A British parent can generally transfer money to a child living in France after Brexit. The difficult question is not whether a UK bank can send the funds. It is which country can tax the transfer, whether the French recipient must declare it, how the gift will be treated if the parent dies within seven years, and whether other children could later challenge its effect on the estate. French gift-tax analysis turns on tax residence, the residence history of the recipient, the location of the asset, the amount, the date and the relationship between donor and recipient. British nationality alone does not answer those questions. In 2026, a French recipient should also pay close attention to the changed procedure for declaring a manual gift or cash gift. This article separates the immediate French tax calculation from the United Kingdom Inheritance Tax and succession consequences. It gives a practical evidence trail for a parent in the UK who wants to fund a child in France while keeping the transaction identifiable, properly declared and consistent with the family\u2019s later estate planning. A transfer intended to finance a property purchase may raise additional conveyancing questions, but the purchase process itself is outside this British desk\u2019s remit.<\/p>\n
Brexit did not create a special French gift-tax exemption for a transfer from a British bank account. The starting point is the French rules on transfers for no consideration, commonly called mutation \u00e0 titre gratuit<\/em> (a transfer without payment). A genuine gift is a transfer made with a liberal intention: the parent intends to enrich the child and does not expect repayment. A loan, a reimbursement, money held as nominee for the parent, and a gift are not interchangeable descriptions.<\/p>\n The civil-law definition is important. Article 894 of the French Civil Code<\/a> begins: French gift tax is governed principally by the donor\u2019s and donee\u2019s tax residence and by the location of the asset. The donateur<\/em> means the person giving the asset; the donataire<\/em> means the person receiving it. Article 750 ter of the French Tax Code<\/a> starts with the words That six-out-of-ten test is often missed by British families. A child who moved to France recently may be French tax-resident today but may not yet have accumulated six years of French residence in the relevant ten-year period. Conversely, a child who studied or worked in France for several years before returning to the UK may need a careful residence-history calculation. The test is not measured simply by the address printed on a bank statement. Keep tax returns, tax-residence certificates, employment records, rental agreements and dates of departure and arrival so the calculation can be reconstructed.<\/p>\n The following practical matrix helps frame the first review:<\/p>\nLa donation entre vifs est un acte par lequel le donateur se d\u00e9pouille<\/q>. In English, a lifetime donation is an act by which the donor disposes of the asset for the beneficiary. The transfer must therefore be real and accepted; a parent who keeps unrestricted ownership and can demand the money back has a different evidential problem. A bank payment labelled \u201cfamily gift\u201d is useful, but the label is not by itself conclusive.<\/p>\n
Sont soumis aux droits de mutation \u00e0 titre gratuit<\/q>, then identifies three situations:<\/p>\n
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