You bought the stone house in the Dordogne, or the flat near the harbour in Brittany, long before Brexit changed the paperwork around it. The purchase is behind you, the notaire (the French conveyancing solicitor who handled the sale) has handed over the keys, and now a quieter question arrives every autumn in your inbox: what does it actually cost, year after year, to keep a French second home as a British owner, and what do you do when one of the bills looks wrong? Since Britain left the European Union, British owners live with a double anxiety. They worry about the 90-day visiting limit, which is an immigration matter, and they confuse it with the tax bills, which obey entirely different rules. French holding taxes do not care about your passport. They care about bricks, about the 1st of January, and about the value of what you own. This guide explains, in plain English with every French term translated at first use, the three taxes that land on a British second-home owner in France: the taxe foncière (the annual owner’s property tax), the taxe d’habitation sur les résidences secondaires (the council tax on second homes, usually shortened to THRS), and the impôt sur la fortune immobilière (the annual wealth tax on property assets, shortened to IFI). It sets out who pays each one, how each one is calculated, how the 2008 France-United Kingdom double tax convention (the bilateral treaty that divides taxing rights between the two countries) protects you against paying twice on rental income, and how to challenge a bill step by step when the administration has made a mistake. Every decisive statement is tied to the statute it comes from, with the official text quoted, and the final section gives you the exact deadlines and remedies that apply when you want to contest an assessment.
I. The two annual local taxes on your French second home: who pays, how much, and when
A. Taxe foncière: the owner’s tax, billed every year on the property itself
The taxe foncière sur les propriétés bâties (the property tax on built land, the full name of what everyone calls the taxe foncière) is the tax that follows ownership. Article 1380 of the General Tax Code (the Code général des impôts, the statute book that gathers French tax law, universally shortened to CGI) states the rule in one sentence: “La taxe foncière est établie annuellement sur les propriétés bâties sises en France à l’exception de celles qui en sont expressément exonérées par les dispositions du présent code.” In ordinary English: the tax is assessed every year on built property situated in France, except for property the Code expressly exempts. Three consequences flow from that sentence, and British owners misunderstand all three. First, the tax is annual and automatic: there is no return to file to trigger it, and no choice to opt out. Second, it attaches to the building, not to the person: the person who owns on the 1st of January pays the whole year’s bill, even if the sale completes in February, which is why the apportionment clause in the sale contract (prorata, the seller-to-buyer adjustment calculated day by day) matters so much at completion. Third, nationality and residence change nothing: a British owner living in Manchester pays exactly the same taxe foncière as a French neighbour owning an identical house, and Brexit has not altered that symmetry by a single euro.
The amount is built from a rental value that has nothing to do with the rent you could actually charge. Each property carries a valeur locative cadastrale (the cadastral rental value, an administrative estimate recorded by the land registry for every building), which the administration increases slightly each year in line with inflation. The municipal council and the intercommunal body then apply their voted rates (taux d’imposition, the percentage rates set locally each spring) to half of that value for built property. That is why two identical houses a few streets apart, sitting in different communes (the commune, the smallest French local authority, roughly the parish or town council), can produce bills that differ by hundreds of euros: the base is national, but the rates are local, and councils facing budget pressure vote them upwards. On top of the communal share, the bill carries add-ons the British reader should recognise for what they are. The household waste collection tax (taxe d’enlèvement des ordures ménagères, shortened to TEOM) appears on the same slip and often represents a fifth or more of the total. Special equipment taxes and, in some areas, the GEMAPI levy for flood prevention complete the picture. When clients telephone about a taxe foncière that has jumped 20 per cent in a year, the explanation is usually one of three things: the council voted a higher rate, the waste collection share was reorganised, or the property’s cadastral record was updated after building work the owner declared, or failed to declare.
The practical calendar is fixed and unforgiving for owners who only open their French post at Christmas. The avis d’imposition (the tax assessment notice) appears in your online personal account on impots.gouv.fr (the French tax authority’s website) at the end of August, and payment falls due around the middle of October; the precise date is printed on the notice and moves slightly each year, so read the slip rather than relying on last year’s deadline. Owners who never created an online account still receive the paper notice at the French address or at the foreign address they declared, but post to Britain is slow and unreliable, and the surcharge for late payment (10 per cent of the bill) applies whether or not you actually saw the envelope. Set up the online account, register a SEPA bank account even a British one where accepted, and consider the monthly direct debit (prélèvement mensuel, the ten-instalments-from-January scheme) which spreads the pain and removes the October cliff edge. One administrative duty is frequently missed by British owners. Since the removal of the old paper housing-tax declaration, every owner must declare the occupancy status of each property (main home, second home, vacant, let) in the Gérer mes biens immobiliers online service (the “manage my property” section of impots.gouv.fr), and update that declaration whenever the situation changes. A wrong occupancy flag is the single most common cause of a wrong THRS bill, discussed below, and correcting it early is the cheapest remedy in French property tax.
Exemptions exist but they are narrower than British owners hope, and claiming the wrong one is worse than claiming none. New buildings benefit from a temporary exemption, older owners of modest means can be relieved under strict age and income conditions, and genuinely uninhabitable or long-vacant property can attract relief, but each of these turns on its own statutory test and none of them applies simply because the owner lives abroad or uses the house for six weeks a year. The working method is therefore simple: pay first by the deadline to stop the 10 per cent surcharge running, then challenge on the merits through the claim procedure explained in part II. And keep the sale file in mind even while paying holding taxes. When you eventually sell, a different set of rules on capital gains and the accredited representative will apply, explained in our earlier guide on selling a French second home from Britain; the holding taxes in this article and the sale taxes in that guide are separate layers, and confusing them is how owners miss both deadlines at once.
B. Taxe d’habitation on second homes: the bill that survived abolition, plus the 5 to 60 per cent surcharge
British owners often arrive in France believing the taxe d’habitation (the old French council tax on occupiers) has been abolished. It has been abolished for main homes, and it survives in full for second homes, which is exactly what a British-owned holiday house is. Article 1407 of the General Tax Code provides: “La taxe d’habitation sur les résidences secondaires est due pour tous les locaux meublés conformément à leur destination d’habitation autre qu’à titre principal, y compris lorsqu’ils sont imposables à la cotisation foncière des entreprises.” Every furnished dwelling used as anything other than a main home is caught, unless it is used exclusively for professional purposes. Note the test: furnished and residential. An unfurnished shell held empty is outside this tax (though it may attract the vacant-dwelling tax instead), while a fully furnished cottage used six weeks a year is squarely inside it. The person liable is the occupant on the 1st of January, so a house you let to a tenant who occupies it on New Year’s Day produces a bill in the tenant’s name, while a house you keep for your own holidays produces a bill in yours. The administration’s own English-language guidance confirms the mechanism and adds the point that frightens owners most: in municipalities facing a housing shortage, the council can vote a surcharge on top.
That surcharge is the majoration (the uplift voted by the municipal council on second-home council tax), and in the pressured towns of the Atlantic coast, the Basque country, the Alps and much of Brittany and Paris it now dominates the bill. Article 1407 ter of the General Tax Code authorises the council, by formal deliberation, to “majorer d’un pourcentage compris entre 5 % et 60 % la part lui revenant de la cotisation de taxe d’habitation sur les résidences secondaires due au titre des logements meublés.” In plain English: the commune may increase its share of your THRS bill by any percentage from 5 to 60 per cent. The product of the uplift goes to the commune that voted it, and the total cannot breach the statutory ceiling rate, but within that frame the council’s discretion is wide and politically popular: taxing the absent second-home owner costs no local votes. Since the extension of the tense-zone maps, far more communes than before are entitled to vote the uplift, and British owners who bought in villages that never surcharged before are discovering 30, 40 or 60 per cent additions they never budgeted for. Before paying an uplifted bill, check two things: that your commune actually voted the deliberation for the year in question, and that the percentage on your notice matches the voted percentage. A surprising number of disputes turn out to be errors in the rate applied rather than errors of principle.
The statute also builds three escape routes out of the surcharge, and British owners should test each one before accepting the bill. A claim lodged in time and in the proper form opens a full discharge (dégrèvement, the cancellation of the tax assessed) of the uplift for owners compelled to live away from their main home for professional reasons, for owners whose former main home cannot become their main home again because they now live permanently in a care institution, and more broadly for owners who, for a cause beyond their control, cannot use the dwelling as their main home. That third category is deliberately open textured: a posting abroad, a serious illness, or genuine legal impossibility of occupation can qualify, while mere convenience or a preference for London life cannot. Each case is examined on its documents, which is why the paper trail matters: employment contracts showing the posting, medical certificates, or court orders demonstrating the obstacle. The discharge, where granted, is charged to the commune, not to the state, so expect the local tax office to examine the file with care rather than generosity. Alongside the surcharge, remember the ordinary reliefs on the underlying THRS: dwellings genuinely incapable of habitation, and the specific exemptions for rooms and tourist accommodation that meet the statutory definitions, fall outside the tax entirely. The classification question, furnished or not, habitable or not, main or secondary, is a question of fact decided on inspection reports, photographs, utility consumption and insurance records, and it is won or lost on evidence, never on assertion.
II. The national layer and the remedies: IFI above 1.3 million euros and how to challenge any of these bills
A. IFI: when a British owner with French property above 1.3 million euros must declare and pay
Above the two local taxes sits a national one that catches only the most valuable holdings but catches them hard. The impôt sur la fortune immobilière (the wealth tax on property assets, the IFI) replaced the old general wealth tax in 2018 and taxes property wealth alone. Article 964 of the General Tax Code creates it in these terms: “Il est institué un impôt annuel sur les actifs immobiliers désigné sous le nom d’impôt sur la fortune immobilière”. An annual tax on property assets, due where the article 965 assets exceed 1,300,000 euros. For a British owner who does not live in France, the same article draws the boundary with precision: “Les personnes physiques n’ayant pas leur domicile fiscal en France, à raison des biens et droits immobiliers mentionnés au 1° de l’article 965 situés en France”. Non-residents are taxable only on French-situated property and on shares representing French property. Your London house, your British savings and your investment portfolio are invisible to the IFI; your Dordogne estate and your Paris flat, including shares in a property company (société civile immobilière, the family property company many British buyers use, shortened to SCI) to the extent they represent French bricks, are fully visible. And the trigger date is the same discipline as everywhere in this field: “Les conditions d’assujettissement sont appréciées au 1er janvier de chaque année.” Liability is assessed on the 1st of January each year.
The base is the net value on that date. Article 965 of the General Tax Code defines it: “L’assiette de l’impôt sur la fortune immobilière est constituée par la valeur nette au 1er janvier de l’année”. The net value on the 1st of January of the year. Net means debts are subtracted: the outstanding balance of the mortgage taken out to buy or repair the French property reduces the taxable base, within the statutory anti-avoidance limits, which is why keeping the annual loan statement matters even for owners who feel safely below the threshold. Valuation follows the death-duty rules: article 973 of the General Tax Code provides that “La valeur des actifs mentionnés à l’article 965 est déterminée suivant les règles en vigueur en matière de droits de mutation par décès.” Property is valued at its open market value (valeur vénale réelle, what a willing buyer would pay a willing seller) as for inheritance tax purposes. One trap awaits British owners here. The same article grants a 30 per cent discount, but only on the main home: “un abattement de 30 % est effectué sur la valeur vénale réelle de l’immeuble lorsque celui-ci est occupé à titre de résidence principale par son propriétaire.” A 30 per cent reduction applies where the building is occupied as the owner’s main residence. A second home occupied six weeks a year never qualifies, so the British owner’s French cottage enters the IFI computation at 100 per cent of its market value while a French neighbour’s identical main home enters at 70 per cent. Valuations are the most disputed feature of IFI files: obtain a reasoned estate-agent appraisal each year, keep evidence of any discount for structural defects or protected tenancies, and never declare a round number without a supporting estimate, because a round number invites the administration to substitute its own.
The rates are progressive and the declaration is annual. Article 977 of the General Tax Code sets the scale: nothing up to 800,000 euros, 0.50 per cent from 800,000 to 1,300,000, 0.70 per cent from 1,300,000 to 2,570,000, 1 per cent to 5,000,000, 1.25 per cent to 10,000,000, and 1.50 per cent above. Owners just over the threshold benefit from a smoothing mechanism (décote, the discount that softens entry into the tax): for net taxable property between 1,300,000 and 1,400,000 euros, the computed tax is reduced by 17,500 euros minus 1.25 per cent of the net taxable value. A worked illustration makes the mechanics concrete. Take a British owner whose French house, net of the remaining mortgage, is worth 1,500,000 euros on the 1st of January: the slice from 800,000 to 1,300,000 bears 0.50 per cent, which is 2,500 euros, and the slice from 1,300,000 to 1,500,000 bears 0.70 per cent, which is 1,400 euros, giving 3,900 euros for the year. The declaration is filed with the income tax return in May or June on the dedicated IFI form, even by owners who file no French income return, and payment follows in the autumn. Miss the declaration and the administration will assess on its own figures, which are never kind. One boundary must be stated clearly because advisers sometimes blur it. The 2008 double tax convention divides income and gains, not wealth: its article 6 provides that provides that France may tax income from property situated in France, expressly including income from letting in all its forms. France may therefore tax your French rental income, with Britain giving relief at home through its own machinery, but the IFI itself is a French domestic tax with no treaty credit on the British side. Britain has no equivalent wealth tax to absorb it, so the IFI, where due, is a final cost.
B. How to challenge the bill: the claim, the appeal, and the treaty shield against double tax
Every bill in this article can be challenged, and the procedure rewards owners who move quickly and in writing. Start with the distinction the administration itself applies. The amicable request (réclamation gracieuse, a plea for leniency) asks for mercy where the assessment is legally correct but payment would cause hardship; the contentious claim (réclamation contentieuse, the formal dispute of the assessment itself) argues the tax is wrong in law or in fact. File the contentious claim whenever the figures are disputed, because only it preserves the route to the court, and reserve the gracious request for genuine hardship cases where the figures are right but ruinous. The deadline for local taxes is the tighter of the two regimes and it catches British owners every year. Article R*196-2 of the Tax Procedures Book (the Livre des procédures fiscales, the statute book governing tax disputes) provides: “Pour être recevables, les réclamations relatives aux impôts directs locaux et aux taxes annexes doivent être présentées à l’administration des impôts au plus tard le 31 décembre de l’année suivant celle”. Claims on local taxes must reach the administration by the 31st of December of the year following assessment at the latest. A taxe foncière or THRS bill assessed in 2026 must therefore be challenged by the 31st of December 2027, and a claim posted from Britain on the 30th that arrives in January is out of time. For the IFI, which is not a local tax, the general regime gives until the 31st of December of the second year following assessment, but waiting is never a strategy: evidence cools, memories fade, and the administration’s silence hardens into a position.
The claim itself is filed online from your impots.gouv.fr personal account or by recorded post to the tax office shown on the notice (centre des finances publiques, the local public finance centre printed on every assessment), and it must contain four elements to be effective. Identify the tax, the year and the assessment number; state precisely what you dispute, whether the whole bill or a defined slice such as the surcharge; set out the legal and factual grounds with the statutory references from this guide; and attach the supporting documents. The word “precisely” carries the whole outcome. A letter saying the bill is too high achieves nothing; a claim demonstrating that the cadastral area includes a demolished barn, that the occupant on the 1st of January was the tenant and not you, that the commune never voted the surcharge deliberation, or that the IFI valuation ignores a documented structural defect, forces a reasoned answer. The administration has six months to reply; silence for six months counts as an implied rejection (rejet implicite, the deemed refusal that opens the next stage), which you may then take to the administrative court (tribunal administratif, the first-instance court for tax disputes) within two months. Ask in the claim for suspension of enforced collection (sursis de paiement, the stay that halts recovery while the dispute is examined) where the rules allow it, because the Treasury’s computer does not pause for the justice system’s timetable, and a bill under dispute can otherwise be recovered by seizure while the judge is still reading the file.
Three recurring British-owner disputes deserve special attention because each has its own winning method. The first is the wrong-occupant THRS bill: the house was let on the 1st of January, or stood genuinely unfurnished, yet the bill names you. Win it with the lease in force on that date, the tenant’s own THRS notice if obtainable, dated photographs of the empty rooms, and the corrected GMBI declaration. The second is the surcharge applied without a valid deliberation, or at a percentage above the voted one: win it by obtaining the council’s deliberation from the town hall or the prefecture’s legality control records and comparing the voted percentage with the notice line by line. The third is the IFI valuation opinion that values a stone farmhouse as if it stood on the Place Vendôme: win it with two independent appraisals, evidence of defects, planning constraints or protected leases, and a calculation that deducts the mortgage balance shown on the bank’s annual statement. Alongside these domestic remedies sits the treaty shield for rental income. Where the same French rents are taxed in France and declared in Britain, France taxes first under article 6 of the 2008 convention and the British return gives relief for the French tax under domestic foreign-credit machinery; double taxation of the same income is therefore an error to be corrected, in France by claim and in Britain through the Self Assessment foreign pages, not a fate to be endured. Keep every assessment, every lease, every loan statement and every proof of posting for at least the claim period and beyond: in French tax litigation the administration holds the computer and the taxpayer holds the burden of proof, and the file that wins is the file that was complete before the dispute began.
Conclusion
A British second home in France carries three holding taxes, each with its own logic, and none of them depends on Brexit, on nationality, or on how many weeks you spend in the house. The taxe foncière taxes the building every year on its cadastral value at locally voted rates. The THRS taxes furnished second occupation and can be lifted by 5 to 60 per cent where the commune has voted the surcharge. The IFI taxes net French property wealth above 1,300,000 euros at progressive rates, without the 30 per cent discount reserved for main homes. All three are assessed around the 1st of January, all three arrive in the autumn, and all three can be challenged, but only within the statutory deadlines and only on evidence. Check the occupancy declaration in GMBI today, read each autumn notice line by line against the rules in this guide, pay by the printed date to stop surcharges, and file a precise, documented claim the moment a figure is wrong. Owners who treat the autumn bills as an administrative ritual overpay quietly for years; owners who treat them as legal decisions, to be read, tested and where necessary contested, keep what the law entitles them to keep.
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