You settled in France after Brexit with a perfectly ordinary piece of English estate planning behind you: a family trust holding investments, a rental flat, or the proceeds of the sale of the house in Surrey. In England and Wales that trust is routine. In France it is a foreign object. French law has no trust, only a narrower cousin called the fiducie, and since the Act of 29 July 2011 France taxes foreign trusts through a special regime of its own: compulsory annual returns, a yearly levy on the capital, and full succession duty when the settlor dies. The trustee in London or Jersey will not do this for you, and HMRC registration changes nothing in Paris. This article explains, in plain English with every French term translated on first use, who must declare your United Kingdom trust to the French tax office (l’administration fiscale), what the yearly charge costs, what happens to the trust assets on death, and exactly how to challenge a bill or a penalty you believe is wrong. Each legal statement below is anchored to the statute or the court decision cited beside it.

I. How do I declare my United Kingdom trust to the French tax office and what yearly tax applies?

A. Who must file the French trust returns, and when?

Start with the definition, because everything else hangs on it. For French tax purposes, Article 792-0 bis of the General Tax Code (Code général des impôts, the CGI, the single statute that gathers almost all French tax rules) provides that, and I quote, “on entend par trust l’ensemble des relations juridiques créées dans le droit d’un Etat autre que la France par une personne qui a la qualité de constituant, par acte entre vifs ou à cause de mort, en vue d’y placer des biens ou droits, sous le contrôle d’un administrateur, dans l’intérêt d’un ou de plusieurs bénéficiaires ou pour la réalisation d’un objectif déterminé” (Article 792-0 bis of the General Tax Code, Légifrance). In English: any legal arrangement created under the law of a country other than France, by a person called the settlor (le constituant), placing property under the control of a trustee (l’administrateur) for beneficiaries (les bénéficiaires). Your English discretionary trust, your interest-in-possession trust and your Jersey will trust all fall inside this definition, whether created during your lifetime or by your will.

France does not treat the trust as a separate taxpayer the way Britain sometimes does. It looks through the trust and taxes the people behind it: the settlor, the trustee and the beneficiaries. Be particularly careful with one French invention, the beneficiary deemed to be the settlor (le bénéficiaire réputé constituant). If you are the beneficiary of a trust whose original settlor has died, the French tax office can treat you as the settlor yourself, with the full weight of reporting and payment duties that status carries. This is precisely what happened in a recent Paris case discussed below, where the administration treated the income beneficiary of a Jersey will trust as the deemed settlor and assessed nearly one million euros.

The reporting duties themselves are set out on the official English-language page of the French tax administration, “Filing declarations relating to trusts” (impots.gouv.fr, Filing declarations relating to trusts), taken under Article 1649 AB of the CGI (Article 1649 AB of the General Tax Code, French tax administration). Two returns (déclarations) exist. The first is an event return, filed when the trust is created, amended or wound up. The form is number 2181-TRUST-1. The second is an annual return of the market value on 1 January of the assets placed in the trust and their accumulated income, filed on form number 2181-TRUST-2. Both are filed not with your local tax office but with the Non-Residents Tax Office in Noisy-le-Grand (la Recette des Non-Résidents), 10 rue du Centre, TSA 50014, 93465 Noisy-le-Grand Cedex.

The duty to file falls on the trustee, and it arises as soon as any one of four conditions is met on 1 January of the year concerned: the settlor, or the beneficiary deemed to be the settlor, is tax-resident in France; at least one beneficiary is tax-resident in France; at least one asset placed in the trust is situated in France; or the trustee is tax-resident in France. In practice, a British family living in the Dordogne with a UK trust over a London investment portfolio meets the first two conditions on day one, even though nothing in the trust is French. A brother who stayed in Manchester but kept his share of a French holiday flat inside a trust meets the third. You do not need all four; one is enough.

Tax residence (le domicile fiscal) is therefore the tripwire, and it is defined by Article 4 B of the CGI (Article 4 B of the General Tax Code, Légifrance), which states, and I quote: “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”. In plain terms: if your home or your main place of stay is in France, you are French tax-resident, alongside those who work principally in France or centre their economic interests there. Most British readers of this article, living year-round in France with their family home here, satisfy paragraph (a) without any doubt. Note that the definition adds that double-tax treaties can reallocate residence in tie-break situations, so the France-United Kingdom double tax treaty of 19 June 2008 remains relevant where both countries could claim you.

Two practical warnings follow. First, your trustee in London, Douglas or St Helier almost certainly does not know about form 2181 and will not file it spontaneously. The obligation exists regardless of the trustee’s ignorance, and if the trustee defaults, the settlor and the beneficiaries are jointly liable for the tax. Second, nothing you do with HMRC in Britain, where information on trusts and taxes is published on GOV.UK, Trusts and taxes, discharges the French filing. The two systems run in parallel: British registration and British trust tax returns for the British side, French forms 2181 for the French side, every year.

B. The yearly levy, the wealth tax and the income position

The centrepiece of the French regime is a yearly charge officially called a levy (le prélèvement), laid down by Article 990 J of the CGI (Article 990 J of the General Tax Code, Légifrance). The statute states, and I quote: “Les personnes physiques constituants ou bénéficiaires d’un trust défini à l’article 792-0 bis sont soumises à un prélèvement fixé au tarif le plus élevé mentionné au 1 de l’article 977.” Every individual settlor or beneficiary of a trust is therefore liable to a levy set at the highest wealth-tax rate. That highest rate is found in Article 977 of the CGI (Article 977 of the General Tax Code, Légifrance), whose scale runs from 0.50 per cent to, and I quote the top slice, “Supérieure à 10 000 000 € 1,50”: 1.50 per cent above ten million euros. The levy is assessed, and I quote Article 990 J again, “sur la valeur vénale nette au 1er janvier de l’année d’imposition des actifs mentionnés à l’article 965 composant le trust”: on the net market value, measured each 1 January, of the property assets inside the trust. The trustee must declare the composition and value and pay the levy by 15 June each year, failing which the settlor, the beneficiaries or their heirs are jointly and severally liable.

Read that carefully and the sting becomes clear. A two-million-pound portfolio sitting in a trust can attract a yearly French charge even though you have received no distribution, simply because you live in France. Exemptions exist but they are narrow: trusts whose trustee is established in a State that has an administrative-assistance convention with France and which are irrevocable trusts for exclusively charitable beneficiaries, or employer pension trusts, escape the levy; and assets already properly included in someone’s wealth-tax base or properly declared escape double counting. Your ordinary family discretionary trust qualifies for none of these.

The courts apply this levy without sentiment, and two recent judgments show how. In Paris, the ninth chamber of the Paris judicial court (le tribunal judiciaire de Paris) ruled on 25 March 2026, case number 23/02365, concerning a Jersey will trust called the C [T] Will Trust (Paris judicial court, 25 March 2026, RG 23/02365). The facts, as stated by the court, were that, and I quote, “le trustee a procédé aux déclarations annuelles n°2181 Trust 2 au titre des années 2013 à 2017”: the trustee had indeed filed the annual returns for 2013 to 2017. That did not save the beneficiary, because the administration considered him the deemed settlor who should have declared the trust assets for his own wealth tax, and, and I quote, “l’administration fiscale a fait application du prélèvement sui generis au taux de 1,5%”. A formal reassessment followed, and, and I quote once more, “un avis de mise en recouvrement a été émis le 29 novembre 2019 pour un montant total de 954 511 euros, comprenant 827 702 euros de droits et 126 809 euros d’intérêts de retard”: a collection notice for 954,511 euros, of which 827,702 euros of tax and 126,809 euros of late interest. Filing the trust return is therefore necessary but not sufficient; the assets must also sit in the right person’s wealth declaration.

The Bobigny judicial court spelled out the philosophy behind the charge on 23 October 2025, case number 23/02471 (Bobigny judicial court, 23 October 2025, RG 23/02471). It recalled, and I quote, that “le prélèvement sui generis a pour objet de sanctionner le défaut de déclaration au titre de l’ISF des biens placés dans un trust”: the special levy exists to punish the failure to declare trust assets for wealth-tax purposes. In that case the claimant, a Swiss-resident settlor of a trust holding a Var property through a Luxembourg company, challenged the rejection of her claim dated 13 January 2023. The court closed its judgment with the words, and I quote: “CONFIRME la décision de la DRFIP IDF [Localité 8] du 13 janvier 2023 rejetant la réclamation de Madame [T] [Z]” and “DÉBOUTE Madame [T] [Z] de l’ensemble de ses demandes”: the rejection was confirmed and every claim dismissed, with costs against her. The lesson for British readers is blunt. Declare every year, declare in the right person’s name, and keep the proof, because the levy is designed as a sanction and the judges enforce it as one.

Alongside the levy, the ordinary French property-wealth tax applies. The IFI, the impôt sur la fortune immobilière, the tax on property wealth that replaced the old general wealth tax (the ISF) on 1 January 2018, catches property held through a trust. Its base is defined by Article 965 of the CGI (Article 965 of the General Tax Code, Légifrance), which states, and I quote: “L’assiette de l’impôt sur la fortune immobilière est constituée par la valeur nette au 1er janvier de l’année : 1° De l’ensemble des biens et droits immobiliers appartenant aux personnes mentionnées à l’article 964”. Trust assets that are property count in the settlor’s or deemed settlor’s IFI base above the 1.3-million-euro threshold, and Article 990 J expressly coordinates the two charges so that assets properly declared for IFI are not struck twice by the special levy. Income is the third layer: a French-resident beneficiary is taxable in France on worldwide income, including distributions actually received from the trust, and undistributed trust income can raise separate questions of attribution that must be examined trust by trust. Take advice before the 1 January snapshot each year, not after the assessment arrives.

II. What happens to my United Kingdom trust when someone dies and how do I challenge the French tax bill?

A. Death, succession duty and the clash with English freedom of disposition

English lawyers draft wills in a spirit of freedom: apart from limited family-provision claims, you leave your property to whom you please. French succession law starts from the opposite principle, the reserved share (la réserve héréditaire), the fraction of the estate that must go to the children. Article 913 of the Civil Code (Code civil) (Article 913 of the Civil Code, Légifrance) provides, and I quote: “Les libéralités, soit par actes entre vifs, soit par testament, ne pourront excéder la moitié des biens du disposant, s’il ne laisse à son décès qu’un enfant ; le tiers, s’il laisse deux enfants ; le quart, s’il en laisse trois ou un plus grand nombre.” With one child, half the estate is reserved; with two, one third of each share pattern applies; with three or more, only one quarter is freely disposable. A trust that disinherits a child or leaves everything to the second spouse therefore collides head-on with French law wherever French law governs the succession.

Which law governs is decided by the European Succession Regulation number 650/2012, which France applies to deaths on or after 17 August 2015. A Paris succession judgment of 28 May 2026, case number 23/08610, concerning a Franco-Lebanese deceased with property in France, Lebanon, Switzerland and the Emirates, illustrates the method (Paris judicial court, 28 May 2026, RG 23/08610). The court first confirmed that, and I quote, “les dispositions du règlement sont applicables au présent litige qui, d’une part, comporte plusieurs éléments d’extranéité et d’autre part, porte sur une matière relevant de son champ d’application tel que défini à l’article 1er”, then worked through the deceased’s habitual residence (la résidence habituelle) by weighing nationality, family centre, career, tax and medical ties in each country. For a British reader the message is practical. The default law is that of your habitual residence at death, which for most of you will be France, but the Regulation allows a choice of your national law in your will (professio juris). A British national resident in France can therefore elect English law to govern the succession, and every British will with French assets should contain that clause, reviewed after each move.

The election of English law does not end the story, because since 2021 French statute adds a safety net for children. The final paragraph of Article 913, cited above, grants each child a compensatory levy (le prélèvement compensatoire) on property situated in France where the deceased or at least one child is a European Union national or habitually resident in the Union and the applicable foreign law gives the children no reserved-share protection. A British parent habitually resident in France satisfies the residence condition, so an English-law will that leaves a child with nothing can still be corrected against the French assets. Structure the trust and the will together: English-law election for flexibility, lifetime gifts and insurance arrangements that respect the French fractions, and no clause that a French court would read as an attempt to empty the reserve.

Then comes the tax on death, and here the trust regime is at its heaviest. Article 792-0 bis, II, of the CGI states, and I quote: “La transmission par donation ou succession de biens ou droits placés dans un trust ainsi que des produits qui y sont capitalisés est, pour la valeur vénale nette des biens, droits ou produits concernés à la date de la transmission, soumise aux droits de mutation à titre gratuit en fonction du lien de parenté existant entre le constituant et le bénéficiaire.” Transfers of trust property by gift or on death pay French transfer duty (les droits de mutation à titre gratuit, the gift and succession taxes) according to the family link between the settlor and the beneficiary. Where the link is distant or the shares at death are undetermined, the statute imposes the top slices of the Article 777 scale (Article 777 of the General Tax Code, Légifrance), whose tables the article sets, and I quote, “pour la part nette revenant à chaque ayant droit”, for the net share of each beneficiary, rising to, and I quote, “Entre parents au-delà du 4e degré et entre personnes non-parentes 60”: 60 per cent between distant relatives and non-relatives. A discretionary trust whose beneficiaries are not fixed at the settlor’s death can therefore be taxed at 45 or 60 per cent, a world away from the English nil-rate band logic.

The territorial reach is set by Article 750 ter of the CGI (Article 750 ter of the General Tax Code, Légifrance), which states, and I quote: “Les biens meubles et immeubles situés en France ou hors de France, et notamment les fonds publics, parts d’intérêts, biens ou droits composant un trust défini à l’article 792-0 bis et produits qui y sont capitalisés, créances et généralement toutes les valeurs mobilières françaises ou étrangères de quelque nature qu’elles soient, lorsque le donateur ou le défunt a son domicile fiscal en France au sens de l’article 4 B”. If the deceased settlor was French tax-resident, the worldwide trust assets are caught, expressly including trust interests. If the settlor was still British-resident, French-situated trust assets are caught, and assets received by a beneficiary who is French-resident can be caught where that beneficiary has been resident for at least six of the last ten years. There is no France-United Kingdom succession treaty to soften this, so double taxation with British inheritance tax is relieved, if at all, only by each country’s unilateral rules and the general double-tax treaty. Map domicile, residence history and asset location before death, because after death the categories lock shut.

One final distinction matters. France does possess a domestic device resembling a trust, the fiducie, defined by Article 2011 of the Civil Code (Article 2011 of the Civil Code, Légifrance), which states, and I quote: “La fiducie est l’opération par laquelle un ou plusieurs constituants transfèrent des biens, des droits ou des sûretés, ou un ensemble de biens, de droits ou de sûretés, présents ou futurs, à un ou plusieurs fiduciaires qui, les tenant séparés de leur patrimoine propre, agissent dans un but déterminé au profit d’un ou plusieurs bénéficiaires.” Do not confuse the two. The fiducie is contractual, registered, and available only for narrow purposes; it never absorbs or shelters your English trust. Your trust remains a trust under Article 792-0 bis, with the declaration, levy and succession duties described here.

B. How to challenge a trust assessment, a penalty or a refusal

French tax disputes follow a fixed staircase, and missing a step can end the case. The first step is almost always the administrative claim (la réclamation), a written challenge sent to the tax office that issued the assessment, asking for discharge (le dégrèvement, the cancellation of the tax) or restitution. Both cases cited above began this way: in the Paris will-trust case the beneficiary claimed on 15 November 2022 against the 954,511-euro collection notice and received an express rejection on 20 December 2022; in Bobigny the claimant attacked the 13 January 2023 rejection of her claim. File the claim by registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt (lettre recommandée avec accusé de réception), set out every legal and factual ground at once, attach the trust deed, the 2181 receipts, the wealth-tax returns and the proof of payment, and keep copies of everything. Grounds raised for the first time before the judge risk being ruled inadmissible.

The second step is the court. Trust levy and succession-duty disputes go to the judicial court (le tribunal judiciaire), not the administrative court, and for readers in Paris and the Île-de-France region that means the Paris judicial court for most cases, as in both judgments above, with the regional public-finances directorate (la direction régionale des finances publiques, the DRFiP) as defendant. Your writ (l’assignation) must mirror the claim and add the evidence the administration ignored: trustee accounts showing who was entitled to what and when, valuations supporting the 1 January figure, proof that assets were already included in an IFI base, and, where relevant, the assistance convention with the trustee’s State. Ask the court for annulment of the rejection, full discharge of the sums, repayment with interest, and costs. In the Paris case the beneficiary sought, among other relief, discharge of the whole 954,511 euros, or alternatively a reduction reflecting only the income rights he actually enjoyed; frame a principal and a subsidiary case the same way rather than betting everything on a single figure.

Watch the clocks. Succession declarations themselves are due within strict periods set by Article 641 of the CGI (Article 641 of the General Tax Code, Légifrance), which states, and I quote: “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.” Six months where the deceased died in metropolitan France, one year in all other cases, with the trust administrator paying the death duties on undetermined shares within those same periods. Limitation and claim periods for assessments run separately and are short, so diary every date on the assessment notice the day it arrives and instruct your adviser immediately. Paying under protest where enforcement threatens, while continuing the dispute, often costs less than forced recovery plus fresh interest.

Choose your substantive arguments with care, because the two judgments show which defences fail. Arguing that the trustee filed the 2181 returns, that the trust is valid under English law, or that nobody understood the French rules cuts no ice: validity under English law is accepted and irrelevant, and the levy punishes precisely the defective personal declaration. Stronger lines, depending on the file, include: the beneficiary was never a deemed settlor because the trust terms gave him no capital entitlement; the 1 January valuation was excessive and an independent valuation proves it; the assets were already included in a declared IFI base so the levy cannot apply twice; the trustee’s State has an assistance convention and the trust meets an exemption; the succession shares were determined at death so the family-link scale, not the top rate, applies; or the deceased was not French tax-resident and only French assets can be taxed. Each of these turns on documents, so build the bundle before you argue.

For readers in Paris and Île-de-France, add two local points to the file. First, the competent offices, the Non-Residents office in Noisy-le-Grand for returns and the Paris DRFiP for disputes, are accustomed to British trust files and apply the Guide diligently; a tidy, complete, French-language bundle with certified translations of the trust deed settles faster than a box of English originals. Second, the notary (le notaire, the public officer who settles French successions) handling the French property will ask for the trust documents and the English grant of probate with an apostille; align the notary’s succession declaration with the tax positions taken on the 2181 forms so the two files do not contradict each other. Contradiction between the notary’s file and the tax file is the single most avoidable cause of reassessment this firm sees.

Conclusion

A United Kingdom trust and French residence can coexist, but only on France’s terms: file the event and annual returns through the trustee, declare the capital in the right person’s wealth base, accept the yearly levy where no exemption fits, elect English law in the will while respecting the children’s reserved share, and expect worldwide taxation of the trust capital at the settlor’s death if the settlor dies French-resident. The Paris and Bobigny judgments quoted here prove that the administration assesses first and in large amounts, and that judges uphold the levy where the paperwork was defective. Reverse the order: audit the trust deed now, file correctly by the next 15 June, value the assets defensibly each 1 January, and keep every receipt. And if a collection notice has already landed, claim in writing at once, then bring the full bundle to a lawyer who reads both English trusts and French tax. The dispute is winnable where the documents support it, as the very existence of these court challenges shows, but it is won on evidence and deadlines, never on surprise that France taxes trusts.

Need a quick opinion on your case.

If you live in France and hold assets through a United Kingdom trust, or if you have received a French assessment on a trust, our British desk can review your position. Telephone consultation: 80 EUR TTC, with a lawyer of the firm, within 48 hours. Call +33 6 46 60 58 22, or write via our contact page. We receive clients in Paris and throughout Île-de-France, and advise in English.