Your father lived in Kent, spent his summers in the Dordogne, and has just died leaving you the stone farmhouse the family has loved for thirty years. The grief is raw, the French notaire — the public legal officer who settles estates in France — is asking for a déclaration de succession, the French estate tax return, and HM Revenue & Customs may want its share too. Since Brexit, British heirs face this situation without the cushion of European Union assistance mechanisms, yet the underlying French tax rules have not changed: a house standing on French soil is taxed in France, whoever inherits it and wherever the deceased lived. This guide explains, for a British reader, what French succession tax you actually pay on a French house, which tax-free allowances reduce the bill, how the 1963 Franco-British treaty prevents the same property being fully taxed twice, how to file and pay on time, and how to challenge a reassessment or a penalty when the tax office goes too far.

Three points set the frame before any detail. First, French succession tax — the droits de mutation à titre gratuit par décès, literally the transfer duties on transfers without payment that arise on death — applies to the house because it stands in France, even if the person who died was domiciled in England and even if you, the heir, live in Britain. Second, the amount you pay depends on your family link with the deceased: children pay on a progressive scale after a substantial allowance, while distant relatives and unrelated beneficiaries pay far more. Third, strict deadlines apply, and missing them is expensive — but an excessive assessment can be contested, first through a formal complaint to the tax office and then before the civil courts, as two recent Court of Cassation decisions show. The question of which national law governs the succession itself — French law or English law — is a separate issue dealt with in our guide to choosing English law for a French house in your will; this article deals with the tax bill.

I. What France taxes when a British heir inherits a French house

A. Which French property France can tax and which allowances cut the bill

France taxes the Worldwide estate of a person whose tax domicile — domicile fiscal — is in France, and it taxes French-situated property even when the deceased was not tax-resident in France at all. The charging provision is Article 750 ter of the General Tax Code, which states that gratuitous transfer duties apply to movable and immovable property situated in France, whether held directly or indirectly, “when the donor or the deceased does not have his tax domicile in France”. In plain terms: if your late mother lived in Manchester and owned a flat in Nice, that flat falls within French succession tax. If she lived in France, her English bank accounts fall within it as well. Property held indirectly — for example through a property company or a family property company of the French société civile immobilière type — is expressly caught, since the article provides that any building is deemed to be held indirectly when it belongs to legal persons in which the deceased held rights.

Once the taxable base is set, the rate depends on kinship. For children inheriting in the direct line, Article 777 of the General Tax Code sets a progressive scale running from 5 per cent on the first slice of the net taxable share up to 45 per cent beyond 1,805,677 euros, with intermediate bands at 10, 15, 20, 30 and 40 per cent. Brothers and sisters pay 35 per cent up to 24,430 euros and 45 per cent above. Before those rates bite, each child deducts a personal tax-free allowance — an abattement — of 100,000 euros on his or her share, and each ascendant the same, under Article 779 of the General Tax Code, whose wording provides that “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”. The same article grants a 159,325 euro allowance to any heir who cannot work under normal conditions of profitability because of a physical or mental infirmity. A surviving husband, wife or civil partner — the partner in a pacte civil de solidarité, the French registered partnership — pays nothing at all: Article 796-0 bis of the General Tax Code provides that “sont exonérés de droits de mutation par décès le conjoint survivant et le partenaire lié au défunt par un pacte civil de solidarité”. Readers in that position should also consult our guide for the British surviving spouse who keeps the French home, which covers the property rights side of widowhood.

A worked example makes the arithmetic concrete. Suppose a widowed father who lived in Leeds leaves a Dordogne house worth 420,000 euros to his only daughter, who lives in London, and suppose no prior gifts. The daughter first deducts her 100,000 euro allowance, leaving a net taxable share of 320,000 euros. The scale then applies slice by slice: 5 per cent up to 8,072 euros, 10 per cent to 12,109 euros, 15 per cent to 15,932 euros and 20 per cent on the large central band up to 552,324 euros. The resulting bill is roughly 57,000 euros — painful, but far below the headline 45 per cent rate that frightens many British families, and it falls further if the estate can document deductible liabilities such as the deceased’s outstanding debts. Valuing the house correctly at the date of death is therefore the first practical battle: an inflated valuation pushes more of the share into the higher bands, while a reasoned valuation supported by comparable sales or an independent appraisal protects the heir from day one.

Two refinements frequently matter for British families. First, gifts the deceased made during his lifetime are not forgotten. Article 784 of the General Tax Code requires the parties to disclose, in every succession declaration, whether earlier gifts were made to the heirs and for how much, and the tax is then computed by adding back gifts made less than fifteen years earlier when applying the progressive scale. A British father who gave his daughter 100,000 euros five years before dying and then leaves her the house cannot use a second full allowance on the same scale mechanics without that reminder rule applying. Second, splitting ownership between generations — the démembrement de propriété, dividing full ownership into a usufruit, the lifelong right to use the property and take its income, and a nue-propriété, the bare ownership that becomes full ownership when the usufruct ends — changes what is taxed and when. The French Court of Cassation, the country’s supreme court for civil and tax matters, clarified the boundary in a trust case that British families with Anglo-Saxon estate structures should know. In its judgment of 18 November 2020, appeal no. 18-14.242 (ECLI:FR:CCASS:2020:CO00673), the Commercial Chamber held that, under Article 750 ter in its then-applicable wording, “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” and those received by an heir domiciled in France, and it ruled that “le fait générateur des droits de mutation à titre gratuit est constitué par le transfert de propriété, qui, s’agissant de biens placés dans un trust, s’opère par l’effet de la distribution de l’actif du trust au bénéficiaire final, au jour de sa clôture”. The taxable event, in other words, is the actual transfer of ownership — for trust assets, the distribution when the trust closes, not an earlier paper re-labelling of rights. Any British heir whose parent used an English trust, a usufruct arrangement or a family company should therefore have the structure mapped onto French categories before signing anything the notaire prepares.

B. How the 1963 Franco-British treaty stops the same house being taxed twice

France is not the only country that may claim tax on the death. If the deceased was domiciled in the United Kingdom for British purposes, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs can charge British inheritance tax on the worldwide estate, including the French house. Conversely, if you are a British heir living in the United Kingdom and receive French assets, French tax applies under Article 750 ter while Britain may also take an interest. Without a treaty, the same house would be fully taxed twice. The instrument that prevents that outcome is the convention between France and the United Kingdom for the avoidance of double taxation with respect to duties on successions, signed on 21 June 1963, whose double-relief mechanics are set out in the French tax administration’s official commentary BOI-INT-CVB-GBR-20-20. Brexit did not terminate this treaty: it is a bilateral agreement independent of European Union membership, and it continues to apply to Anglo-French deaths.

The treaty works in two stages. First, it allocates the primary right to tax. Immovable property — land and buildings — is deemed situated where it physically stands, so France taxes the Dordogne farmhouse first and Britain must respect that priority. Second, the state of the deceased’s domicile grants a credit — an imputation — for the tax levied by the other state on the same property, within the limit of its own tax on that property. The official commentary organises this relief symmetrically: imputation of French death duties against the British tax, and imputation of the British tax against French death duties, depending on which state is the domicile state. In practice, then, a British-domiciled father’s French house is taxed in France first, and the British inheritance tax bill on that house is reduced by the French tax already paid, so the family pays the higher of the two charges rather than the sum. The treaty situs rule follows the same logic for valuation and for computing the credit, and the commentary explains that where one state taxes property deemed situated in the other state under Article 4 of the convention, it must credit the other state’s tax on that property.

The British side of the equation follows rules the heir should verify on the official British source rather than take on trust from a French adviser. According to the British government’s guidance on inheritance tax when someone living outside the United Kingdom dies, a person treated as based abroad pays British inheritance tax only on United Kingdom assets such as British property or bank accounts, while domicile-based liability — covering worldwide assets — can still arise where the deceased’s permanent home was in the United Kingdom, where he lived in the United Kingdom for 15 of the last 20 years, or where he had his permanent home there at any time in the last three years of life. The same guidance confirms that the executor may reclaim tax through a double-taxation treaty where both countries charge on the same assets, with practical detail on the payment of the British bill. A British heir should therefore run the two computations in parallel: the French declaration with the notaire, and the British inheritance tax position with the executor or personal representative, keeping proof of every euro paid in France because that receipt is the key to the British credit — and symmetrically, proof of British tax paid is the key to any French credit where France is the domicile state.

One common misunderstanding deserves correction. Some British families assume that because the deceased “paid tax in England”, nothing is due in France, or conversely that French payment settles everything. Neither is true. Each state assesses under its own law, applies its own allowances and rates, and then grants relief for the other’s tax through the credit mechanism; paperwork proving payment abroad must be produced, deadlines in each country must be met separately, and exchange-rate and valuation differences can leave a residual balance in one state. Families should also note that the treaty covers duties on successions, not every adjacent levy: French capital income, rental income from letting the house before sale, and local property taxes follow different rules and different treaties. Keeping the succession file strictly separated from income-tax matters avoids the frequent error of answering a succession query with income-tax arguments, which the French administration will simply disregard.

II. How to declare, pay and challenge the French succession bill

A. Filing the French estate return on time and paying without penalties

The French estate return is not optional, and the clock starts on the day of death. Article 641 of the General Tax Code gives the heirs six months from the date of death to register the declaration where the deceased died in metropolitan France, and one year in all other cases — which in practice means one year where the deceased died in England. The return must be detailed: Article 800 of the General Tax Code requires the heirs, legatees and donees to subscribe a detailed declaration, with narrow exemptions where the gross estate is below 50,000 euros for direct-line heirs and the surviving spouse who received no prior unregistered gift, or below 3,000 euros for other beneficiaries. The return is filed using the official form 2705-SD, normally prepared and signed through the notaire, and it is accompanied by payment of the duties it discloses. The French administration’s own guidance for individuals confirms that the declaration must be lodged within six months of a death in France and describes the form to use (impots.gouv.fr), while the public service portal walks through each heir’s position step by step (service-public.fr: declaration de succession). Note that even heirs who end up exempt from duties are not exempt from paperwork: the portal states that heirs exempt from succession duties are not jointly liable for payment of the duties, but they are not dispensed from filing the declaration.

Practical preparation decides whether the file runs smoothly or stalls for months. The notaire will first establish an acte de notoriété, the formal deed identifying the heirs and their shares, which is required wherever the gross estate exceeds 5,965 euros. The heirs must then supply a complete picture: the death certificate, the will if any, the property title deeds, a valuation of the house at the date of death, bank statements, the deceased’s debts that reduce the taxable base, details of life-insurance contracts — assurance-vie policies follow their own beneficiary-clause regime and are largely outside the succession — and, crucially, disclosure of any gifts made in the previous fifteen years as Article 784 requires. British paperwork needs translation and sometimes an apostille-equivalent certification to be usable by the French administration; British grants of probate have no direct effect in France and must be translated into a French succession framework through the notaire’s deeds. Where the heirs disagree about the will, the valuation or the distribution, the declaration can still be filed on a protective basis with reservations, because the greater danger lies in filing nothing at all.

Filing nothing is precisely what triggers the harshest consequences. If the deadline passes without a declaration, the administration sends a formal demand — a mise en demeure — and penalties accumulate. Article 1728 of the General Tax Code imposes an increase of 10 per cent where the return is filed spontaneously or within thirty days of the demand, 40 per cent where it is filed later, and 80 per cent where hidden activity is discovered. On top of the increase, Article 1727 of the General Tax Code provides that any tax debt not paid within the legal time gives rise to late-payment interest, to which the penalties are added where applicable. The lesson of the Court of Cassation’s judgment of 8 October 2025, appeal no. 24-16.995 (ECLI:FR:CCASS:2025:CO00504), is stark: the Court recalled that “selon l’article 641 du code général des impôts, 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” where the deceased died in metropolitan France, that under Articles 800 and 802 “les héritiers, légataires ou donataires” must subscribe a detailed declaration which they affirm sincere and truthful, and it approved the finding that heirs who never replaced an annulled declaration were in a state of filing default — défaillance déclarative — exposing them to an extended recovery period. A declaration filed late, even with penalties, almost always costs less than years of interest plus a reassessment built entirely on the administration’s estimates.

Heirs who cannot pay immediately should know that the law offers breathing room. Payment of succession duties may be spread over time — paiement fractionné, payment in instalments — or deferred — paiement différé — on request to the tax office, against interest and guarantees, which is frequently useful where the estate consists mainly of an illiquid French house the family wishes to keep rather than sell under pressure. Conversely, heirs who discover the estate is insolvent may accept only up to the net assets — acceptance à concurrence de l’actif net — or renounce the succession entirely before the courts, within the statutory option period. Renunciation must be weighed carefully by a British heir: renouncing the French succession does not erase a British inheritance-tax position computed on worldwide domicile, and it redirects the French share to the next heirs with their own tax consequences. No decision to accept, accept with limited liability or renounce should be taken without a consolidated Franco-British computation in hand.

B. Challenging a reassessment, a penalty or a refusal after Brexit

Even a return filed carefully can come back with a proposition de rectification, the formal notice by which the administration proposes to increase the assessment, or with a demand the heirs consider unfounded: a rejected valuation, a refused allowance, a denied treaty credit, or penalties the family regards as disproportionate. The first step is always the réclamation contentieuse, the written claim to the tax office setting out the facts and law and attaching the evidence — valuation reports, proof of debts, proof of tax paid in Britain, the treaty articles. This claim is not a courtesy letter: it frames the entire later dispute, and arguments or documents held back at this stage may be difficult to introduce later. Where the claim is rejected expressly or by silence, the heir may take the matter to court. For registration and succession duties, the competent court is the civil court — the tribunal judiciaire — seised by an action for discharge, an assignation en décharge, against the tax administration, with appeal and then review by the Court of Cassation available. That is exactly the path followed in both judgments cited in this article: in the 2020 trust case the heir claimed a refund after an unsuccessful complaint and sued for annulment of the rejection, and in the 2025 case the heir, after a 2011 reassessment and a rejected complaint, sued for discharge of the additional duties.

The 2025 judgment also illustrates how limitation periods — the prescription rules that extinguish the administration’s right to recover — operate in succession disputes. Once a full and sincere declaration has been filed, the administration’s window to correct it is short: the public service portal explains that where the irregularity is flagrant, checking may run until 31 December of the third year following the year of the return, with the example that a return filed on 5 January 2026 may be corrected for a glaring error until 31 December 2029 (service-public.fr: how the declaration is checked). Where no declaration was ever filed, the portal states the administration may act until 31 December of the sixth year following the year of death. But where heirs were formally put on notice and still filed nothing, the sanction is heavier: in the 2025 case the Court approved a ten-year recovery period running from the death, precisely because the annulled declaration had left the heirs in filing default and the administration had validly opened the control with a demand letter. The contrast is the whole strategy of defence in one sentence: file completely and sincerely to benefit from the short window, because filing nothing converts a manageable correction into a decade-long exposure.

Substantive defences vary with the file, but several recur for British heirs. Valuation disputes are the most common: the administration often substitutes its own comparable sales, and the heir’s best weapon is a reasoned expert valuation anchored at the date of death, adjusted for occupancy, tenancy, planning constraints or structural defects the administration ignored. Allowance disputes come next: a refused 100,000 euro child allowance, a disputed disability allowance, or the wrongful taxation of a surviving spouse who should have been exempt under Article 796-0 bis. Treaty-credit disputes form a third family: the administration may refuse the British tax credit for want of proof, miscalculate the cap, or misapply the situs rule to shares in a property company rather than to the building itself. Procedural defences form a fourth: an inadequately reasoned reassessment, a demand sent to the wrong address after the heir returned to Britain, or penalties imposed without the required formal notice. Each of these must be raised in the complaint with its evidence, because French tax judges decide on the file as constituted, not on general complaints about fairness.

British heirs based in Paris and the Île-de-France region face the same national rules with a few local practicalities worth noting. Successions with French property are generally settled through a notaire practising in France, often near the property, while the tax declaration is processed by the departmental tax office of the property’s location — not by the heir’s Paris address — and any court action belongs to the tribunal judiciaire of the place where the tax office that issued the assessment sits. Heirs living in Paris should therefore expect to deal with a provincial tax office and possibly a provincial court, to budget for travel or representation, and to keep a single complete copy of the file in one place, since correspondence shuttling between London, Paris and the Dordogne is the most common source of missed deadlines. Where the estate includes both the French house and British assets, appointing one coordinator — usually the French notaire working alongside the British executor — prevents the two files from contradicting each other on domicile, valuation or the treaty credit.

Conclusion

A British heir who receives a French house inherits two certainties and one opportunity. The certainties are that France will tax the property because it stands on French soil, and that the return must be filed within six months of a death in France or one year of a death in England, in detailed and sincere form. The opportunity is that the bill is negotiable within the law: the 100,000 euro allowance per child, the total exemption of a surviving spouse, correct valuation at the date of death, deduction of genuine liabilities, the credit for British tax under the 1963 treaty, and staged payment where cash is short can each legitimately reduce what the family pays. What cannot be negotiated is silence: as the Court of Cassation confirmed in October 2025, heirs who file nothing after being put on notice face penalties, interest and an extended recovery period, while heirs who file fully benefit from a short correction window and keep every avenue of challenge open. Prepare the valuation early, disclose the prior gifts, pay under reservation where necessary, complain in writing with evidence when the assessment overreaches, and take the dispute to the civil courts if the administration will not move. The house your parents loved can pass to you without a second bereavement at the hands of the tax office, provided the declaration is treated from the first week as the legal act it is.