You let your French flat or cottage to paying guests — a few summer weeks through a platform, a winter let to a contractor, perhaps a full calendar of short stays — and the rental money lands in your UK account. It feels like simple extra income, and for the platform it is. For the French tax system it is something else entirely: a commercial profit, taxed under its own category, declared on its own forms, subject to its own thresholds that changed sharply in the 2024 finance law, and collected from you even though you live in Britain. British owners who treat French rental receipts the way they treat UK rental income — same return, same allowances — routinely overpay, under-declare, or miss the regime that would have halved their taxable base. This guide explains, for a British reader, how France taxes your furnished rental income, which of the two tax regimes applies to you, how a UK-based owner declares and pays, and what to do when the assessment is wrong. Every French term is explained at first use; every decisive proposition is tied to the statute, the case law or the administration’s own published guidance.
I. How Is Your French Furnished Rental Profit Taxed?
The first surprise for British landlords is one of classification. In the United Kingdom, rent from a furnished flat is property income. In France, rent from a furnished dwelling is not rental income at all in the legal sense: it is a commercial profit, in the income-tax category of bénéfices industriels et commerciaux (BIC — industrial and commercial profits). That single classification drives everything else: the forms you file, the allowances you can claim, the social charges that attach, and the difference between an amateur landlord and a professional one. Unfurnished letting, by contrast, stays in the revenus fonciers (land income) category. So the presence or absence of furniture — beds, cooker, tableware, the equipment that lets a tenant live in the place from day one — is not a lifestyle detail. It is the boundary between two tax worlds.
A. Why Is Your Furnished Let a Commercial Profit and Not Simple Rent?
The statute draws the line in plain language. After listing dealers and intermediaries, Article 35 of the tax code provides that industrial and commercial profits include, “Présentent également le caractère de bénéfices industriels et commerciaux, pour l’application de l’impôt sur le revenu, les bénéfices réalisés par les personnes physiques désignées ci-après”, and among those persons: “5° bis Personnes qui donnent en location directe ou indirecte des locaux d’habitation meublés” — persons who let, directly or indirectly, furnished residential premises. If you let a furnished flat in Nice or a furnished cottage in Normandy, whether in your own name or through an agent or platform, you are within that description. The administration’s international desk confirms the consequence for non-residents in its published question-and-answer, a non-resident letting a furnished property: what are my tax duties: income from letting furnished premises situated in France is subject to income tax in the BIC category and must be reported on the supplementary return 2042-C-PRO in the dedicated section, distinguishing professional industrial and commercial income from non-professional furnished-letting income.
That distinction — professional landlord (loueur en meublé professionnel, LMP) versus non-professional landlord (loueur en meublé non professionnel, LMNP) — is the second classification to grasp. The administration states that furnished-letting is professional only where two cumulative conditions are both met, and the dedicated page sets them out; most British owners of one or two holiday properties fall on the LMNP side of the line, which is generally the gentler side: profits are taxed, but the activity does not carry the full professional apparatus. The practical upshot is that the overwhelming majority of British readers will declare as non-professional furnished landlords, and the rest of this guide is written for them, with the professional regime mentioned only where the boundary matters.
France’s right to tax you at all, while you live in Kent or Yorkshire, rests on the oldest rule in cross-border property taxation: land is taxed where it stands. Article 164 B of the tax code lists the income treated as being of French source, beginning with “Sont considérés comme revenus de source française : a. Les revenus d’immeubles sis en France ou de droits relatifs à ces immeubles” — income from buildings situated in France or rights relating to them. Your French rents are French-source income by definition, so France taxes them first, and the double-tax position is that the United Kingdom, which taxes its residents on worldwide income, gives relief for the French tax under the treaty and its foreign-tax-credit mechanics. The GOV.UK overview puts the UK side in one sentence: You may need to pay UK Income Tax on your foreign income, with residence deciding the scope (see UK residence and tax on foreign income). In practice this means two returns, two computations, and a credit in the United Kingdom for the tax properly paid in France — which is why getting the French computation right saves tax twice over.
B. Micro-BIC or Actual-Cost Basis: Which Regime Applies and What Does It Cost?
Within the BIC category, two assessment methods compete: the simplified micro regime (micro-BIC) and the actual-cost regime (régime réel). The micro regime taxes a fixed fraction of your gross receipts and ignores your actual expenses; the actual-cost regime taxes receipts minus proven costs, including depreciation of the property and furniture (amortissements), plus loan interest, management fees, insurance and repairs. Choosing — or drifting into — the wrong one is the costliest mistake a British landlord makes, and since the 2024 finance law the thresholds that allocate you between them are far tighter for holiday lets than they used to be.
The current Article 50-0 sets three turnover ceilings, measured on the previous or penultimate calendar year: “1° bis 15 000 € s’il s’agit d’entreprises dont l’activité principale est de louer directement ou indirectement des meublés de tourisme, au sens du I de l’article L. 324-1-1 du code du tourisme, autres que ceux mentionnés aux 1° et 2° du I de l’article 1414 bis du présent code ; 2° 83 600 € s’il s’agit d’autres entreprises.” In ordinary language: unclassified tourist furnished lets (meublés de tourisme non classés — the standard holiday cottage or flat advertised online without an official star classification) enter the micro regime only up to 15,000 euros of annual turnover excluding tax; ordinary furnished lets that are not tourist accommodation, such as a nine-month student let or a year-round furnished tenancy, enter it up to 83,600 euros. Above the ceiling, the actual-cost regime is compulsory. Below it, the micro regime applies by default but you may elect for the actual-cost basis within the time limits — an option worth modelling, because depreciation alone often exceeds the flat-rate allowance on a recently bought property.
The flat-rate allowances (abattements) that replace your expenses under micro-BIC are fixed by the same article: “d’un abattement de 50 % pour le chiffre d’affaires provenant d’activités de la catégorie mentionnée au 2° et d’un abattement de 30 % pour le chiffre d’affaires provenant d’activités de la catégorie mentionnée au 1° bis.” So a standard furnished let enjoys a 50 per cent allowance — 12,000 euros of receipts produce 6,000 euros of taxable profit — while an unclassified tourist let gets only 30 per cent. These allowances cannot fall below 305 euros. The reform behind the tourist-letting figures was Article 45 of the finance law for 2024 (Law No 2023-1322 of 29 December 2023), and its terms were bitterly litigated: owners and hotel-industry bodies challenged the administration’s commentary applying the new 15,000-euro threshold and 30 per cent allowance to 2023 income. The Conseil d’État recited the reform’s substance in its decision, noting that “L’article 45 de la loi n° 2023-1322 du 29 décembre 2023 de finances pour 2024 modifie les modalités d’application du régime des micro-entreprises, prévues à l’article 50-0 du code général des impôts (CGI), pour les activités de location meublée de tourisme.” and that for unclassified tourist accommodation it brought “la baisse du seuil de chiffre d’affaires d’application du régime des micro-entreprises à 15 000 € et fixe l’abattement représentatif de charges à 30 %.” (Conseil d’État, 8th chamber, 8 July 2024, Nos 492382 and 492582.) For a British owner whose cottage grosses 20,000 euros a season, the message is stark: the micro regime is closed, a full actual-cost return is compulsory, and reconstruction of deductible costs after the event is painful. Keep invoices from January.
Two worked comparisons show why the election matters even where micro-BIC remains available. Take a furnished two-bedroom flat in Lyon let to a postgraduate for the academic year at 900 euros a month: 10,800 euros of annual receipts, within the 83,600-euro ceiling, so micro-BIC applies by default. The 50 per cent allowance gives 5,400 euros of taxable profit with no paperwork beyond the receipts. Under the actual-cost basis, deductible interest of 2,000 euros, charges of 1,500 euros and depreciation of, say, 4,000 euros would leave roughly 3,300 euros taxable — better, but at the price of full accounts and a 2031 return. Now take an unclassified Dordogne cottage grossing 14,000 euros in a good summer: micro-BIC is available (under 15,000 euros) but the allowance is only 30 per cent, so 9,800 euros is taxable; the actual-cost basis, with heavy running costs and depreciation on the renovation, will very often produce a lower figure. The general lesson is that micro-BIC rewards low-cost lets and the actual-cost basis rewards capital-intensive ones — and that the election, once made, runs for a fixed period, so model it before you commit rather than after the notice arrives.
One further boundary deserves a sentence, because British owners cross it without noticing: the regulatory status of the let does not change its tax category, but it changes everything around it. Registration numbers, change-of-use permission and fines for unlawful short-term letting belong to regulatory law, analysed in the companion piece on second-home holiday lets, registration, change-of-use permission and fines; this article deals only with the income-tax consequences once the letting exists. A compliant registration does not reduce the tax, and an irregular letting does not remove it — the tax office will happily assess income from a letting that the town hall would happily fine.
II. How Do You Declare, Pay and Correct the Tax as a British Owner?
Brexit did not create a special tax status for British landlords; it simply left them, like other non-EU owners, inside the ordinary non-resident machinery: a French return for French-source income, French instalments, French social charges computed from that return, and a floor rate of tax that surprises almost everyone the first year. The machinery is navigable, but only if you file the right forms at the right offices — and the most common British failure is filing nothing in France on the assumption that the UK return covers everything. It does not. France taxes the French house first, and it expects a French return to prove it.
A. Which French Returns, Offices and Minimum Rates Apply to a UK-Based Landlord?
The declaration circuit for a non-resident furnished landlord runs through two documents. The rental profit itself is reported on the supplementary return 2042-C-PRO, in the section for non-professional furnished letting (or the professional BIC section for the rare LMP case). Under the micro regime, you enter gross receipts and the administration applies the allowance; the international desk’s guidance describes the micro boxes and the 71, 50 and 30 per cent mechanics by letting category. Under the actual-cost regime, you first determine the taxable result on return No 2031, filed not with your personal tax office but with the business tax office (service des impôts des entreprises, SIE) responsible for the area where the property stands — the office of the most valuable property if you own several — and then carry that result onto the 2042-C-PRO. The English-language service-public overview of income tax on furnished-rental income walks through the same architecture for residents, and the non-resident Q&A adapts it to owners abroad at furnished letting by a non-resident, with the general property-income position for non-residents summarised at non-residents receiving French property income.
Then comes the floor rate — the taux minimum — which is the single most misunderstood line on a non-resident’s assessment. Article 197 A provides that the ordinary scale applies to persons without a French tax domicile who receive French-source income, but “l’impôt ne peut, en ce cas, être inférieur à un montant calculé en appliquant un taux de 20 % à la fraction du revenu net imposable inférieure ou égale à la limite supérieure de la deuxième tranche du barème de l’impôt sur le revenu et un taux de 30 % à la fraction supérieure à cette limite”. In substance: at least 20 per cent on the lower slice and 30 per cent above, even if the ordinary progressive scale would have given a lower figure. There is, however, a statutory safety valve in the same article: “lorsque le contribuable justifie que le taux de l’impôt français sur l’ensemble de ses revenus de source française ou étrangère serait inférieur à ces minima, ce taux est applicable à ses revenus de source française.” If you can show, with worldwide evidence, that the French tax on all your income — French and foreign — would be taxed at a lower average rate, that lower rate applies to the French income. For a British landlord whose only substantial income is a modest French rental profit plus a UK pension, this worldwide-rate claim (taux moyen) regularly cuts the bill, but it must be affirmatively made with full documentation; the administration applies the minima by default. The constitutional robustness of the minima has itself been litigated up to the Conseil d’État on a priority question of constitutionality concerning non-residents whose entire income is French-source (Conseil d’État, 9th–10th chambers combined, 3 February 2023, No 468904, decision 468904) — a reminder that the floor rate is contested terrain where a well-documented file matters.
Social charges (prélèvements sociaux — the CSG, CRDS and related levies that fund French social protection) form the second layer many British owners discover late. The principle for property income is stated in the Social Security Code: “Les personnes physiques fiscalement domiciliées en France au sens de l’article 4 B du code général des impôts sont assujetties à une contribution sur les revenus du patrimoine assise sur le montant net retenu pour l’établissement de l’impôt sur le revenu”, including “a) Des revenus fonciers”. For furnished BIC profits the computation runs through the same return-based machinery, and for non-residents the applicable levies and affiliation questions have a long and litigated history — including the line of claims known as the Dreyer case law on social charges, for which the international desk maintains a dedicated complaints channel for non-residents whose earlier claims were never processed. The practical guidance is therefore threefold: expect a social-charge assessment on top of the income tax shown on your French notice; check which levies appear and on what base; and if your history includes disputed pre-Brexit social-charge assessments, use the dedicated channel rather than an ordinary letter. Do not assume that because you pay National Insurance in Britain, no French social levy can apply to French rental profits — the two systems attach to different bases under different statutes.
Payment runs through the contemporary-instalment system (acomptes contemporains): once rental profits are known to the system, monthly or quarterly instalments are levied, and a wrongly computed instalment — for example after a regime change or a corrected return — produces a wrongly high direct debit for months. The administration’s guidance explains that the instalment can be corrected by filing an amending entry while still possible, and otherwise by sending an amending 2042-C-PRO on paper to the non-residents’ personal tax office (service des impôts des particuliers non-résidents) in Noisy-le-Grand. British owners who move between micro and actual-cost regimes, or who stop letting mid-year, should diary this step: the assessment may be right while the instalments remain wrong, and only an amendment fixes the cash flow.
B. How Do You Get a Wrong Rental Assessment Corrected or Repaid?
Wrong rental assessments come in a small number of recurring shapes, and each has a matching remedy. The wrong-regime shape: a cottage grossing 18,000 euros taxed under micro-BIC with a 30 per cent allowance when the threshold had been exceeded and the actual-cost basis was compulsory — or, conversely, a landlord taxed under the actual-cost basis who never elected for it and whose micro allowance would have been kinder. The wrong-base shape: gross receipts inflated by security deposits that were refunded, by the tourist tax (taxe de séjour) collected on behalf of the commune, or by the platform’s service fees counted as the owner’s turnover. The wrong-person shape: income attributed to one spouse where the property is jointly owned, or to the owner where a long lease had transferred enjoyment. The wrong-rate shape: the 20/30 per cent minima applied where a worldwide-rate claim would have succeeded, or social levies charged on a base that the return did not support. And the wrong-year shape: receipts allocated to the year of bank transfer rather than the year the claim was acquired, or a regime reform applied to the wrong year’s income — the very retroactivity question at the heart of the July 2024 Conseil d’État litigation over the 15,000-euro threshold.
The correction ladder has three rungs. The first rung is administrative and immediate: correct the online return while the portal allows it, amend the property record, write to the issuing office with dated evidence — tenancy agreements, platform payout statements with fees separated, bank statements distinguishing deposits refunded, the 2031 computation with depreciation schedules, the worldwide income file for a taux moyen claim. The second rung is the formal contentious claim (réclamation contentieuse), open against any tax established or recovered by the administration where it seeks “soit la réparation d’erreurs commises dans l’assiette ou le calcul des impositions, soit le bénéfice d’un droit résultant d’une disposition législative ou réglementaire.” Address the claim to the office shown on the notice, identify the tax, the year and the precise error — threshold, allowance, base, rate or person — state the correct figure with the computation, and attach the exhibits the judge would want to see. If the claim is rejected expressly or expires unanswered, the third rung is the administrative court (tribunal administratif), where the materials assembled for this guide become pleadings: the Article 35 classification, the Article 50-0 thresholds and allowances in force for the year in dispute, the worldwide-rate proviso of Article 197 A with the global income file, and the July 2024 decision on the tourist-letting reform for assessments of the transition years.
A closing note on evidence, because furnished-rental files fail on proof more often than on law. The administration taxes what its records show, and its records show what your returns and the platform reports say. Reconcile the two every year before filing: platform gross payouts, minus platform fees, minus refunded deposits, minus tourist tax collected for the commune, equals the turnover you declare — with each adjustment documented. Keep the classification evidence for tourist accommodation if you claim a classified allowance, the loan statements and depreciation tables if you elect the actual-cost basis, and the complete worldwide income file if you invoke the average rate. A British landlord who files a coherent, reconciled, documented return rarely needs the courtroom; one who files from memory usually meets the judge without the exhibits the judge needs. The tax is annual, the reference texts change — the 2024 reform proved that thresholds are not permanent — and the file you keep through the letting season decides the assessment you receive in the autumn.
Conclusion
French furnished-rental income is a commercial profit taxed in the BIC category, entering the micro-BIC regime only below 15,000 euros for unclassified tourist lets or 83,600 euros for other furnished lets, with allowances of 30 or 50 per cent respectively, and moving to the actual-cost basis — with depreciation, interest and full expense relief — above those lines or by election. A British owner declares it in France on the 2042-C-PRO, with a 2031 computation lodged at the local business tax office under the actual-cost basis, faces the 20 and 30 per cent minimum rates of Article 197 A unless a documented worldwide-rate claim brings them down, and meets social charges computed from the same return. Every one of those links — regime, base, rate, person, year — can be checked against the notice, corrected administratively, claimed formally through the contentious procedure, and defended before the administrative judge with the statutes and decisions set out above. Let the property in conformity with the registration rules, declare the profit in the right category and regime, keep the reconciled file, and challenge the rest with documents rather than with surprise.