You live in France, you built up a pension in Britain \u2014 a workplace scheme, a Self-Invested Personal Pension (a SIPP, the do-it-yourself pension wrapper millions of Britons use), or an old frozen pot from a former employer \u2014 and you wonder whether you can move it across the Channel now that Britain has left the European Union. The short answer is yes, the transfer remains possible, but it sits at the crossing of two tax systems that do not speak the same language. London tests the transfer before the money leaves and can take 25% at source. Paris taxes you once you are resident in France, treats most foreign pensions as ordinary pension income, and then applies social charges on top, with only a treaty credit to soften the second bill. Get any step wrong \u2014 the wrong receiving scheme, the wrong box on the French return, the wrong proof of what you paid or declared in Britain \u2014 and you pay twice or you pay too much. This article walks through the whole chain in the order you will meet it: the British exit test, the French residence test, the French tax bill, and the remedies when the bill is wrong. It is written for British readers living in France, and every French legal term is explained the first time it appears.<\/p>\n
Brexit did not abolish pension transfers, but it moved them into a stricter regime. Before you think about French tax at all, the British scheme must agree to release the money, and His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC, the British tax authority) applies its own charge at the moment of transfer. This section covers the two British-side questions readers actually type into search engines: which overseas schemes qualify, and when the 25% charge bites.<\/p>\n
The British rule is simple to state and expensive to ignore. The official GOV.UK guidance on transferring to an overseas scheme<\/a> requires the receiving scheme to be a qualifying recognised overseas pension scheme (QROPS), and places the check squarely on the saver, with their scheme or adviser. A QROPS is therefore not a brand name; it is a status. An overseas scheme tells HMRC it meets the British conditions, HMRC publishes it on the recognised overseas pension schemes notification list, and only then can a British scheme transfer to it without the transfer being treated as an unauthorised payment. The same official page warns that a transfer to a non-QROPS may simply be refused by the British scheme, and that a tax charge of at least 40% can otherwise apply. That 40% figure is not a negotiating position. It reflects the unauthorised-payments charge regime, and in practice most British ceding schemes simply refuse to send money to a scheme that is not on the list, so the transfer never happens.<\/p>\n Three practical consequences follow for a British resident in France. First, the check is your responsibility, not your adviser’s and not the receiving scheme’s. The GOV.UK page puts the burden bluntly on the saver \u2014 and if the scheme lost its QROPS status the week before your transfer, HMRC will treat you as the person who got it wrong. The published list changes regularly, so check it in the days before the transfer, keep a dated copy, and ask the receiving scheme for written confirmation that it still meets the ROPS conditions on the transfer date. The guidance warns that British tax charges plus interest for late payment can still be pursued where the receiving entity fails the ROPS conditions, which means the risk follows you even if everyone smiled at signing. Second, France-based QROPS exist but they are fewer than before Brexit, and many British expatriates in France use a QROPS based in a third country such as Malta or Gibraltar. That choice is lawful, but as shown below it changes the 25% analysis, because the exemption depends on where you live relative to where the QROPS sits. Third, the transfer must be reported. Where the five-year rule described below applies, the member must complete HMRC form APSS 241 and hand it to the scheme administrator, and the administrator settles the charge. Keep proof of that filing; the French administration may later ask what was paid in Britain, and the treaty credit analysed in Part II turns on exactly that evidence.<\/p>\n One more British-side point matters before Brexit nostalgia sets in. When Britain was in the EU, transfers to schemes in the European Economic Area broadly escaped the overseas transfer charge as a class. Since the end of the transition period, that blanket protection is gone and each transfer is tested on its own facts: same country of residence as the QROPS, employer link, allowance headroom, and the five-year tail. A transfer that would have passed untouched in 2019 can therefore cost 25% in 2026 for no reason other than the calendar. Readers who moved a pension years ago should also check whether they later broke the residence condition within five years of the transfer, because the charge can revive retrospectively. The French side of the story then starts the day you become resident in France, which is the subject of the next section.<\/p>\n France taxes its residents on worldwide income; the treaty with Britain then divides the bill. The entry point is article 4 B of the French Tax Code (Code g\u00e9n\u00e9ral des imp\u00f4ts)<\/a>, which defines tax residence (domicile fiscal). It provides: “Sont consid\u00e9r\u00e9es 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 s\u00e9jour principal ; b. Celles qui exercent en France une activit\u00e9 professionnelle, salari\u00e9e ou non, \u00e0 moins qu’elles ne justifient que cette activit\u00e9 y est exerc\u00e9e \u00e0 titre accessoire”. In plain English: your home (foyer, the place where your family and personal life are centred) or your main place of stay (s\u00e9jour principal, roughly presence of more than 183 days in the year, though the case law looks at the whole pattern) makes you resident, as does a main professional activity in France. Any one of these tests is enough. A British retiree who keeps a London flat but spends the year in the Dordogne with spouse and doctor is resident in France under the first test, and the London flat does not save them.<\/p>\n Once you are resident in France, the France\u2013Britain double tax treaty of 19 June 2008, published in France by Decree No 2010-20 of 7 January 2010, allocates the right to tax pensions. The default rule is Article 18 of the treaty<\/a>, under which private pensions and similar payments for past employment made to a resident of one state are taxable only in that state \u2014 so a British private or workplace pension paid to a French resident is taxable only in France. Britain must then exempt it (in practice through the NT \u2014 no tax \u2014 code mechanism on application), and France taxes it under its own rules examined in Part II. The exception is government-service pensions. Article 19, paragraph 2 of the treaty<\/a> keeps pensions paid by a contracting state, one of its local authorities or a French public-law body for government service taxable in the paying state, whether paid directly or from funds set aside for the purpose. There is a narrow way back \u2014 where the recipient is both resident and national of the other state without holding the paying state’s nationality, the residence state recovers the right to tax \u2014 but most British retired civil servants, teachers in state schemes treated as government pensions, National Health Service staff and military pensioners living in France remain taxable in Britain on that pension, and must not declare it as French-taxable pension income. Misclassifying a Crown pension as an Article 18 private pension, or vice versa, is one of the most common and most expensive errors in this desk’s files, and our companion analysis of how the 25% tax-free lump sum and Crown pensions are taxed in France<\/a> works through that boundary with the treaty text. For transfer planning, the classification decides everything that follows: an Article 18 pension transferred to a French QROPS while you are French-resident produces a French tax event under French rules, whereas a government pension can often not be transferred at all because the paying public scheme forbids it.<\/p>\n The transfer itself then faces the British overseas transfer charge test at the very moment the money moves. GOV.UK states the headline plainly: a 25% tax charge may apply to the transfer. Whether it does depends on two things: the country where the receiving QROPS is based, and the saver’s available overseas transfer allowance. The allowance is usually \u00a31,073,100 and may be higher with protection. The clean exemption applies where two conditions are both met: the saver lives in the same country where the QROPS is based, and the transfer stays within the available overseas transfer allowance. So a French-resident transferring to a France-based QROPS within the allowance generally pays no British charge, while the same person transferring to a Malta-based QROPS fails the same-country test and owes 25% unless another exemption, such as a transfer to a QROPS provided by the saver’s employer, which is usually tax-free, applies. Above the allowance, even an otherwise exempt transfer suffers a 25% charge on the excess over the allowance. And the tail is long: where the saver moves country within five years of the transfer, the APSS 241 form must be filed, a 25% charge applies if the saver has moved away from the QROPS country, and a refund is available in the symmetric case where the saver moved into it. A British retiree who transfers to a French QROPS and then returns to Kent two years later to be near grandchildren can therefore receive a British charge two years after the event. Diary the five-year anniversary before you celebrate. With the British test survived, the French bill arrives, and it is heavier than most newcomers expect.<\/p>\n France taxes the pension as pension income, denies the British tax-free label, adds social charges, and then grants a treaty credit computed under precise rules that the administration sometimes misapplies. This part works through the computation first, because you cannot challenge a figure you cannot recompute, and then gives the evidence file and the litigation path that actually wins cases, including two recent court decisions that show what works and what fails.<\/p>\n Start with income tax (imp\u00f4t sur le revenu). Article 79 of the Tax Code<\/a> brings pensions into the net in the widest terms: “Les traitements, indemnit\u00e9s, \u00e9moluments, salaires, pensions et rentes viag\u00e8res concourent \u00e0 la formation du revenu global servant de base \u00e0 l’imp\u00f4t sur le revenu. Il en est de m\u00eame des prestations de retraite servies sous forme de capital.” The second sentence matters enormously for transfers: retirement benefits paid as a lump sum (capital) are also caught. A transfer value paid out and moved is therefore not magically converted into capital-with-no-tax; France looks through the payment and asks what right it represents. If it represents pension rights, Article 79 taxes it. The computation then runs through Article 158 of the Tax Code<\/a>: “Les pensions et retraites font l’objet d’un abattement de 10 % qui ne peut exc\u00e9der 4 439 \u20ac.” An abattement is a statutory reduction applied before the rate scale: declare the gross pension, subtract 10% within the cap and floor, and the scale applies to the rest. The British personal allowance, the 25% tax-free lump sum, and the British starting-rate band have no equivalent effect in France and must be forgotten the moment the return is prepared. That single misunderstanding \u2014 the belief that the British 25% tax-free treatment travels with the money \u2014 accounts for a large share of the reassessments (rectifications) this desk reviews each year.<\/p>\n A narrower door exists for lump-sum pension capital through Article 163 bis, II of the Tax Code<\/a>, which allows certain retirement benefits paid as capital, taxable under Article 158, to be subjected, on the express and irrevocable request of the beneficiary, to a flat levy: the benefits “peuvent, sur demande expresse et irr\u00e9vocable du b\u00e9n\u00e9ficiaire, \u00eatre soumises \u00e0 un pr\u00e9l\u00e8vement au taux de 7,5 % qui lib\u00e8re les revenus auxquels il s’applique de l’imp\u00f4t sur le revenu. Ce pr\u00e9l\u00e8vement est assis sur le montant du capital diminu\u00e9 d’un abattement de 10 %.” The conditions are strict: “Ce pr\u00e9l\u00e8vement est applicable lorsque le versement n’est pas fractionn\u00e9 et que le b\u00e9n\u00e9ficiaire justifie que les cotisations vers\u00e9es durant la phase de constitution des droits, y compris le cas \u00e9ch\u00e9ant par l’employeur, \u00e9taient d\u00e9ductibles de son revenu imposable ou \u00e9taient aff\u00e9rentes \u00e0 un revenu exon\u00e9r\u00e9 dans l’Etat auquel \u00e9tait attribu\u00e9 le droit d’imposer celui-ci.” So the payment must come in one go (versement non fractionn\u00e9 \u2014 no splitting across tax years to manufacture the rate), and you must prove the contributions were deductible or linked to exempt income in the state that had the right to tax them. For a British SIPP where contributions got UK tax relief, that second condition is normally satisfiable with the right paperwork, but the paperwork must actually be produced: P60s, annual allowance statements, employer certificates. Note the exclusion at the end of the article for retirement savings plans (plans d’\u00e9pargne retraite) and repeating claims: the option is one-shot and irrevocable, so modelling must precede filing. Whether the scale-plus-10%-reduction or the 7.5% flat levy wins depends on the amount, the household’s other income, and the year, and the answer must be computed both ways before the return is signed.<\/p>\n On top of income tax come the social charges: the CSG (contribution sociale g\u00e9n\u00e9ralis\u00e9e, the broad social contribution) and the CRDS (contribution pour le remboursement de la dette sociale, the debt-redemption contribution). The rate provision is Article L. 136-8 of the Social Security Code (Code de la s\u00e9curit\u00e9 sociale)<\/a>: “Sont assujetties \u00e0 la contribution au taux de 8,3 % les pensions de retraite, et les pensions d’invalidit\u00e9.” Reduced rates exist for modest households, but the default full-rate load on pensions surprises British newcomers who never paid anything comparable on pension income at home. The persons concerned are, under Article L. 136-6 of the Social Security Code<\/a>, “Les personnes physiques fiscalement domicili\u00e9es en France au sens de l’article 4 B du code g\u00e9n\u00e9ral des imp\u00f4ts”, which loops straight back to the residence test above: once Article 4 B catches you, the social charges follow unless a specific exemption applies. The main exemption argued for British pensioners is the S1 route \u2014 the portable document (formulaire S1) by which Britain, as the state paying your state pension, remains competent for your healthcare, so that France, which does not carry your sickness risk, cannot levy the sickness-linked charges. That argument is real but narrow: it requires actual non-affiliation to the French compulsory scheme, a live S1 registered with the French health fund (caisse primaire d’assurance maladie), and careful separation of the CSG from the solidarity levies, and the courts test each element. A recent failure illustrates the strictness. In CAA Lyon, 13 August 2025, No 24LY03019 (CETATEXT000052130152<\/a>), a taxpayer receiving a Swiss capital pension argued, among other things, an equivalence with a voluntary retirement savings plan and an extensive reading of EU coordination Regulation No 883\/2004 on social security. The court was unmoved: “Il r\u00e9sulte de ce qui pr\u00e9c\u00e8de, sans qu’il soit besoin de surseoir \u00e0 statuer pour un renvoi d’une question pr\u00e9judicielle, que Mme A… n’est pas fond\u00e9e \u00e0 soutenir que c’est \u00e0 tort que, par le jugement attaqu\u00e9, le tribunal administratif de Lyon a rejet\u00e9 sa demande. Sa requ\u00eate doit \u00eatre rejet\u00e9e”, and the operative part reads “D\u00c9CIDE : Article 1er : La requ\u00eate de Mme A… est rejet\u00e9e.” The lesson is not that the S1 exemption does not exist; it is that courts reject it whenever the file proves affiliation, equivalence, or timing imperfectly \u2014 including, in that case, an argument built on a savings vehicle that did not even exist in the year of payment. Build the exemption file before paying, not after assessment.<\/p>\n The treaty then softens double taxation through Article 24, paragraph 3 of the France\u2013Britain treaty, as reproduced in the Conseil d’\u00c9tat’s opinion<\/a>, and this is where the administration most often under-computes. The mechanism: “nonobstant toute autre disposition de la pr\u00e9sente Convention, les revenus qui sont imposables ou ne sont imposables qu’au Royaume-Uni conform\u00e9ment aux dispositions de la pr\u00e9sente Convention sont pris en compte pour le calcul de l’imp\u00f4t fran\u00e7ais lorsqu’ils ne sont pas exempt\u00e9s de l’imp\u00f4t sur les soci\u00e9t\u00e9s en application de la l\u00e9gislation interne fran\u00e7aise. Dans ce cas, l’imp\u00f4t du Royaume-Uni n’est pas d\u00e9ductible de ces revenus, mais le r\u00e9sident de France a droit, sous r\u00e9serve des conditions et limites pr\u00e9vues aux alin\u00e9as (i) et (ii) et au paragraphe 4, \u00e0 un cr\u00e9dit d’imp\u00f4t imputable sur l’imp\u00f4t fran\u00e7ais.” For ordinary pensions the credit under subparagraph (i) equals the French tax on that income: “(i) pour les revenus non mentionn\u00e9s \u00e0 l’alin\u00e9a (ii), au montant de l’imp\u00f4t fran\u00e7ais correspondant \u00e0 ces revenus \u00e0 condition que le r\u00e9sident de France soit soumis \u00e0 l’imp\u00f4t du Royaume-Uni \u00e0 raison de ces revenus”. The computation of that French-tax amount follows subparagraph (b): “\/ (i) lorsque l’imp\u00f4t d\u00fb \u00e0 raison de ces revenus est calcul\u00e9 par application d’un taux proportionnel, le produit du montant des revenus nets consid\u00e9r\u00e9s par le taux qui leur est effectivement appliqu\u00e9 ; \/ (ii) lorsque l’imp\u00f4t d\u00fb \u00e0 raison de ces revenus est calcul\u00e9 par application d’un bar\u00e8me progressif, le produit du montant des revenus nets consid\u00e9r\u00e9s par le taux r\u00e9sultant du rapport entre l’imp\u00f4t effectivement d\u00fb \u00e0 raison du revenu net global imposable selon la l\u00e9gislation fran\u00e7aise et le montant de ce revenu net global.” In practice the administration must therefore gross up the French computation with the British income, compute the French scale, and credit the attributable French slice \u2014 not merely delete the income, and not cap the credit by the British tax actually paid under subparagraph (i).<\/p>\nB. Once you live in France, which country does the treaty let tax your British pension?<\/h3>\n
II. How Does France Tax the Transferred British Pension, and How Do You Challenge a Wrong Bill?<\/h2>\n
A. How is your transferred British pension taxed in France: income tax, social charges and the treaty credit?<\/h3>\n