You have settled in France, you pay your French tax, and back in England a tenant pays rent into your old current account every month. Then two letters arrive in the same season: HMRC wants a Self Assessment return for the English let, and the French tax office wants the same rent on your French return. Many British landlords in France assume one of the two bills must be a mistake. It is not. After Brexit nothing in this picture changed on the tax front, because taxation of rental income never depended on European Union membership: the United Kingdom taxes rent arising on its soil, France taxes the worldwide income of its residents, and the Franco-British tax treaty of 19 June 2008 shares the bill between them instead of letting both treasuries take a full bite. This article explains, for a British reader living in France, where each pound of English rent is taxed, how the British Non-Resident Landlord scheme works in practice, how to declare the rent correctly on the French side, how the treaty credit wipes out the double charge, and how to challenge a bill that gets the arithmetic wrong.

I. You Live in France and Let a Property in England: Where Is Each Rent Payment Taxed?

A. Why France taxes your worldwide income while the United Kingdom taxes the rent at source

Once France regards you as a tax resident, it taxes everything you earn anywhere in the world, including rent from a house in Manchester or a flat in Bristol. Article 4 A of the French General Tax Code states: “Les personnes qui ont en France leur domicile fiscal sont passibles de l’impôt sur le revenu en raison de l’ensemble de leurs revenus.” That single sentence is the foundation of the whole French side of your file, and it is worth reading alongside the official text on Article 4 A of the General Tax Code. You are treated as having your tax domicile in France as soon as you meet any one of three alternative tests, set out in Article 4 B: “1. Sont considérées comme ayant leur domicile fiscal en France au sens de l’article 4 A : a. Les personnes qui ont en France leur foyer ou le lieu de leur séjour principal ; b. Celles qui exercent en France une activité professionnelle, salariée ou non, à moins qu’elles ne justifient que cette activité y est exercée à titre accessoire”, as published on Article 4 B of the General Tax Code. In plain terms, if your home is in France, or you spend most of the year there, or your main professional activity is there, France taxes your English rent exactly as if the property stood in Lyon.

Owning the English house does not by itself make you a United Kingdom tax resident, and being non-resident in Britain does not shelter the rent from British tax either. The treaty gives the country where the bricks stand the first right to tax. Article 6, paragraph 1, of the convention signed in London on 19 June 2008, published by Decree No 2010-20 of 7 January 2010 reserves to the state where the property stands the right to tax income from immovable property situated there, and the rule expressly covers income from direct use, letting and every other form of exploitation of the property. A straightforward letting of an English house therefore falls squarely inside British taxing rights, and HMRC says the same thing in everyday language: you need to pay tax on your rental income if you rent out a property in the United Kingdom, and if you live abroad for six months or more per year you are classed as a non-resident landlord even if you remain a United Kingdom resident for tax purposes, as explained on the official rental income page for people living abroad. The two claims overlap by design, and the rest of this article is about stopping that overlap from becoming double payment.

B. How the Non-Resident Landlord scheme taxes your English rent before it reaches you

On the British side, the starting point surprises many new arrivals in France: your letting agent, and in some cases your tenant directly, must take tax off the rent before passing it on. Under the Non-Resident Landlord scheme, an agent normally deducts basic-rate tax from the rent, after allowing for expenses it has paid on your behalf, and hands you a certificate at the end of the tax year showing how much was held back. Where there is no agent and the tenant pays more than one hundred pounds a week, the tenant itself operates the deduction. This is not a final settlement of your British tax; it is tax collected at source, and the system then offers you two routes. You can accept deduction at source and square the account through a return, or you can apply to receive the rent gross and pay through Self Assessment instead.

Receiving the rent gross requires HMRC approval, applied for on form NRL1i for an individual landlord. The official guidance on receiving United Kingdom rental income without tax deducted explains that the letting agent or tenant normally deducts tax when paying rent to a landlord who lives outside the United Kingdom, and that form NRL1i is the route for an individual non-resident landlord seeking gross payment. Approval is not automatic: HMRC will refuse it if your British tax affairs are not up to date, for example where returns or payments are late. If approval is granted, HMRC instructs the agent or tenant to stop deducting, and you declare the income in a Self Assessment return instead. Approval therefore helps cash flow during the year, but it never removes the obligation to report and pay.

That reporting obligation is heavier than many landlords expect. You need to declare the rental income in a Self Assessment tax return unless HMRC tells you otherwise, completing the residence section on form SA109 and the property section on form SA105, as set out on the official rental income page for people living abroad. Because you live abroad, you cannot use HMRC online filing for this return: you must send the paper return by post, use approved commercial software, or go through an accountant. The postal deadline falls on 31 October, earlier than the online deadline available to United Kingdom filers, and missing it attracts a fine, so diarise that date as soon as the tenancy starts. Keep the agent deduction certificates, the tenancy agreement, invoices for repairs, insurance, agent fees and mortgage interest statements together, because the deductible-expenses computation on the SA105 and the matching French computation will both need them, and reconstructing a year of payments from bank statements under time pressure is where most errors creep in.

One relief survives the move to France and regularly produces a repayment. A British citizen keeps a United Kingdom Personal Allowance against United Kingdom income even while living abroad, alongside citizens of European Economic Area countries and people who have worked for the British government in the tax year, as confirmed on the official Personal Allowance page for non-residents. If you are not United Kingdom resident you must claim the allowance at the end of each tax year in which you have United Kingdom income, on form R43. Where the agent has deducted basic-rate tax but your rental profit sits below the allowance, form R43 is also the vehicle for reclaiming the over-deducted tax. Two practical points follow. First, the allowance is claimed year by year; it is not lost because you live in France, but it is not applied automatically either. Second, the treaty between the United Kingdom and France can extend similar treatment in some configurations, so a landlord who is not a British citizen should check the double-taxation position described on the official page on being taxed twice rather than assuming no allowance is available. For most British readers of this article, though, the sequence is simple: deduction at source or approved gross receipt, SA105 return, Personal Allowance claimed on R43 where due.

II. How Do You Declare the English Rent in France and Stop the Double Tax?

A. Declaring the net rent on the French return, from forms to social charges

On the French side the rent is not a curiosity to mention in passing; it belongs in the rental-income category of your return even though the house stands in England. Article 14 of the General Tax Code brings into the revenus fonciers category, and I quote the operative part: “Sous réserve des dispositions de l’article 15 , sont compris dans la catégorie des revenus fonciers, lorsqu’ils ne sont pas inclus dans les bénéfices d’une entreprise industrielle, commerciale ou artisanale, d’une exploitation agricole ou d’une profession non commerciale : 1° Les revenus des propriétés bâties, telles que maisons et usines”, which you can verify on Article 14 of the General Tax Code. An ordinary unfurnished letting of your English house therefore enters the French return as revenus fonciers. Only the net amount is taxed: Article 13, paragraph 1, defines taxable income as “1. Le bénéfice ou revenu imposable est constitué par l’excédent du produit brut, y compris la valeur des profits et avantages en nature, sur les dépenses effectuées en vue de l’acquisition et de la conservation du revenu”, on Article 13 of the General Tax Code. In practice you deduct, under French rules, the same kinds of outgoings you claimed in Britain: repairs, insurance, agent fees and loan interest on the let property, evidenced by the file you assembled for the SA105.

Declaring means three forms working together. The main return, form 2042, carries the totals; annexe 2047 details income collected abroad, with its frame 4 dedicated to rental income, as the tax administration confirms on its page on taxing income received from abroad; and form 2044 hosts the detailed rental-income computation whenever you use the actual-expenses regime rather than the flat-rate regime. Taxpayers whose total annual gross rental income does not exceed fifteen thousand euros may instead use the micro-foncier regime, under which, and I quote Article 32: “Par dérogation aux dispositions de l’article 31, lorsque le montant du revenu brut annuel défini aux articles 29 et 30 n’excède pas 15 000 €, le revenu imposable correspondant est fixé à une somme égale au montant de ce revenu brut diminué d’un abattement de 30 %”, on Article 32 of the General Tax Code. Note that the regime applies across all the rental income of the household, so add any French rents to the English gross before testing the threshold, and remember that the thirty per cent allowance replaces all actual expenses: once your deductible costs exceed that allowance, the actual-expenses computation on form 2044 wins and you should elect it. British owners who let property on the French side face a parallel set of registration and declaration duties, described in our guide to renting out a French house as a British owner, which is useful reading if your portfolio spans both countries.

Income tax is only half the French bill. Net rental income of a person domiciled in France also bears social charges on capital income. Article L. 136-6 of the Social Security Code makes persons domiciled in France under Article 4 B liable to a contribution on capital income assessed on the net amount used for income tax purposes, expressly including rental income: “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”, with “a) Des revenus fonciers” listed in the base, on Article L. 136-6 of the Social Security Code. The rate for these contributions is set by Article L. 136-8, which currently provides “2° A 10,6 % pour les contributions sociales mentionnées aux articles L. 136-6 et L. 136-7”, on Article L. 136-8 of the Social Security Code, with further levies sitting alongside, so check the current assessment notice for the full combined rate rather than relying on last year’s payment slip. A frequent follow-on question concerns wealth tax: English lets owned by a French resident sit in the taxable base of the French real-estate wealth tax unless a specific exemption applies, and the main shelter is the professional-asset exemption of Article 975, which covers, and I quote: “Sont exonérés les biens ou droits immobiliers mentionnés au 1° de l’article 965 et les parts ou actions mentionnées au 2° du même article 965 représentatives de ces mêmes biens ou droits, lorsque ces biens ou droits immobiliers sont affectés à l’activité principale industrielle, commerciale, artisanale, agricole ou libérale”, on Article 975 of the General Tax Code. An ordinary passive letting of one English house does not meet that professional-activity test, so budget for the wealth-tax position as well as the income-tax one.

One temptation must be refused outright. If the English let runs at a loss in a given year, after interest and repairs, you cannot use that United Kingdom deficit to reduce your French salary or other French income. The treaty credit mechanism described below only neutralises French tax actually bearing on the rental income; it does not export a British loss into the French computation. The Conseil d’Etat enforces this architecture strictly: in a case about French residents letting German property, it held that “Il résulte des termes mêmes des stipulations du a) du 2) de l’article 20 de cette convention, dans leur rédaction antérieure à l’avenant du 31 mars 2015, dont l’objet est de fixer les règles permettant l’élimination de la double imposition des revenus de source allemande perçus par des résidents de France, que les parties signataires ont entendu, pour la mise en oeuvre de ces règles, limiter aux seuls revenus positifs la prise en compte des revenus de source allemande dans les revenus imposables en France des contribuables résidents de France, à l’exclusion des déficits”, Conseil d’Etat, 19 December 2019, No 428443, on Conseil d’Etat 19 December 2019 No 428443. That ruling concerned the Franco-German treaty, but it illustrates the method French judges apply to credit-method treaties generally: positive income is counted and credited, deficits stay where they arose. A loss-making English let therefore gives no French tax value in the loss year, though the economics remain deductible in Britain under United Kingdom rules.

B. How the treaty credit cancels the French tax and how to challenge a wrong bill

The treaty does not exempt the rent in France; it makes France give you a credit that mirrors the French tax on that rent, so that the British tax you already paid is the tax that sticks. Article 24, paragraph 3(a), of the 2008 convention provides, for France, that income taxable in the United Kingdom under the treaty is taken into account for computing French tax, the British tax is not deducted from the income, and the French resident receives a credit against French tax, measured for rental income by the French tax corresponding to that income, on condition that the French resident has paid United Kingdom tax on it, under Article 24 of the 2008 convention. The computation of that French-tax equivalent is spelled out just below: under a progressive scale it is the product of the net income concerned by the rate resulting from the ratio between the tax actually due on the overall net taxable income under French legislation and the amount of that overall net income. Only British tax definitively borne on that income counts toward the comparison, and the credit can never exceed the French tax attributable to the rent. The Conseil d’Etat has confirmed the same reading for bilateral treaties generally, holding that “Il en est de même pour la détermination du montant du crédit d’impôt auquel ouvrent droit des revenus de source étrangère en vertu d’une convention fiscale bilatérale prévoyant d’éliminer les doubles impositions par l’octroi d’un crédit égal au montant de l’impôt français correspondant à ces revenus”, Conseil d’Etat, 10 July 2019, No 412624, a decision which concerned British-source income among others, on Conseil d’Etat 10 July 2019 No 412624.

Take a simple illustration, labelled as such so nobody mistakes it for your assessment. Suppose your English let yields a net rental profit of ten thousand euros under French computation rules, taxed in France at your marginal conditions for two thousand euros of French tax, while Britain has definitively charged you one thousand eight hundred euros on the same profit. France first computes its two thousand euros, then grants a credit equal to the French tax corresponding to the rent, capped at the British tax actually paid, so one thousand eight hundred euros of credit wipes out all but two hundred euros of the French charge, and the combined burden equals the higher of the two national computations. Reverse the figures and the cap bites the other way: the credit can never exceed the French tax on the rent, so no refund of foreign tax ever comes out of the French side. The same credit logic governs the capital-gains side when you eventually sell the English property, as explained in our guide to the treaty credit on the sale of a British home by a French resident. Because the credit is only as good as the numbers fed into it, declare the gross rent, the deductible expenses and the British tax paid with unusual care, keep the SA105 computation, the agent certificates and the R43 correspondence, and reconcile the euro conversion rate used on the 2047 with your bank records before filing.

If the assessment still comes out wrong, French procedure gives you a ladder with strict rungs. At audit stage, any correction must arrive as a reasoned proposal, and you have thirty days from receipt to reply to any notification from the tax administration: “le délai accordé aux contribuables pour répondre aux demandes de renseignements, de justifications ou d’éclaircissements et, d’une manière générale, à toute notification émanant d’un agent de l’administration des impôts est fixé à trente jours à compter de la réception de cette notification”, under Article L. 11 of the Tax Procedure Book. The proposals for responding to a French tax correction and the thirty-day mechanics are detailed in our guide to answering a French tax audit as a British resident. Where you need more time to assemble English evidence, the administration extends the reply period by thirty days when you ask before the first period expires: “L’administration adresse au contribuable une proposition de rectification qui doit être motivée de manière à lui permettre de formuler ses observations ou de faire connaître son acceptation. Sur demande du contribuable reçue par l’administration avant l’expiration du délai mentionné à l’article L. 11 , ce délai est prorogé de trente jours”, under Article L. 57 of the Tax Procedure Book. Once the bill is issued, the formal objection has its own cut-off: objections must reach the administration no later than 31 December of the second year following the year of collection or payment, since “Pour être recevables, les réclamations relatives aux impôts autres que les impôts directs locaux et les taxes annexes à ces impôts, doivent être présentées à l’administration au plus tard le 31 décembre de la deuxième année suivant celle” of the events the article then lists, under Article R*196-1 of the Tax Procedure Book. Miss that date and the objection is inadmissible however strong the treaty arithmetic; respect it and attach the SA105, the agent certificates, proof of the British tax definitively paid and your credit computation, so the officer can correct the file without litigation.

Conclusion

A British resident of France who lets an English property pays British tax first, declares the net rent in France, bears French social charges on it, and then neutralises the French income-tax charge with the treaty credit measured by the French tax on that rent. The system works when each side receives clean numbers: gross receipt authorised on NRL1i or tax deducted at source, SA105 filed on paper by 31 October, Personal Allowance claimed on R43, French 2042 with 2047 frame 4 and 2044 under the actual-expenses regime or micro-foncier below fifteen thousand euros, and the credit reconciled to British tax definitively paid. The two traps are symmetrical: forgetting the French declaration because the rent was already taxed in Britain, and assuming a loss-making English let reduces French tax when treaty credits only cover positive income. Keep both files, both certificates and both computations together each year, and any dispute becomes an arithmetic correction rather than a reconstruction.