household can adopt.

Employees seconded across the Channel face a related but distinct rule in the treaty’s article on employment income (revenus d’emploi, wages and salaries from dependent personal services). The principle is that salary is taxable where the work is physically done, but an exception keeps taxation in the residence state where three cumulative conditions are all met: presence in the state of work not exceeding 183 days in any rolling twelve-month period, payment by or on behalf of an employer not resident in that state, and no bearing of the salary cost by a permanent establishment (établissement stable, essentially a fixed place of business) of the employer there (Article 15, consolidated treaty text). Miss any one of the three conditions, for example by exceeding 183 days of presence in a twelve-month window, by being paid by the French subsidiary rather than the British employer, or by having your salary recharged to the French branch, and the state where you work recovers the right to tax. British employers sometimes assume that keeping a worker nominally on the United Kingdom payroll is enough; it is not. The Conseil d’État illustrated how strictly residence and exemption claims are examined in a decision of 20 March 2023, No 452718, concerning a taxpayer seconded (détaché, sent abroad by his employer while remaining under its authority) to the United Arab Emirates by his Swiss employer, who had reported his salaries in France as exempt for 2013, 2014 and 2015 before the administration challenged the exemption following a documentary audit (contrôle sur pièces, a check conducted from the office on the basis of the file). The details differ from the British situation, but the method is identical to the one the French administration applies to British secondments: the label of the arrangement does not decide; the facts of presence, the employer’s residence, and the supporting documents decide. Conseil d’État, 3rd and 8th chambers, 20 March 2023, No 452718. Anyone working between London and Paris should therefore verify, before the year ends, which entity formally employs them, which entity bears the cost, and how many days have actually been spent on French soil.

Two practical consequences follow. First, organise your evidence around the cascade: proof of a single permanent home beats everything, proof of the centre of vital interests decides the balanced cases, and day counts settle the rest. Second, never assume that because you pay tax in one country, the other is automatically informed or satisfied. France and the United Kingdom exchange information on a large scale, and a British tax return claiming residence can sit in the same file as a French property, French school enrolments and French bank interest. Coherence across both filings is itself a line of defence.

II. Which country taxes my pension, my dividends and my French house?

Once residence is settled, the treaty allocates each category of income to one state, to the other, or to both with relief in the residence state. The allocation is the heart of the Convention, and British households typically meet it through four categories: pensions, investment income, French rental income, and gains on selling French property. Each category has its own article, its own logic, and its own traps.

A. Pensions, dividends and interest: what the treaty reserves to each state

Private pensions follow a simple rule in the treaty’s pensions article: pensions and similar payments for past employment (au titre d’un emploi antérieur) paid to a resident of one state are taxable only in that state, subject to the government-service article (Article 18, consolidated treaty text). A private-sector pension, including a United Kingdom personal or occupational pension paid to a French resident, is therefore taxable only in the residence state, which in practice means France taxes it and the United Kingdom must exempt it. This covers the pension itself and similar payments for past employment, which is why British retirees in France normally declare their United Kingdom pensions on the French return and claim exemption on the British side. Public-service pensions obey the opposite logic in the government-service article: salaries and pensions paid by a state, one of its local authorities or a French public-law body for government service are taxable only in the paying state, subject to an exception where the recipient is a resident and national of the other state without also being a national of the paying state. A British civil-service pension paid to a British national living in France therefore generally remains taxable in the United Kingdom, while a French state pension paid to a French national living in Britain remains taxable in France. Confusion between the two articles is one of the most expensive mistakes in Franco-British tax practice: declaring a United Kingdom civil-service pension as exempt in the United Kingdom under the private-pensions rule, or declaring a private pension only in the United Kingdom, produces exactly the kind of double assessment the treaty was meant to prevent. War-disability and armed-forces injury pensions benefit from specific mirror exemptions, and teachers and researchers on short assignments of up to two years, as well as students receiving maintenance payments from abroad, are dealt with in dedicated articles.

Dividends and interest are shared between the two states in a more balanced way. The dividends article provides that dividends from one state paid to a resident of the other are taxable in that other state, while allowing the source state a limited withholding tax, except that dividends paid to a company subject to corporation tax holding at least 10 per cent of the capital of the paying company escape source taxation entirely where the beneficial owner (bénéficiaire effectif, the person genuinely entitled to the income) meets the conditions (Article 10, consolidated treaty text). For individuals, the practical effect is that French dividends paid to a British resident, and British dividends paid to a French resident, may suffer a withholding at source (retenue à la source, tax deducted by the payer before the money reaches you) with the residence state then granting relief. Interest follows an even simpler rule: interest arising in one state and beneficially owned by a resident of the other is taxable only in that other state. In practice, this means British residents receiving French interest, and French residents receiving British interest, should be able to obtain exemption at source by proving residence in advance, using the residence certificate procedure, or otherwise obtain a refund afterwards. On the British side, the GOV.UK guide confirms that where the same income is taxed twice, relief can usually be claimed to recover some or all of the foreign tax, with the route depending on whether the income has already been taxed: exemption at source before the event, or Foreign Tax Credit Relief in the British tax return afterwards, with the amount depending on the treaty (GOV.UK, If you’re taxed twice). One boundary should be noted: the other-income article expressly carves out income from trusts and estates in the course of administration, so British trustees and beneficiaries resident in France face a separate and harsher set of declaration duties that go beyond this article.

B. Your French house, its rent, its sale, and how to challenge double tax

Immovable property is the category where France keeps the strongest rights, and British owners are often surprised by how far those rights go. The immovable-property article states the foundation: income from immovable property situated in one state, including from direct use, letting and any other form of exploitation, is taxable in that state, and the treaty expressly extends the rule to income from rights of enjoyment held through a company, partnership or trust (Article 6, consolidated treaty text). Rent from your French house is therefore taxable in France whether you live in London, Leeds or Lyon. French domestic law mirrors this for capital gains: “I. – Sous réserve des dispositions propres aux bénéfices industriels et commerciaux, aux bénéfices agricoles et aux bénéfices non commerciaux, les plus-values réalisées par les personnes physiques […] lors de la cession à titre onéreux de biens immobiliers bâtis ou non bâtis ou de droits relatifs à ces biens, sont passibles de l’impôt sur le revenu dans les conditions prévues aux articles 150 V à 150 VH”, and the treaty confirms that gains on the disposal of French immovable property, on shares deriving most of their value from it, and on partnership or trust interests backed mainly by it are taxable where the property sits, while gains on anything else are taxable only in the seller’s residence state (Article 14, consolidated treaty text). British readers should pay close attention to that article’s anti-avoidance sting, which preserves each state’s right to tax gains realised by a person who is resident there at the time of sale or was resident there at any time during the previous six fiscal years, a temporary-non-residence rule that can follow a British owner who leaves France and sells shortly afterwards. The residence state does not disappear from the picture: where France taxes the rent or the gain, the United Kingdom as residence state must eliminate the resulting double taxation through its own relief mechanism, and symmetrically France grants relief for British-source income taxable in the United Kingdom under the treaty. The elimination article organises this relief in both directions: on the British side, French tax levied in accordance with the Convention on French-source income is credited against British tax computed on the same income; on the French side, income taxable in the United Kingdom under the Convention is taken into account for computing French tax with a tax credit, subject to the conditions and limits of the article. The mechanism is a credit (crédit d’impôt, a sum deducted from the tax bill), not an exemption, and its limits mean that differences in rates, bases and timing between the two systems can leave a residual burden that must be computed year by year rather than assumed away.

When double taxation happens despite the treaty, because an office misapplies the tie-breaker, denies the treaty rate, or taxes income the treaty reserves to the other state, French law imposes a compulsory first step before any court action: the prior complaint to the tax office. Article R*190-1 of the Tax Procedures Book (Livre des procédures fiscales, the statute governing audits, claims and disputes) provides: “Le contribuable qui désire contester tout ou partie d’un impôt qui le concerne doit d’abord adresser une réclamation au service territorial, selon le cas, de la direction générale des finances publiques ou de la direction générale des douanes et droits indirects dont dépend le lieu de l’imposition.” This réclamation is not optional correspondence; skipping it makes a later court application inadmissible. Non-residents write to the dedicated non-resident tax office (Service des impôts des particuliers non-résidents, based at Noisy-le-Grand in the Paris region), while French residents write to the office of the place of taxation. The time limit is strict and frequently missed by British taxpayers who discover the problem late: “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”, with equivalent starting points where there is no assessment notice. In practice, income tax for year N is usually claimed by 31 December N+2. The complaint must identify the tax, state the grounds, and attach the treaty analysis with the supporting evidence: residence certificates, day counts, employment contracts, pension statements, and the relevant treaty articles. If the administration rejects the claim expressly or by six months of silence, the dispute moves to the tribunal administratif, which can only be seized by an action against a decision, within two months of its notification or publication: “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 residence case law examined above, including the foyer definition recalled in Conseil d’État, 21 June 2022, No 449408, then becomes the framework of the argument. Alongside domestic remedies, the treaty offers its own diplomatic channel, the mutual agreement procedure (procédure amiable, a negotiation between the two tax administrations to remove taxation contrary to the treaty), which any resident who considers that measures taken by one or both states produce treaty-contrary taxation may invoke before the competent authority of the residence state, independently of domestic remedies, within three years of the first notification of the offending measure or six years from the end of the fiscal year concerned (Article 26, consolidated treaty text). The agreement, once reached, is applied regardless of domestic time limits. For a British household taxed on both sides on the same pension or the same rental profit, running the French réclamation, the British relief claim and, where needed, the mutual agreement request in parallel, within each applicable deadline, is the only safe strategy. Waiting for one country to concede before writing to the other is how deadlines expire and double tax becomes final.

Conclusion

The France-United Kingdom treaty of 19 June 2008 answers almost every question a British person in France will face: French domestic law catches you easily through the foyer, the main stay or professional activity, but the treaty’s tie-breaker can restore you to single residence if your permanent home, your closest ties or your habitual presence point across the Channel; private pensions follow residence while public pensions generally stay with the paying state; dividends and interest are shared with relief; French houses are taxed in France for rent and gains while the residence state absorbs the double charge through a tax credit. The system works only if you work it: document your residence facts before they are challenged, apply treaty relief in the right country and in the right order, and challenge contrary assessments through the French prior complaint within its deadline, the British claim channels, and the mutual agreement procedure where both states persist. Double taxation between France and Britain is almost never a fatality; it is usually an unfiled form, an unquoted article, or an expired time limit.

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