You moved to France, kept the flat in Manchester or the terrace in Bristol, let it out for a few years, and now you want to sell. The estate agent talks about completion, the tenant asks about notice, and then two tax offices raise their hands at once: HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC, the British tax authority) wants its share because the property is in England, and the French tax authority wants its share because you live in France. Many British sellers discover this double claim only after completion, when a 60-day British deadline has already started running and the French bill arrives the following year. This article explains, step by step, where the gain is taxed, what each country charges, which form stops the double bill, and what you can challenge when the figures are wrong.<\/p>\n
A few words first, because the two systems do not use the same vocabulary. A buy-to-let is simply a residential property bought to be let to tenants. Capital Gains Tax (CGT) is the British tax on the profit made when you sell an asset. In France the equivalent is the imp\u00f4t sur les plus-values immobili\u00e8res, the tax on property gains, collected with the income tax return but calculated under its own rules. The notaire is the French public officer who handles conveyancing; in England your conveyancer or solicitor does that job and no notaire is involved. The foyer is your home base, the place where your family life is centred, and the s\u00e9jour principal is the place where you spend most of your time. Keep these pairs in mind: every paragraph below moves between the British event, the sale in England, and the French consequence, your tax position in France.<\/p>\n
The fact pattern is deliberately narrow. You are a British national living in France, you are a French tax resident, you own a residential property in England or Wales that you have let out, and you sell it after Brexit. Holiday lets that qualified under the old furnished holiday lettings regime, commercial premises, and sales through a company raise different questions and are only mentioned where they change the answer. The treaty that allocates the taxing rights is the France\u2013United Kingdom double tax convention signed in London on 19 June 2008, published in France by D\u00e9cret n\u00b0 2010-20 du 7 janvier 2010 portant publication de la convention entre le Gouvernement de la R\u00e9publique fran\u00e7aise et le Gouvernement du Royaume-Uni de Grande-Bretagne et d’Irlande du Nord en vue d’\u00e9viter les doubles impositions et de pr\u00e9venir l’\u00e9vasion et la fraude fiscales en mati\u00e8re d’imp\u00f4ts sur le revenu et sur les gains en capital (ensemble un protocole), sign\u00e9e \u00e0 Londres le 19 juin 2008<\/a>. Brexit did not terminate it, and both tax offices still apply it every day.<\/p>\n Everything starts with residence, because residence decides whether France taxes your worldwide gains or only your French-source income. Article 4 A of the French General Tax Code (Code g\u00e9n\u00e9ral des imp\u00f4ts)<\/a> states: \u00ab Les personnes qui ont en France leur domicile fiscal sont passibles de l’imp\u00f4t sur le revenu en raison de l’ensemble de leurs revenus. \u00bb It adds: \u00ab Celles dont le domicile fiscal est situ\u00e9 hors de France sont passibles de cet imp\u00f4t en raison de leurs seuls revenus de source fran\u00e7aise. \u00bb In plain English, once your tax home (domicile fiscal) is in France, France taxes all of your income and gains, including the profit on a house in Leeds. If your tax home were still in Britain, France would only tax your French-source income, but that is not your situation if your family, your home and your daily life are in France.<\/p>\n Three alternative tests put your tax home in France, and meeting any one of them is enough. Article 4 B of the General Tax Code<\/a> provides: \u00ab Sont consid\u00e9r\u00e9es comme ayant leur domicile fiscal en France au sens de l’article 4 A : \u00bb It then lists \u00ab Les personnes qui ont en France leur foyer ou le lieu de leur s\u00e9jour principal \u00bb and \u00ab Celles qui ont en France le centre de leurs int\u00e9r\u00eats \u00e9conomiques. \u00bb A British family renting a flat in Lyon, with children at a French school, meets the first test even if the parents still hold British passports and a British bank account. A consultant who spends 220 days a year in Bordeaux and works remotely for French clients meets the professional-activity and economic-centre tests. The article closes the loop for treaty cases: \u00ab Les personnes qui satisfont \u00e0 l’un au moins des crit\u00e8res fix\u00e9s aux a \u00e0 c du pr\u00e9sent 1 ne peuvent toutefois pas \u00eatre consid\u00e9r\u00e9es comme ayant leur domicile fiscal en France lorsque, par application des conventions internationales relatives aux doubles impositions, elles ne sont pas regard\u00e9es comme r\u00e9sidentes de France. \u00bb So the domestic tests bring you into French residence, and the treaty then confirms or corrects that result.<\/p>\n The treaty has its own tie-breaker for people who look resident in both countries. Article 4 of the France\u2013United Kingdom convention of 19 June 2008<\/a> provides that a person is treated as resident only of the country where they have a permanent home, and if they have a permanent home in both countries, only of the country with which their personal and economic relations are closest. If you keep a permanent home in both countries, perhaps a flat in Lyon and the very buy-to-let you are selling, the treaty looks at where your personal and economic ties are closest. For most readers of this article, a let property does not count as your permanent home: your tenants live there, not you. Your permanent home is in France, your centre of vital interests follows, and you emerge as a French resident for treaty purposes. Keep the completion statement, the tenancy agreement showing you were not in occupation, flight records, school certificates and French utility bills together: they are the evidence that your foyer d’habitation permanent was in France on the sale date.<\/p>\n French residence does not push Britain out of the picture. The treaty expressly preserves the right of the country where the bricks stand to tax the profit. Article 14 of the France\u2013United Kingdom convention of 19 June 2008<\/a> states that gains from selling immovable property situated in one of the two countries may be taxed in that country. A flat in Sheffield is an immovable property within the meaning of Article 6, which itself confirms that income from immovable property situated in one of the two countries may be taxed there, whether the income comes from direct use, letting, farming or any other form of exploitation and the rental years were already taxable there on the same basis. The rental history therefore belonged to Britain first while the property was let, and the sale gain belongs to Britain first when you dispose of it. France then taxes the same gain as the residence country and eliminates the resulting double taxation through a credit, examined in Part II.<\/p>\n One treaty tail deserves attention for recent movers. Paragraph 6 of Article 14 of the France\u2013United Kingdom convention<\/a> preserves each country’s right to tax gains of people who were its residents at any time during the previous six fiscal years, under its own anti-avoidance departure rules. In practice this means a seller who left Britain only a year or two before the sale can face a British charge even as a French resident, alongside the French charge. It is a trap for sellers who assume that one full French tax year wipes the British slate clean. Check your residence history over the six years before completion and take advice on whether this tail catches you: it changes which reliefs you claim first.<\/p>\n French domestic law mirrors the treaty outcome. Article 150 U of the General Tax Code<\/a> provides: \u00ab les plus-values r\u00e9alis\u00e9es par les personnes physiques ou les soci\u00e9t\u00e9s ou groupements qui rel\u00e8vent des articles 8 \u00e0 8 ter \u00bb, covering gains on the sale for consideration of built or unbuilt property. The wording covers sales for consideration of built or unbuilt property or rights over it, wherever the property stands. Nothing in Article 150 U exempts foreign property. The exemption you may have heard about for a main home (r\u00e9sidence principale) does not help here either: your main home is in France, not the English buy-to-let, so the sale is fully within the French charge, subject only to the holding-period relief and the treaty credit explained below. Readers who also receive British rental income before the sale, or who draw a British pension alongside the rent, will find the same treaty-credit logic applied to pensions in our companion analysis of British pensions taxed in France after Brexit, the lump sum and the Crown pensions France cannot tax<\/a>.<\/p>\n Britain taxes you as a non-resident landlord-seller under the non-resident Capital Gains Tax (NRCGT) rules for UK land. The charge applies whether you are an individual, a couple owning jointly, or a trust. Since 6 April 2020 the compliance rule that hurts most sellers is the 60-day report-and-pay obligation. The official guidance states: You must report and pay any Capital Gains Tax due on UK residential property within 60 days of completing the sale of the property.<\/a> Completion means the day legal ownership transfers, not the day you accept an offer and not the exchange of contracts. Day one is the day after completion, weekends and holidays count, and the return is filed through HMRC’s online UK property service, with a separate return for each seller. A married couple selling a jointly owned flat files two returns. Miss the deadline and late-filing penalties and interest accrue even if you eventually pay the right amount through Self Assessment. The detailed non-resident procedure is set out in Tell HMRC about Capital Gains Tax on UK property or land if you are not a UK resident<\/a>. Open that page before exchange, create your HMRC property account early, and check whether your conveyancer will remind you: many will not.<\/p>\n The British calculation starts with sale price minus purchase price, minus buying and selling costs such as estate agent fees, conveyancer fees and Stamp Duty Land Tax paid on acquisition, plus genuine enhancement expenditure such as an extension, but not routine repairs or the mortgage itself. For properties owned since before April 2015 or April 2019, depending on the type of property and the period, only the gain accruing after the rebasing date is charged, or the whole gain with time apportionment: your accountant elects the method that gives the lower figure. Private residence relief then exempts the years you actually lived in the property as your only or main home, plus the final nine months of ownership in most cases, apportioned over total ownership. A seller who lived in the flat for three years, let it for nine, and owned it for twelve gets roughly a quarter of the gain relieved plus the final-period relief, while the letting years stay chargeable. Lettings relief, which once sheltered up to 40,000 pounds per owner, now survives only where the owner shared occupation with the tenant, so a standard arm’s-length buy-to-let gets no lettings relief. The old furnished holiday lettings advantages were abolished from April 2025, which matters if your English property was a holiday let rather than a standard AST: the capital allowances, profit-counting and relief consequences changed at that date, and your pre-2025 history must be reconstructed under the new rules.<\/p>\n British CGT rates on residential property depend on your total UK taxable income for the year, including the gain itself stacked on top. Within the basic-rate band the residential property rate is 18 per cent; above it, 24 per cent. Because you live in France, your British income may be small, perhaps only the rent, which can leave basic-rate band available and pull part of the gain into the 18 per cent rate. That is one of the few silver linings of non-residence. Capital losses on other UK assets, unused annual exempt amounts, and foreign-currency effects on a euro-funded purchase can also move the figure. Keep every completion statement, SDLT return, invoice for the extension, tenancy agreement proving occupation history, and P60-equivalent for the year: HMRC can open an enquiry and the burden of proving costs and reliefs sits with you. If the property was held in joint names with unequal shares, the declaration of trust fixing the beneficial split must predate the sale, otherwise HMRC taxes you 50\/50.<\/p>\n Two practical warnings complete the British side. First, the 60-day payment is a payment on account, not the final word: you reconcile it in your Self Assessment return for the year, and an overpayment comes back to you, but only if you file that return. Second, if you still owned the property at a moment when you were UK resident during the tax year of sale, split-year treatment or the treaty tail mentioned above can change which year’s return the gain belongs to. Sellers who moved to France mid-year should check their statutory residence test position for the year of sale before assuming the non-resident route applies cleanly. When the British side is settled, keep the HMRC submission receipt, the computation, and the proof of payment: the French tax office will want the sterling figures and the exchange rate, and the treaty credit cannot exceed the French tax on the same gain, so every pound of British tax above the French figure is unrelieved and worth modelling before you accept an offer.<\/p>\n France taxes you the year after the sale through your income tax return, and the declaration obligation is general. Article 170 of the General Tax Code<\/a> provides: \u00ab En vue de l’\u00e9tablissement de l’imp\u00f4t sur le revenu, toute personne imposable audit imp\u00f4t est tenue de souscrire et de faire parvenir \u00e0 l’administration une d\u00e9claration d\u00e9taill\u00e9e de ses revenus et b\u00e9n\u00e9fices, de ses charges de famille et des autres \u00e9l\u00e9ments n\u00e9cessaires au calcul de l’imp\u00f4t sur le revenu \u00bb. For an English sale that means three paperwork layers: the British 60-day return within two months of completion, the French foreign-income form 2047 and property-gains form 2048-IMM attached to your French return the following spring, and the supporting bundle of completion statements, purchase deeds, cost invoices and HMRC receipts converted into euros at the rate of the sale date. Declare the gross gain in France even if you already paid HMRC: failure to declare is a separate penalty from failure to pay, and the French office receives HMRC data under automatic exchange of information, so an undeclared English completion is increasingly likely to surface.<\/p>\n The French calculation follows Articles 150 U to 150 VH. Start with the sale price in euros, subtract the purchase price in euros at the historic rate, subtract acquisition costs (a 7.5 per cent flat allowance or proven higher costs), works supported by invoices from qualifying contractors, and sale costs such as agency fees. The net gain then benefits from holding-period relief (abattement pour dur\u00e9e de d\u00e9tention): for income tax, 6 per cent per year from the sixth to the twenty-first year and 4 per cent in the twenty-second year, giving full income-tax exemption after 22 years; for the social levies (pr\u00e9l\u00e8vements sociaux), a slower taper giving full exemption after 30 years. A flat bought in 2010 and sold in 2026 keeps 16 years of taper, roughly 60 per cent income-tax relief before the flat 19 per cent rate applies to the remainder, plus the social levies at 17.2 per cent on the gain after its own taper, plus a surtax (surtaxe) of 2 to 6 per cent when the net taxable gain exceeds 50,000 euros. Short ownership is therefore punished twice: little taper and the surtax. Model the taper before you choose your completion date: delaying exchange by a few months can add a full year’s relief and, at the margin, drop you below a surtax threshold.<\/p>\n Social levies surprise many British sellers who assume the treaty exempts them. As a French resident affiliated to the French health system, your English property gain sits in the French social-levy base alongside French gains. The levy architecture starts from residence: Article L136-6 of the Social Security Code<\/a> provides: \u00ab Les personnes physiques fiscalement domicili\u00e9es en France au sens de l’article 4 B du code g\u00e9n\u00e9ral des imp\u00f4ts sont assujetties \u00e0 une contribution sur les revenus du patrimoine assise sur le montant net retenu pour l’\u00e9tablissement de l’imp\u00f4t sur le revenu \u00bb including \u00ab Des revenus fonciers \u00bb. Gains on foreign property follow the parallel levy provisions for property gains, collected at the same 17.2 per cent headline rate. Detached workers and frontier cases with an S1 or A1 form may escape French levies on some income, but a settled French resident selling an English flat after years in France should budget for them. The only systematic relief is the treaty credit against the French income tax, which does not extend to the social levies: those stay payable in France even when Britain took the lion’s share.<\/p>\n The treaty credit is the mechanism that stops the double bill, and its wording matters because the French office applies it mechanically. Paragraph 3 of Article 24 of the France\u2013United Kingdom convention<\/a> explains that the British tax is not deducted from the income, but that the French resident receives a tax credit set against the French tax, within the conditions and limits of that article. In other words, you do not deduct the British tax from the gain; you compute the French tax on the gain and then subtract a credit. For property gains, which fall outside the listed Articles giving a credit equal to the foreign tax paid, the credit equals the French tax attributable to that gain, provided the French resident has actually paid British tax on it. The Conseil d’Etat expressed the same rule for immovable-property income in a form the tax offices quote back at you: Conseil d’Etat, 19 December 2019, n\u00b0 428443<\/a>, \u00ab Ce cr\u00e9dit d’imp\u00f4t est \u00e9gal, s’agissant de revenus provenant de biens immobiliers, au montant de l’imp\u00f4t fran\u00e7ais correspondant \u00e0 ces revenus. \u00bb The lower court in the same dispute, Cour administrative d’appel de Lyon, 8 January 2019, n\u00b0 17LY02151<\/a>, had already framed the identical principle for foreign property income taxed in France with a credit. The consequence is binary: if the French tax on the gain is 20,000 euros and you paid 14,000 pounds in Britain, the credit wipes out the French income tax and you keep paying the social levies; if the British tax exceeds the French tax, the excess is not refunded and the French income tax is simply reduced to zero.<\/p>\n A worked example makes the ordering concrete. Take a Bristol flat bought for 140,000 pounds in 2012, sold for 260,000 pounds in 2026, with 8,000 pounds of agency and legal costs on sale and a 15,000-pound extension invoiced in 2018. The British gain before reliefs is roughly 97,000 pounds; after private-residence apportionment for two years of actual occupation plus the final nine months, and the annual exempt amount, suppose 70,000 pounds remains taxable, giving a British bill of around 13,000 to 15,000 pounds depending on the rate band. Converted into euros, the French net gain after acquisition allowance, works and taper might be around 60,000 euros, giving French income tax near 4,500 euros after taper plus surtax near 1,000 euros plus social levies near 8,000 euros. The treaty credit, capped at the French income tax on the gain, absorbs the income-tax portion entirely but leaves the levies and any British excess payable. Change one input and the answer moves: a longer holding period raises the French taper and shrinks the credit’s value, a weaker pound on the sale date shrinks the euro gain, and missing extension invoices inflate both bills at once. Run the two computations side by side before exchange, not after, and keep the exchange-rate printout for the completion date stapled to both returns.<\/p>\n Newcomers to the French system sometimes miss the wider filing picture. The English sale does not stand alone: the same French return must report your worldwide salaries, pensions and any rental income received before the sale, with the same credit logic applied line by line. Our step-by-step guide for British newcomers choosing the right long-stay visa and carte de s\u00e9jour, and challenging a refusal or removal order<\/a> explains how residence, registration and first filing fit together in year one. If your English property was let, the rents were taxable in Britain first and declarable in France with credit, under the same machinery; the sale simply moves the same logic from rents to gains. On the French side, Article 14 of the General Tax Code<\/a> brings those rents into the French land-income category: \u00ab sont compris dans la cat\u00e9gorie des revenus fonciers \u00bb<\/p>\n Errors cluster in five places, and each has its own remedy. First, the French office sometimes refuses the credit or caps it wrongly, for example by treating the English gain as exempt rather than creditable, by applying the wrong exchange rate, or by computing the French tax on the gain without the taper. The fix is a r\u00e9clamation contentieuse, the formal claim to the tax office, filed before 31 December of the second year after the tax notice, asking for the credit equal to the French tax on the gain with a full recomputation attached. Cite Article 24 of the convention, show the British assessment and proof of payment, and quantify the French tax on the gain line by the effective-rate method the treaty prescribes: the treaty defines the French tax on the gain as, under a progressive scale, the net gain multiplied by the effective rate obtained by dividing the total French tax actually due on your overall net taxable income by that overall income. If the office rejects the claim or stays silent for six months, appeal to the tribunal administratif within two months of the rejection. Attach the Conseil d’Etat wording quoted above; local offices apply it more readily when the judgment number is on the first page of your claim.<\/p>\n Second, the British side produces its own penalties: late 60-day returns, underestimated payments on account, or HMRC’s refusal of enhancement expenditure for lack of invoices. A reasonable-excuse appeal against the penalty, filed within 30 days of the penalty notice, succeeds more often than sellers expect when the delay came from waiting for probate documents, a missing National Insurance number blocking the property account, or incorrect conveyancer advice evidenced in writing. Against an excessive assessment, amend the property return within 12 months or open a review and then appeal to the First-tier Tribunal. Keep the French file open in parallel: a British repayment after appeal reduces the foreign tax paid and can require a corrective French declaration, because a credit claimed on tax that HMRC later repays becomes over-claimed. The clean sequence is to appeal in Britain first, declare the corrected British figure in France with an explanatory note, and only then litigate the French credit on the corrected base.<\/p>\n Third, the French computation itself is challengeable line by line. The most frequent wins are the acquisition allowance: proving real notary-equivalent costs above the 7.5 per cent flat rate with the original English purchase completion statement; qualifying works: producing contractor invoices with the property address, dates and payment proofs, since quotes, photographs and DIY material receipts without labour do not qualify; the taper start date: the holding period runs from the acquisition deed date, and an off-plan purchase or a transfer between spouses can shift it by months; and the surtax threshold: splitting a jointly owned gain between two sellers can halve each share and drop both below the threshold, provided the ownership split is genuine and documented before completion. Each correction needs its own exhibit: translated completion statements where the office cannot read English, a sworn translation (traduction asserment\u00e9e) for the decisive pages, and a euro conversion table showing the rate used for each amount. Offices rarely concede on bare assertions; they concede on indexed bundles.<\/p>\n Fourth, currency and double counting cause quiet over-taxation. Sterling gains converted at the wrong date’s rate, British tax paid converted at a different rate from the gain, rental arrears received after completion taxed once as rent and again inside the sale price, and deposit deductions for dilapidations added back on the wrong side all inflate the base. Recompute every sterling amount at the completion-date rate published by the Banque de France or the European Central Bank, print the page, and apply one rate consistently to the gain and the credit inputs. If a tenant’s arrears were included in the completion apportionment, strip them from the sale price and return them as rental income for the right year instead. If the buyer retained part of the price for repairs, tax only the consideration actually received and adjust if the retention is later released. These are accounting corrections, not legal arguments, and a polite r\u00e9clamation gracieuse asking for remission of penalties alongside the corrected computation often resolves them without a judge.<\/p>\n Fifth, procedure protects you even when the substance is debatable. On the French side, the administration must send a proposition de rectification before reassessing, giving you 30 days to respond with observations and counsel; silence at that stage is treated as acceptance, so reply within the deadline even if only to ask for the documents the office relied on. Keep proof of every filing: the HMRC submission reference, the French teledeclaration acknowledgements, and recorded delivery slips for claims. Time limits run strictly: the British penalty appeal within 30 days, the French claim before the 31 December deadline, the tribunal appeal within two months. A seller who discovers an old error is not helpless either: the claim window for overpaid French tax on a foreign gain runs on the same 31 December of the second year rule, and HMRC overpayment relief runs four years from the end of the tax year. Diarise all three clocks on the day of completion and you preserve every route.<\/p>\n Three files to assemble before you call anyone, because they decide most cases. The residence file proves France was your treaty home: French tax notices, tenancy or title deeds for your French home, school or employment letters, and the English tenancy agreement proving you did not occupy the sold property. The British file proves the gain and the tax: purchase and sale completion statements, SDLT return, enhancement invoices, lettings history, HMRC property return, computation and payment receipt. The French file proves the declaration and the credit: forms 2047 and 2048-IMM, euro conversions, the French assessment, and the credit computation. With those three files, most disputes narrow to a single figure both sides can verify, and many settle at the claim stage without reaching the tribunal.<\/p>\n Selling an English buy-to-let from France after Brexit means paying in the right order and refusing to pay twice. Britain taxes the gain first because the property stands in its territory, under Article 14 of the 2008 convention, and enforces that right through the 60-day report-and-pay return with penalties for delay. France taxes the same gain because your tax home is in its territory, under Articles 4 A, 4 B and 150 U, applying its own taper, surtax and social levies through your return the following year. The treaty credit in Article 24 then reduces the French income tax on the gain down to zero where the British tax covers it, as the Conseil d’Etat confirmed for immovable-property income, while the French social levies remain payable. Sellers who prepare both computations before exchange, file the British return within 60 days, declare the full euro gain in France with forms 2047 and 2048-IMM, and claim the credit with proof of the British payment come out with one economic charge instead of two. Sellers who discover an error later still have structured remedies on each side: reasonable excuse and tribunal appeal in Britain, documented claim and tribunal appeal in France, and procedural deadlines that reward early action. Completion day starts every clock, so build the three files on that day and the rest of the process becomes arithmetic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Living in France and selling your English buy-to-let? Britain taxes the gain first with a 60-day return, France taxes it again, and the treaty credit stops the double bill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":251031309,"featured_media":16315,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kj_source_type":"","_kj_official_id":"","_kj_official_url":"","_kj_judilibre_id":"","_kj_jur":"","_kj_lieu":"","_kj_chambre":"","_kj_rg":"","_kj_date":"","activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federated","footnotes":""},"categories":[80312,80314],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2145538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-british-desk","category-decryptage"],"yoast_head":"\nI. Your English Buy-to-Let Sale Is Taxable in Both Countries: Here Is Why and in Which Order<\/h2>\n
A. Are you a French tax resident on the day you sell, and does the treaty let Britain tax the gain too?<\/h3>\n
B. What does Britain charge you on the sale, and what must you file within 60 days of completion?<\/h3>\n
II. How France Taxes the Same English Sale and How the Treaty Credit Stops You Paying Twice<\/h2>\n
A. How do you declare the sale in France, what does France charge, and how does the credit work in figures?<\/h3>\n
B. What can you challenge when the French bill, the British bill or the credit is wrong?<\/h3>\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n