{"id":2126436,"date":"2026-09-21T04:56:55","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T02:56:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kohenavocats.fr\/2026\/09\/21\/british-second-home-france-taxe-habitation-surcharge-majoration-challenge-brexit\/"},"modified":"2026-09-21T04:56:55","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T02:56:55","slug":"british-second-home-france-taxe-habitation-surcharge-majoration-challenge-brexit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kohenavocats.fr\/en\/2026\/09\/21\/british-second-home-france-taxe-habitation-surcharge-majoration-challenge-brexit\/","title":{"rendered":"British Second-Home Owner in France After Brexit: Why You Still Get a Taxe d’Habitation Bill, How the 60% Surcharge Works, and How to Challenge It"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every autumn, the same envelope lands on the doormat of British-owned holiday homes from Brittany to the Dordogne: the avis de taxe d’habitation<\/em>, the French housing tax bill. Many British owners open it in disbelief. Was this tax not abolished? The answer is yes \u2014 but only for main homes. Since 2023, the taxe d’habitation sur les r\u00e9sidences secondaires<\/em> (THRS, the housing tax on second homes) survives in full, and in thousands of communes it now arrives with a surcharge of up to 60% on top. If your bill this September looks heavier than last year’s, the majoration<\/em> (surcharge) voted by your commune council is the likely reason. This guide explains, in plain English with the exact legal texts, why your French holiday home is still taxed after the main-home abolition, how the 5% to 60% surcharge machinery works, and \u2014 the part that matters most \u2014 how to challenge the bill, claim the three statutory reliefs from the surcharge, and correct a wrong occupation record before the 31 December complaint deadline.<\/p>\n

I. Why Your French Holiday Home Still Pays Taxe d’Habitation After Brexit and How the 5% to 60% Surcharge Is Added<\/h2>\n

A. Why the Main-Home Abolition Changed Nothing for Your Second Home: Who Pays, on What Date, and the 1 July Declaration You Must File<\/h3>\n

Start with the misunderstanding that costs British owners the most money: the abolition of the taxe d’habitation<\/em> never covered second homes. Since the 2023 tax year, no housing tax is due on a r\u00e9sidence principale<\/em> (main home), but every furnished dwelling kept for use other than as a main home remains taxable. Article 1407 of the General Tax Code<\/a> states: “La taxe d’habitation sur les r\u00e9sidences secondaires est due pour tous les locaux meubl\u00e9s conform\u00e9ment \u00e0 leur destination d’habitation autre qu’\u00e0 titre principal” \u2014 the second-home housing tax is due for all furnished premises used as dwellings other than as a main home. That single sentence is the foundation of your bill. It applies whether you live in London, Edinburgh or Cardiff: what matters is the French dwelling, not your residence. The tax is established for the whole year by reference to the facts existing on 1 January of the tax year, so a house you owned and kept furnished on 1 January 2026 is taxable for all of 2026 even if you sell it in March.<\/p>\n

The liable person is, in principle, whoever has the use of the dwelling on 1 January \u2014 owner, yearly tenant or even a person housed free of charge. For British owners this produces two practical traps. The first concerns houses let out as holiday g\u00eetes<\/em> (furnished seasonal rentals). Owners often assume that because the house is a business asset for most of the year, it escapes the housing tax. The Council of State (Conseil d’Etat<\/em>, France’s supreme administrative court) ruled the opposite on 23 December 2024 (No 492174). The court recalled that “le propri\u00e9taire du bien est redevable de la taxe d’habitation d\u00e8s lors qu’au 1er janvier de l’ann\u00e9e de l’imposition, il peut \u00eatre regard\u00e9 comme entendant en conserver la disposition ou la jouissance une partie de l’ann\u00e9e” \u2014 the owner is liable for the housing tax where, on 1 January of the tax year, he can be regarded as intending to keep the use or enjoyment of the property for part of the year. In that case, a couple letting two g\u00eetes<\/em> in Brittany through online platforms had won discharge before the Rennes administrative court; the Council of State held that “le tribunal administratif de Rennes a commis une erreur de droit” \u2014 the Rennes court had erred in law \u2014 annulled the judgment and ruled: “Les conclusions de la demande pr\u00e9sent\u00e9e par M. et Mme A… tendant \u00e0 la d\u00e9charge des cotisations de taxe d’habitation \u00e0 laquelle ils ont \u00e9t\u00e9 assujettis au titre de l’ann\u00e9e 2022 sont rejet\u00e9es.” The decisive factor was that the owners, free to accept or refuse each short booking as it came, had kept the power to enjoy the houses themselves. Read the full ruling on Conseil d’Etat, 23 December 2024, No 492174<\/a>. For a British owner, the lesson is blunt: advertising your house on a holiday platform while keeping the keys and the right to block out weeks for yourself makes you the liable occupier on 1 January, and the tax is yours.<\/p>\n

The second trap is the mirror image: owners who believe a French address on some document proves a property is their main home. In a ruling of 7 July 2026 (No 506653), the Council of State clarified how a r\u00e9sidence principale<\/em> is identified for housing-tax purposes: “La r\u00e9sidence principale, au sens de ces dispositions, s’appr\u00e9cie au regard de la situation de chaque contribuable” \u2014 the main home is assessed by reference to each individual taxpayer’s situation. The court added that the address shown on a joint income-tax return is only one piece of evidence among others: “il ne saurait \u00eatre pr\u00e9sum\u00e9 que cette adresse est, sauf preuve contraire apport\u00e9e par le contribuable, celle de sa r\u00e9sidence principale pour l’\u00e9tablissement de la taxe d’habitation” \u2014 it cannot be presumed that this address is, unless the taxpayer proves otherwise, his main home for housing-tax purposes. The taxpayer, who claimed her Lyon flat was her main home while her joint tax return showed another address, saw her appeal dismissed: “Le pourvoi de Mme A… est rejet\u00e9.” See Conseil d’Etat, 7 July 2026, No 506653<\/a>. For British readers the practical meaning is symmetrical: your UK home is your main home, your French house is a second home, and no paperwork exercise in France will reclassify it \u2014 the tax office looks at where you actually live, work, keep your family and spend most nights.<\/p>\n

Since 2023, a yearly declaration controls all of this. Article 1418 of the General Tax Code<\/a> provides: “les propri\u00e9taires de locaux affect\u00e9s \u00e0 l’habitation sont tenus de d\u00e9clarer \u00e0 l’administration fiscale, avant le 1er juillet de chaque ann\u00e9e, les informations relatives \u00e0 la nature de l’occupation de ces locaux” \u2014 owners of residential premises must declare to the tax administration, before 1 July each year, information on how each property is occupied. You file this d\u00e9claration d’occupation<\/em> (occupation declaration) online in your personal account on impots.gouv.fr, under “G\u00e9rer mes biens immobiliers” (Manage my properties): main home, second home, let, vacant, with the occupant’s identity and the period of occupation. No declaration is needed in a year where nothing changed since the previous one, but a first declaration is compulsory for any undeclared property, and every change \u2014 sale, new letting, a child moving in, works making the house uninhabitable \u2014 must be reported before 1 July of the following year. The administration pre-fills your bill from this file, which is why a wrong entry (a house shown as vacant when it is your second home, or shown as your main home when you live in Kent) produces a wrong bill that you must then fight. Check the record today: if the September avis<\/em> misdescribes the occupation, the error almost always originates in this declaration, and correcting it is the first step of any challenge.<\/p>\n

Do not confuse this tax with its cousin. The taxe fonci\u00e8re<\/em> (property tax) is paid by the owner as owner; the taxe d’habitation<\/em> is paid by the person who can use the dwelling. On an identical house you can owe both, and our companion guide explains the taxe fonci\u00e8re bill for British owners, how to read the avis and how to challenge it<\/a>. If you let the house furnished, the letting income has its own regime, covered in our guide to letting your French second home: furnished rental tax, registration and fines<\/a>. The rest of this article stays on the occupier’s tax and its surcharge.<\/p>\n

B. How Your Commune Adds 5% to 60%: the Tense Zone, the 2023 Decree That Redrew the Map, and the Council Vote Behind Your Bill<\/h3>\n

The surcharge is not set by Paris and it is not automatic: it is voted street by street, commune by commune. Article 1407 ter of the General Tax Code<\/a> allows the municipal council (conseil municipal<\/em>), by formal deliberation, to “majorer d’un pourcentage compris entre 5 % et 60 % la part lui revenant de la cotisation de taxe d’habitation sur les r\u00e9sidences secondaires due au titre des logements meubl\u00e9s” \u2014 to increase by between 5% and 60% the commune’s share of the second-home housing tax due on furnished dwellings. Only the communal portion is uplifted; the intercommunal and special-equipment shares are untouched, so a 60% vote does not raise the total bill by 60% \u2014 typically by 40% to 50% depending on local rate splits. The same article caps the result: the combined rate cannot exceed a national ceiling. Read the mechanism in the official service-public.fr explainer on the second-home housing tax<\/a>, which also gives the current list logic and the online simulator to check whether your commune applies the surcharge.<\/p>\n

A commune may only vote the surcharge if it sits in a zone tendue<\/em> (tense area, where housing demand structurally exceeds supply). Article 1406 bis of the General Tax Code<\/a> defines these as communes showing “un d\u00e9s\u00e9quilibre marqu\u00e9 entre l’offre et la demande de logements entra\u00eenant des difficult\u00e9s s\u00e9rieuses d’acc\u00e8s au logement sur l’ensemble du parc r\u00e9sidentiel existant” \u2014 a marked imbalance between housing supply and demand causing serious difficulty in accessing housing across the existing stock. Two groups qualify: large continuous urban areas of over 50,000 inhabitants with high rents, high purchase prices or long social-housing queues, and \u2014 since the 2022 Finance Act \u2014 smaller communes showing high rents, high prices or a high proportion of dwellings not used as main homes. That second group is the revolution for British owners: classic second-home territory \u2014 coastal resorts, Alpine and Pyrenean villages, Dordogne market towns, Proven\u00e7al hill villages \u2014 entered the map in large numbers.<\/p>\n

The instrument of that revolution was Decree No 2023-822 of 25 August 2023 (challenged unsuccessfully in Conseil d’Etat, 21 December 2023, No 488601<\/a>), which rewrote the official list of communes and added more than two thousand of them, many rural or mountain communes whose housing stock is dominated by holiday homes. Second-home owners did not accept it quietly: the federation of mountain-resort residents (FARSM) and four owners asked the Council of State to annul the decree and referred a priority question of constitutionality (question prioritaire de constitutionnalit\u00e9<\/em>, the procedure allowing litigants to challenge a statute’s compatibility with constitutional rights). On 21 December 2023 (No 488601), the court refused to transmit the constitutional question \u2014 “la question de la conformit\u00e9 de ces dispositions aux droits et libert\u00e9s garantis par la Constitution, qui n’est pas nouvelle, est d\u00e9pourvue de caract\u00e8re s\u00e9rieux”, the question was not new and lacked serious character \u2014 and then: “La requ\u00eate de la F\u00e9d\u00e9ration des associations de r\u00e9sidents des stations de montagne et autres est rejet\u00e9e.” See Conseil d’Etat, 21 December 2023, No 488601<\/a>. The court accepted that Parliament had used objective criteria linked to the housing goal and had not imposed an excessive burden on one category of taxpayers. For your case, the message is clear: do not build a challenge on the argument that the surcharge or the zone list is unconstitutional in itself \u2014 that battle was fought by the mountain resorts and lost. Challenges succeed on individual grounds: wrong commune rate applied, missing or irregular council deliberation, eligibility for one of the three statutory reliefs, or a wrong occupation record.<\/p>\n

So when the September avis<\/em> arrives, read it as a three-layer document. The base is the valeur locative cadastrale<\/em> (the notional rental value of the dwelling, set by the land registry and revalued yearly) multiplied by the local rates. The second layer is the communal surcharge percentage voted for that year, shown as a separate line. The third layer is everything the bill assumes about you: occupation status on 1 January, address for service, household composition. Each layer has its own remedy, and the strongest, cheapest victories come from the third layer \u2014 a corrected occupation record \u2014 and from the statutory reliefs described below. Before paying an inflated bill, verify the deliberation: the surcharge must have been voted by your commune council before 1 October of the previous year to apply this year, and the percentage printed on your avis<\/em> must match the voted rate. A surcharge applied in a commune that never voted it, or at a different rate from the vote, is simply unlawful, and the tax office corrects such errors on a simple, well-documented complaint.<\/p>\n

II. How to Challenge the Bill, Claim the Surcharge Relief and Fix a Wrong Occupation Record<\/h2>\n

A. How to Get the Surcharge Cancelled: the Three Statutory Relief Cases, the 31 December Complaint Deadline and the Road to the Tax Judge<\/h3>\n

Parliament created three escape routes from the surcharge, and they are claims of right, not favours. Article 1407 ter, paragraph II<\/a> provides: “Sur r\u00e9clamation pr\u00e9sent\u00e9e dans le d\u00e9lai pr\u00e9vu \u00e0 l’article R. * 196-2 du livre des proc\u00e9dures fiscales et dans les formes pr\u00e9vues par ce m\u00eame livre, b\u00e9n\u00e9ficient d’un d\u00e9gr\u00e8vement de la majoration” \u2014 on a complaint filed within the time limit set by Article R.*196-2 of the Tax Procedure Book, a relief from the surcharge is granted to three categories. First: “Pour le logement situ\u00e9 \u00e0 proximit\u00e9 du lieu o\u00f9 elles exercent leur activit\u00e9 professionnelle, les personnes contraintes de r\u00e9sider dans un lieu distinct de celui de leur habitation principale” \u2014 for the dwelling near their workplace, people obliged to live somewhere other than their main home. This covers the classic pied-\u00e0-terre<\/em> kept for work: a consultant who rents or owns a small flat near a French client site while the family home is elsewhere. Second: “Pour le logement qui constituait leur r\u00e9sidence principale avant qu’elles soient h\u00e9berg\u00e9es durablement dans un \u00e9tablissement” providing long-term care \u2014 the former main home of a person moved permanently into a care home. British families with an elderly parent in a French EHPAD<\/em> (care home) while the old house stands empty should check this route. Third: “Les personnes autres que celles mentionn\u00e9es aux 1\u00b0 et 2\u00b0 qui, pour une cause \u00e9trang\u00e8re \u00e0 leur volont\u00e9, ne peuvent affecter le logement \u00e0 un usage d’habitation principale” \u2014 anyone else who, for a reason beyond their control, cannot use the dwelling as a main home. This is the workhorse provision: a house made uninhabitable by structural damage, a planning or co-ownership dispute blocking occupation, a property under a court-ordered sale that cannot be lived in. “Beyond your control” is assessed strictly \u2014 a house you simply prefer to keep empty, or leave vacant between holiday visits, does not qualify \u2014 but genuine impossibility, documented by expert reports, council orders or court decisions, does. Each of these reliefs wipes out the surcharge while leaving the base tax due; claim them expressly and separately, because the tax office will not apply them on its own initiative.<\/p>\n

Every complaint runs against a hard clock. Article R.*196-2 of the Tax Procedure Book<\/a> requires that “les r\u00e9clamations relatives aux imp\u00f4ts directs locaux et aux taxes annexes doivent \u00eatre pr\u00e9sent\u00e9es \u00e0 l’administration des imp\u00f4ts au plus tard le 31 d\u00e9cembre de l’ann\u00e9e suivant celle” of the collection of the tax roll \u2014 complaints about local direct taxes must reach the tax office by 31 December of the year after the bill’s collection year. For the avis<\/em> you receive in autumn 2026, the deadline is 31 December 2027; for the 2025 bill, it is 31 December 2026 \u2014 barely three months from now, so check last year’s bill too, because a 2025 surcharge wrongly applied can still be reclaimed. File the r\u00e9clamation<\/em> (formal complaint) from your personal account on impots.gouv.fr via the secure messaging (“Nous contacter”) to the tax office of the property’s location (service des imp\u00f4ts des particuliers<\/em> of the place where the house stands, not your UK address), or by recorded-delivery letter to the same office, or in person. State the tax, the year, the num\u00e9ro fiscal<\/em> and the property reference from the avis<\/em>, the exact relief or correction requested, and attach everything: the deliberation rate if you dispute it, employment contract and proof of the family home for the work case, the care-home admission certificate for the second, expert or bailiff (commissaire de justice<\/em>) reports and uninhabitability orders for the third. Keep the acknowledgement of receipt: the office has six months to answer, and silence for six months counts as an implied rejection that opens the road to court.<\/p>\n

If the office rejects your complaint expressly or by silence, the dispute moves to the administrative court (tribunal administratif<\/em>) of the department where the house is situated. Article R.421-1 of the Administrative Justice Code<\/a> sets the rule: “La juridiction ne peut \u00eatre saisie que par voie de recours form\u00e9 contre une d\u00e9cision, et ce, dans les deux mois \u00e0 partir de la notification ou de la publication de la d\u00e9cision attaqu\u00e9e” \u2014 the court can only be seised by an appeal against a decision, within two months of notification of that decision. You must therefore complain to the tax office first \u2014 a direct application to the judge without a prior complaint is inadmissible \u2014 and then lodge the court application within two months of the rejection. The application (requ\u00eate<\/em>) states the facts, the legal grounds (wrong rate, irregular deliberation, qualifying relief, wrong 1 January situation) and the discharge requested, with the avis<\/em>, the complaint and its rejection attached. Court proceedings are written and slow \u2014 eighteen months is ordinary \u2014 but interest on any overpayment runs in your favour, and a win on the surcharge often repeats for later years on the same facts, so the effort compounds. The official service-public.fr guide to tax complaints and court appeals<\/a> summarises the same steps in French for reference when drafting.<\/p>\n

One strategic point British owners miss: pay first, fight second. A complaint does not suspend collection, and late-payment penalties of 10% plus monthly interest accrue while you argue. Unless the bill is manifestly issued to the wrong person, pay by the deadline shown on the avis<\/em> (normally mid-November for online payment), then reclaim. Payment under protest preserves every right and costs nothing extra; refusal to pay converts a dispute about a surcharge into a dispute about penalties too. If cash flow is tight, ask the tax office for a payment schedule (d\u00e9lai de paiement<\/em>) in the same complaint letter \u2014 local offices routinely grant a few months on documented hardship, and the request itself evidences good faith.<\/p>\n

B. When the Tax Office Has the Wrong Picture: Holiday Lets, Works, Family Use and the Evidence That Actually Wins<\/h3>\n

Most winnable files are not about the law at all \u2014 they are about facts the computer got wrong. The bill is generated from the occupation file, and four British-owner profiles generate most errors. First, the holiday-let house. As the Council of State held in the 2024 g\u00eetes<\/em> ruling discussed above, keeping disposal of the house on 1 January makes you liable even with heavy seasonal letting \u2014 but the reverse is equally true. A house handed over year-round to a manager, with every week genuinely offered and the owner retaining no personal-use right, and a house reserved exclusively for letting with no personal use, point away from owner liability. The dividing line the court drew was the owner’s freedom: owners who could accept or refuse bookings at will kept “la disposition ou la jouissance” (the use or enjoyment). If your house was continuously let or genuinely unavailable to you on 1 January, prove it with the management mandate, the full-year calendar, platform statements and the absence of any personal stays \u2014 and if you let furnished under the regimes in our letting guide<\/a>, align the tax complaint with the letting paperwork so the two files tell the same story.<\/p>\n

Second, the house under works. A property undergoing renovation that makes it unfit for habitation on 1 January can support two arguments at once: the surcharge relief for impossibility beyond your control under Article 1407 ter, and, in extreme cases, exclusion from the base itself if the dwelling is genuinely not a furnished habitable unit. Evidence decides everything: dated photographs, the builder’s contract (devis<\/em> and invoices) showing the work period straddling 1 January, a bailiff’s report (constat<\/em>) recording the absence of kitchen, bathroom or heating, disconnection certificates from the utilities, and any council danger or unfitness order (arr\u00eat\u00e9 de p\u00e9ril<\/em> or insalubrity order). Cosmetic works while you continue to stay in the house prove nothing; a gutted house with no water and no roof proves everything. Commission the constat<\/em> early \u2014 a bailiff’s report drawn up in January is worth ten times a witness statement written in November.<\/p>\n

Third, the family-use house. British owners often lend the French house to adult children, parents or friends for long stretches. Lending does not move liability: whoever has personal use on 1 January owes the tax, and a free occupant (occupant \u00e0 titre gratuit<\/em>, someone housed for free) is in principle the liable person \u2014 but the tax office, working from the owner’s declaration, bills the owner by default. If a child actually lived in the house year-round and it was effectively their main home, say so in the declaration and evidence it (their registration, bills, insurance in their name), because a dwelling that is someone’s genuine main home is not a second home at all. If the family member only stays in summer while you keep the house the rest of the year, accept liability and redirect the effort to the surcharge reliefs. Either way, the 7 July 2026 ruling is your evidentiary charter: the judge weighs the whole file \u2014 tax returns, insurance schedules, vehicle registration, utility consumption, school registrations \u2014 with no presumption either way, so build a bundle, not a single document. The tax office reasons exactly like the Lyon court did: one official paper against a pile of consistent private evidence loses.<\/p>\n

Fourth, the cross-border payment trap. British owners without a French bank account sometimes discover the bill only after the payment deadline, when a relative forwards the post. SEPA direct debit from a UK account is accepted for French tax, and the online account allows payment by card within limits, but set up the impots.gouv.fr personal space before October, register the French property address for electronic notices (avis en ligne<\/em>), and appoint a French address for service \u2014 a lawyer, agent or family member \u2014 so deadlines do not run behind your back. Brexit changed none of the tax machinery, yet distance magnifies every missed date: the 1 July declaration, the mid-November payment, the 31 December complaint deadline. Put all three in the calendar the day the avis<\/em> arrives, correct the occupation record immediately if it is wrong, and file the surcharge-relief complaint with evidence rather than adjectives. Handled that way, the September shock becomes a routine administrative correction; ignored, it becomes a 10% penalty, an enforceable debt and, in tense communes, the same surcharge again next year.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\n

Your French second home survived the abolition of the main-home housing tax by design, not by accident: Article 1407 taxes every furnished dwelling kept for non-main-home use, Article 1407 ter lets tense-zone communes add 5% to 60%, and the 2023 decree carried that surcharge deep into holiday-home country \u2014 a framework the Council of State upheld when the mountain resorts challenged it. Liability turns on a single date, 1 January, and a single question, who could use the house; the 2024 g\u00eetes<\/em> ruling and the 2026 main-home ruling show the judge answering that question from the full factual file, with no presumption and no shortcut. Against the bill you hold three precise tools: the three statutory surcharge reliefs claimed by formal complaint before 31 December of the following year, the correction of the 1 July occupation declaration that feeds the bill, and the administrative court within two months of rejection. Pay on time, complain in writing with evidence, and escalate what is wrongly refused. The surcharge rewards communes that vote it and owners who ignore it; it spares owners who know their article numbers and their deadlines.<\/p>\n

Need a quick opinion on your case<\/h2>\n

Our firm offers a telephone consultation within 48 hours with a lawyer of the firm to review your avis de taxe d’habitation, your occupation declaration and your surcharge relief options. Call +33 6 46 60 58 22<\/a>, or write via our contact page<\/a> with a copy of your tax bill and your G\u00e9rer mes biens immobiliers printout.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Your French holiday home still pays housing tax after the main-home abolition \u2014 and in tense zones a 5% to 60% surcharge. 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