You are British, you own a house or flat in France, and every autumn two or three French tax bills land in your online tax account. Since Brexit, those bills can feel harder to read than before: you pay in euros, the explanatory pages are in French, and you are no longer sure whether any European rule still shelters you. This guide is written for you, entirely in English, and it covers the whole annual system in one place: the taxe foncière (the annual local tax on built property, paid by the owner), the taxe d’habitation sur les résidences secondaires (the occupancy tax that now survives only on second homes and other furnished premises that are not your main home, often shortened to THRS), the municipal surcharge of 5% to 60% that a growing number of councils vote in tight housing areas, and the impôt sur la fortune immobilière (the annual tax on net property wealth, known as IFI). It explains who pays each tax after Brexit, how each amount is built up, which reliefs a British owner can still claim, and how to challenge an excessive bill before the deadline expires.

Brexit changed your residence and visa position, but it did not change the basic French rule that local property taxes follow the property, not the passport of its owner. A British national who owns a flat in Paris, a cottage in the Dordogne or a new-build house near Lyon pays the same local taxes as a French owner of the same property. What Brexit did change is the surrounding position: you may now be non-resident for French income tax while still owning French property, your stay in France may be limited to 90 days in any 180-day period unless you hold a visa or a residence permit, and some European reliefs that once depended on EU mobility rights no longer apply. The annual bills themselves, however, are assessed under the same articles of the Code général des impôts (the French general tax code) as for every other owner. That is why this article starts from the French texts and the case law of the French courts, and then draws out, at each step, what matters specifically for a British reader: residence against non-residence, main home against second home, and the practical route to a challenge when the figures are wrong.

Three companion analyses on this site complete the picture and are linked where they matter below. If you have left France and now sell your former French home, the exemption windows and the treaty tail are examined in our analysis of the sale by a British leaver of a former French home. If your French property is held through a family trust set up under English law, the declaration duty and the IFI treatment of the trust are examined in our analysis of the British family trust and France. If you let your second home to holidaymakers, the registration number, the change-of-use permission and the fines are examined in our analysis of the British second home let on a holiday platform. This article is the hub for the annual bills themselves: it keeps the whole system together so you can see which bill is which, which one carries the surcharge, which one only concerns larger estates, and which deadline governs each challenge.

I. Which annual property taxes a British owner pays in France after Brexit

France taxes property ownership every year through two families of taxes that British readers should keep strictly separate. The first family is local: the taxe foncière sur les propriétés bâties (local tax on built properties) and the THRS are assessed by the municipality and the inter-municipal body where the property stands, collected by the State, and spent locally. The second family is national: the IFI is a State tax on net property wealth above a threshold, declared with your income tax return and assessed nationally. A British owner of a modest second home usually pays the first family only. A British owner whose worldwide or French property exceeds the IFI threshold pays both. The sub-sections below set out, for each tax, who is liable, what the charge is built on, and where Brexit makes a practical difference.

A. Taxe foncière, taxe d’habitation on second homes and the 5% to 60% surcharge: who pays what by reference to 1 January

The taxe foncière sur les propriétés bâties is the tax every owner of built property in France knows. The code states the principle 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 plain English: if the building stands in France, it is within the charge unless a specific statutory exemption takes it out. Neither British nationality nor British residence takes a French building out of the charge. A flat in Paris owned from London is taxable in exactly the same way as the identical flat next door owned from Paris.

Liability follows ownership at a single reference date. The code provides that "Sous réserve des dispositions des articles 1403 et 1404 , toute propriété, bâtie ou non bâtie, doit être imposée au nom du propriétaire actuel." The assessment is then fixed for the whole year by reference to the position on 1 January. The Conseil d’État (the supreme court for administrative and tax disputes in France) restates the rule in these terms: "La taxe foncière sur les propriétés bâties, la taxe foncière sur les propriétés non bâties et la taxe d’habitation sont établies pour l’année entière d’après les faits existants au 1er janvier de l’année de l’imposition" (Conseil d’État, 8th chamber, 22 November 2021, No 450227, official record on Légifrance). The practical consequences for a British buyer or seller are immediate. If you buy a French house in March, the seller remains liable for the whole of that year’s taxe foncière, and any sharing of the bill between you is a private contractual matter for the conveyancer, the notaire (the French public officer who authenticates conveyances), to apportion. If you sell in November, you remain the person assessed for that year. Diaries, flights and completion dates do not move the reference date: only ownership recorded at 1 January counts.

The amount of taxe foncière is built from the valeur locative cadastrale (the notional annual rental value recorded for the property in the land registry, which serves as the tax base), multiplied by the rates voted by the commune (the municipality), the inter-municipal body and, historically, the department. British owners are often surprised that the base has little to do with the price they paid. Two houses bought for the same price can carry very different bases because the valeur locative reflects size, comfort elements, upkeep category and long-standing administrative valuations rather than the market. That is also why a challenge to taxe foncière so often turns on the description of the premises: a wrong floor area, a garage counted twice, a comfort element that no longer exists, or a property recorded as fully habitable while part of it is genuinely unfit for occupation. Each of those points is a question of fact at 1 January, proved by the floor plans, the energy and condition reports, dated photographs and the correspondence with the tax office, and each of them can move the base for the year.

The THRS is a different tax on a different person in a different capacity. While the taxe foncière falls on the owner as owner, the THRS falls on the occupier of a furnished second home. Since the abolition of the taxe d’habitation on main homes, completed on 1 January 2023, the code keeps the charge only beyond the main home. It provides that "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." A British owner who lives in London and keeps a furnished flat in Paris therefore pays the THRS on that flat as occupier, in addition to the taxe foncière paid as owner. A British resident of France who lives year-round in a house in Lyon and keeps a small furnished studio in the Alps pays the THRS on the studio only. A British landlord whose French flat is let unfurnished on a long residential lease does not pay the THRS on it at all, because the tenant, as occupier of a main home, is outside the charge; the landlord remains liable for the taxe foncière as owner. Where the flat is let furnished for short holiday stays, the question of who is the occupier at 1 January, which is normally the low season, needs careful handling, and our companion analysis on the British second home let on a holiday platform should be read alongside this section.

The surcharge is the element that has made the THRS bills of recent years so much heavier in the places British buyers favour. The code provides that "Dans les communes mentionnées au B du I de l’article 1406 bis, le conseil municipal peut, par une délibération prise dans les conditions prévues à l’article 1639 A bis, 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 other words, in municipalities listed in the tight-housing zones, the council may vote, by a formal deliberation taken before the statutory deadline, an increase of between 5% and 60% on the municipal share of the THRS. Paris has voted the surcharge, as have very many communes in the inner Paris region (Île-de-France), on the Basque and Mediterranean coasts, and in the Alpine resorts. A British owner with a second home in Paris must therefore expect the municipal part of the THRS to be loaded by the maximum voted locally, which in Paris means a very substantial uplift on the bill. The surcharge applies only to the municipal share, not to the whole bill, but on high-value Paris property even that share is large.

The validity of the zoning that opens the surcharge has been tested before the Conseil d’État by owners of second homes in mountain resorts, and the challenge failed. The Court recalled the mechanism in these terms: "Dans les communes classées dans les zones géographiques mentionnées au I de l’article 232, le conseil municipal peut, par une délibération (…), majorer d’un pourcentage compris entre 5 % et 60 % la part lui revenant de la cotisation de taxe d’habitation sur les résidences secondaires et autres locaux meublés non affectés à l’habitation principale due au titre des logements meublés" (Conseil d’État, 8th and 3rd chambers sitting together, 21 December 2023, No 488601, official record on Légifrance), and it closed the case with the holding "La requête de la Fédération des associations de résidents des stations de montagne et autres est rejetée." British owners should draw the operational lesson: the surcharge zones are lawful in principle, the litigation now moves property by property to the amount, the deliberation date, and the individual reliefs, and a refusal to pay the surcharge on the ground that the zone itself is unlawful has no prospect.

The code does, however, provide three targeted reliefs from the surcharge, and British owners use them more often than they expect. On a complaint lodged within the time limit, a discharging relief from the increase is granted to a person obliged for professional reasons to live somewhere other than the main home, for the dwelling near the workplace; to a person formerly housed in the dwelling as a main home who has moved durably into a care institution; and to any other person who, for a reason beyond personal control, cannot turn the dwelling into a main home. A British employee posted to Paris who keeps the family home in Kent and rents a small Paris flat near the office during the week is the textbook example of the first case. A British owner whose French house cannot be lived in because a genuine planning or building prohibition, a long administrative closure, or a major insurability event makes occupation impossible may fall within the third, but a house kept empty by choice, or kept available for holidays, does not. Each relief must be claimed with proof: employment contract and posting letter showing the workplace constraint, care-home admission records, or the administrative order that prevents residential use. The tax office does not grant them automatically.

Paris and the Île-de-France region deserve a short practical note because so many British second homes stand there. In Paris, the competent tax office for the complaint is the local public finance centre shown on the assessment, and the competent court on appeal is the administrative court of Paris; in the inner suburbs it is Montreuil, Cergy-Pontoise or Versailles according to the department. Parisian bills combine a high valeur locative, the voted THRS surcharge, and, for larger estates, the IFI described below. A British owner in Paris should therefore diary three parallel tracks each autumn: check the taxe foncière base against the actual state of the flat at 1 January, check the THRS assessment and whether the surcharge deliberation and relief conditions have been correctly applied, and check whether the IFI threshold is crossed once the Paris property is added to the rest of the estate. The same discipline applies in the ski resorts and on the coast, where the surcharge is equally common, but the amounts in Paris make the verification most valuable there.

B. IFI on net property above €1,300,000 and the France–United Kingdom position: residents taxed worldwide, non-residents on French assets

The IFI is the national annual tax on property wealth. The 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. Sont soumises à cet impôt, lorsque la valeur de leurs actifs mentionnés à l’article 965 est supérieure à 1 300 000 € :" The rest of the article then distinguishes two positions. A person whose tax residence (domicile fiscal, the French connecting factor for income and wealth tax) is in France is within the charge on worldwide property assets, in France and abroad. A person whose tax residence is outside France is within the charge only on French assets. For a British reader, the mapping is therefore straightforward. A British national who has settled in France and is French tax resident with a house in Surrey and a flat in Paris adds both properties to the IFI base. A British national who lives in London and owns only a house in Provence counts only the Provence house. In both cases the threshold is the same: net taxable property above €1,300,000 on 1 January.

The base is net property wealth at 1 January. The code defines it as follows: "L’assiette de l’impôt sur la fortune immobilière est constituée par la valeur nette au 1er janvier de l’année :" followed by the list of the buildings, rights and shareholdings that enter the base. Net means after the debts that the statute allows as deductions, principally loans taken out to acquire, build, extend or repair the taxable property, within the statutory caps and anti-avoidance limits. British owners often overstate their deductions by subtracting a general mortgage secured on the French house but used to fund something else, or a loan for works that were never done, or a family loan with no written terms and no traceable payments. The tax office disallows those sums as a matter of routine, and the resulting reassessment carries interest and penalties. Deductible debt must be documented loan by loan: the loan offer, the purpose clause, the drawdown trail into the property, and the outstanding capital at 1 January proved by the lender’s annual statement.

Valuation is the second great source of IFI disputes for British owners. French law taxes the open-market value (valeur vénale, the price the property would fetch in a sale between a willing seller and a willing buyer) at 1 January, and the administration expects the taxpayer to justify the figure with comparable sales, not with the price paid years earlier and not with a single estate-agent letter. The main home enjoys a statutory reduction of 30% on its value where the conditions are met, which makes the classification of the property as a main home or a second home financially significant well beyond the THRS. The courts apply a factual test to that classification. The administrative court of appeal of Lyon restates it in these terms: "Pour être considéré comme résidence principale au sens de ces dispositions, l’immeuble en cause doit constituer la résidence habituelle et effective du cédant." and it dismissed the taxpayer’s appeal with the holding "La requête de Mme A… est rejetée." (CAA Lyon, 2nd chamber, 21 March 2024, No 22LY01512, official record on Légifrance). Although that case concerned the capital-gains exemption on sale, the factual method is the same for the IFI reduction: habitual and effective occupation, proved by energy consumption, school and medical records, mail, presence of furniture and personal effects, and consistency between the address declared to the administration and the address actually lived in. A British owner who claims the 30% reduction on a Paris flat while the children are schooled in London, the energy bills show background consumption, and the French tax return gives a London address should expect the reduction to be challenged.

Ownership through a company or a société civile immobilière (a French non-trading property company, universally called an SCI, widely used by British families to hold a French holiday home) does not remove the property from the IFI base. Shares are taxable by reference to the underlying French buildings, and the administration looks through the structure to the bricks. Ownership through an English trust raises a separate declaration duty with its own penalties, examined in our companion analysis of the British family trust and France: a British trustee who files the IFI return without filing the trust return, or the reverse, creates two files that contradict each other. British owners should treat the SCI, the trust and the IFI return as one coherent set of filings with consistent valuations, and keep the valuer’s report, the loan statements and the trust deed or SCI accounts together for the same 1 January date.

The France–United Kingdom double tax treaty allocates the right to tax, but it does not exempt French land from French tax. Immovable property remains taxable where it stands, and the treaty then organises relief in the other State by credit or exemption according to the article concerned. A British resident of France who pays French IFI on a London house does not pay again in the United Kingdom on the same value, because the United Kingdom has no equivalent annual wealth tax; the question is rather whether the London house pushes the worldwide total over €1,300,000 and therefore brings the French flat into charge. A British resident of London who pays French IFI on a Provence house declares that house in France only, and the United Kingdom does not give credit for a tax it does not levy. The treaty matters most where income is concerned, because French rental income from a Provence house owned from London is taxable in France first with relief in the United Kingdom, as examined in our analysis of British rental income and the treaty credit. For the annual wealth tax itself, the operational point is simpler: count everything the statute tells you to count, value it at 1 January, convert sterling values at a documented rate, and file where the statute tells you to file.

New arrivals benefit from a specific five-year measure that British movers use regularly. Individuals who have not been French tax resident during the five calendar years before settling in France are taxable only on French assets for each year they keep French tax residence during the initial period, under the conditions of the statute. A British family that moves from London to Lyon with a retained London house and a new Lyon house therefore has a window in which the London house stays outside the IFI base, while the Lyon house is within it from the start. The window is temporary and conditional, it does not affect the local taxes which follow the French property in any event, and it requires consistent residence positions across the income tax return, the IFI return and the treaty tie-breaker. Keep the arrival date, the five-year history and the valuations for the same 1 January together, because the administration tests all three at once.

II. Paying correctly and challenging an excessive bill before the deadline

British owners lose more money through missed deadlines and thin files than through any difficulty of the substantive law. The French system gives the taxpayer genuine tools: prior complaint to the tax office with suspension of enforced recovery on request, a clear statutory deadline, reasoned decisions, and then an independent judge. But every tool is time-barred, and the administration decides on papers. The sections below set out the payment and return discipline first, then the challenge route step by step, with the points that most often decide a British file.

A. Returns, payment, reliefs for professional mobility and involuntary vacancy: getting the assessment right

Local taxes are assessed by the administration, not self-assessed: you receive the notice in your online account (espace particulier, the personal account on the impots.gouv.fr portal) or by post, and you pay by the date shown. IFI is the reverse: you declare it yourself with the annual income tax return, normally in May or June for the 1 January of the same year, and you pay on assessment. A British owner therefore has two disciplines to keep. For the local taxes, the discipline is verification on receipt: check the property description, the valeur locative, the rates, the application of the THRS surcharge, and the identity of the person assessed. For the IFI, the discipline is anticipation: commission the valuation, assemble the loan statements, reconcile the SCI accounts or the trust position, convert sterling assets at a documented rate, and file a consistent figure. In both cases, keep everything for the same 1 January, because the administration will test the local-tax file against the IFI file and against the income-tax residence position.

Occupancy declarations now drive the THRS. Since the reform, owners must declare the occupancy status of each French dwelling through the online occupancy return (déclaration d’occupation, the return in which every owner states for each property whether it is a main home, a second home, vacant, or let, and identifies the occupier). A British owner who bought a French flat, changed its use, moved a child into it, or started letting it, and never updated the declaration, is inviting an assessment built on stale data. The correction starts online: update the occupancy return, keep the acknowledgement, and then use it as the exhibit to the complaint. Where the flat was genuinely unoccupied at 1 January, say so precisely and prove the surrounding facts: completion or works contracts, meter readings showing no consumption, insurance on an unoccupied basis, and the dated steps taken to sell or let. A bare assertion that the flat was empty carries no weight; a dated bundle showing why it was empty and what was done about it can carry the case.

Reliefs differ sharply between the taxes, and mixing them is a classic British error. Exemptions from taxe foncière for elderly or low-income occupiers of a main home do not help a second home, because a second home is by definition not the main home. The three THRS surcharge reliefs described in Part I help only against the increase, not against the underlying THRS. The IFI 30% reduction helps only the main home and only within the IFI. A British pensioner living year-round in a Dordogne house with a small Paris studio should therefore run three separate analyses: the Dordogne house may attract a taxe foncière relief as a main home, the Paris studio attracts full THRS plus the voted surcharge with no equivalent relief, and the IFI reduction applies to the Dordogne value only. The Conseil d’État’s 2021 decision shows how fact-sensitive the main-home analysis is: the taxpayer there obtained "M. B… est déchargé des cotisations de taxe d’habitation et de contribution à l’audiovisuel auxquelles il a été assujetti au titre de l’année 2016." only after proving, person by person and euro by euro, that the occupation and income conditions for the main-home relief were met (Conseil d’État, 8th chamber, 22 November 2021, No 450227, official record on Légifrance). The lesson travels directly to British files: reliefs are won by proof of the statutory conditions at 1 January, not by general fairness arguments and not by reference to British council-tax concepts.

Payment mechanics deserve a short paragraph because they cause a surprising number of defaults. French local taxes are payable in euros by bank transfer, direct debit (prélèvement, the automatic debit from a bank account) or card through the online account; international cards and transfers from British banks sometimes fail at the deadline for authentication or limit reasons. A failed payment does not suspend the complaint deadline and it attracts late-payment interest. Set up a monthly or on-date direct debit from a French or SEPA-compatible account well before October, keep the debit confirmation, and treat the British bank as a backup rather than the primary channel. Where cash flow is tight because several bills arrive together, the administration may grant a payment plan on request, but the plan must be sought before enforcement, it does not reduce the tax, and it does not extend the complaint deadline. Pay, complain, and seek recovery of the overpaid amount: that order protects both the record and the cash position.

The United Kingdom side of the paperwork should not be neglected. A British owner who is still United Kingdom resident for United Kingdom purposes reports worldwide income to HM Revenue and Customs and claims relief for French tax on French rental income under the treaty, while the French annual property taxes themselves are generally not creditable in the United Kingdom because they are not taxes on income. Keep the French assessments, the proof of payment, and the exchange rate used, because the figures feed the United Kingdom return where rental profit is computed, and because a later enquiry on either side of the Channel will ask for the same bundle. The United Kingdom guidance on tax on foreign property and on residence is published on gov.uk (HM Revenue and Customs), and the French administration publishes the IFI computation method on impots.gouv.fr (IFI computation guide) and the THRS position on service-public.fr (THRS information page). British owners who read the French assessment alongside those three pages make fewer classification errors than those who rely on press summaries.

B. How to challenge: prior complaint to the tax office, the 31 December deadline and the judge

Every challenge begins with a prior complaint to the tax office; there is no direct access to the judge without it. The code states the rule plainly: "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." The complaint goes to the office shown on the assessment, in French, through the online messaging system of the personal account or by recorded post, and it must state the tax, the year, the amount disputed, the legal basis, and the evidence. A complaint that says the bill is too high, without saying which element is wrong and by how much, is treated as a request for mercy rather than a legal claim, and it produces a discretionary answer instead of a reasoned decision that can be taken to the court. Quantify: the correct valeur locative is such-and-such, the surcharge deliberation is dated after the deadline, the relief condition is met for the stated reason, the IFI valuation should be reduced by a stated sum for stated comparables. Attach the bundle and keep the filing receipt.

The deadline for local taxes is strict and it is the one British owners miss most often. The code provides that "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, selon le cas :" followed by the list of starting events, normally the collection of the assessment. In practice, the autumn 2026 local-tax bills must be challenged by 31 December 2027. The IFI, which is not a local direct tax, follows the longer general deadline, normally 31 December of the second year after collection, but a British owner should never rely on the longer period from memory: the notice states the applicable route and time, and the online filing receipt proves compliance. Late complaints are inadmissible however strong the merits, and neither Brexit, nor distance, nor the language of the notice extends the period. Diary the deadline on receipt of every assessment, for every property, for every year.

The complaint should run on two rails at once: correction of the base and, where the base cannot be fully corrected, a reasoned request for the relief that fits the facts. On the taxe foncière rail, the winning points are concrete: the description of the premises is wrong, the valeur locative is out of line with comparable premises in the same commune, an exemption or a vacancy allowance has been overlooked, or the person assessed was not the owner at 1 January. On the THRS rail, the winning points are the occupancy at 1 January, the correct identification of the occupier, the validity and date of the surcharge deliberation, and one of the three statutory reliefs with its proof. On the IFI rail, the winning points are the valuation at 1 January with comparables, the deductible debts with their purpose trail, and the scope of the base for non-residents against residents. Each rail needs its own exhibits, because the office that handles the local taxes is not the office that handles the IFI return, and a bundle that mixes the two without signposting slows both.

If the administration rejects the complaint expressly, or stays silent for six months, the taxpayer may seise the court. Local-tax disputes go to the administrative court (tribunal administratif, the first-instance court for tax and administrative disputes) of the place of taxation; IFI disputes follow the same administrative route. The application must be lodged within two months of the rejection, it must repeat the quantified claims with the evidence, and it must join the complaint, the assessment and the rejection. British claimants litigate from abroad without difficulty through a representative, but the file must be complete in French with translations where the exhibits are in English: the court does not translate bank statements, valuations or trust deeds. Hearings are on papers with a public rapporteur’s conclusions, and the judgment states the exact discharge granted. The 2021 and 2023 decisions cited in this article show both outcomes: a precise, documented main-home file obtained a full discharge in No 450227, while a general attack on the surcharge zones without an individual error failed in No 488601. British files should be built to resemble the first, not the second.

Enforced recovery continues during the complaint unless suspension is obtained, and this is the point that most alarms British owners who discover a direct debit or a seizure warning. A request for suspension of payment (sursis de paiement, the procedure that pauses enforced collection while the dispute is examined) may be made with the complaint under the statutory conditions, with guarantees where the amount requires them. Make the request expressly, in the same letter as the complaint, and keep paying any undisputed part. Where the property is about to be sold, tell the notaire of the pending dispute and of any suspension obtained, because the conveyancer will otherwise clear the assessed amount from the price on completion and the practical leverage of the dispute is lost. Where the bill has already been paid, the complaint seeks restitution with late-payment interest from the administration if it succeeds; payment never waives the right to complain within the deadline.

Costs and penalties close the loop. Interest for late payment runs on unpaid tax, and reassessments for undeclared IFI or for bad-faith valuations carry the statutory increases. Conversely, a taxpayer who obtains a discharge recovers the overpaid principal with interest, and may obtain costs against the State where the court so orders, as the operative parts of the decisions cited above illustrate. The rational British strategy is therefore conservative in filing and assertive in proof: declare the IFI even in a doubtful case with a reasoned valuation rather than filing nothing, pay the local bills by the date shown, complain within the deadline with quantified claims and a dated bundle, seek suspension where recovery threatens, and litigate only the points the papers can carry. Files built that way settle more often, succeed more often, and cost less than files built on general grievances about Brexit, about the level of French taxation, or about comparisons with British council tax, none of which the court can apply.

Conclusion

A British owner in France after Brexit lives with a stable annual system: the taxe foncière on the owner as owner, the THRS on the occupier of a furnished second home with a voted surcharge of 5% to 60% in tight-housing communes, and the IFI on net property above €1,300,000 with worldwide scope for French residents and French-only scope for non-residents. Each tax turns on the position at 1 January, each has its own base, rate and reliefs, and each has its own complaint deadline, with 31 December of the following year as the strict limit for the local taxes. The case law rewards documented files and rejects general attacks: prove the state of the premises, the occupation, the valuation and the debts with dated exhibits, quantify every claim, and use the statutory reliefs where their conditions are genuinely met. Built that way, a British challenge to a French property-tax bill is an ordinary, winnable tax dispute, Brexit or not.