People worry about the wrong tax.
Almost everyone buying a second home in France asks about the purchase costs, and then assumes the hard part is over. The purchase costs are predictable and they happen once. The taxes that follow happen every year for as long as you own the place, and there are more of them than most buyers expect.
None of it is punitive. France is not an expensive country in which to own property compared with much of Europe. But it is worth going in with the real figure rather than a hopeful one.
We are not tax advisers and nothing here is advice for your situation — the rules turn on your residence, your income and sometimes your nationality, and the detail matters. What follows is the shape of it, so you know which questions to ask.
The two that arrive every year
Taxe foncière is the ownership tax. Every owner pays it, resident or not, lived in or empty. It is set locally, so it varies enormously between communes, and it has been rising in most places. On an ordinary rural house think in hundreds rather than thousands.
Taxe d'habitation is the occupancy tax, and here is the part that catches people. France abolished it on main residences. It kept it on second homes. So the tax that your French neighbours stopped paying is one you still pay, every year.
Worse, communes in areas classed as having a tight housing market may vote a surcharge of between 5 and 60 per cent on the second-home portion. A decree in August 2023 widened the list of eligible communes to around 3,690, and the areas added were precisely the ones under pressure from holiday homes — which takes in a great deal of coastline.
Whether your commune has voted it, and at what rate, is a local decision. Two villages fifteen minutes apart can differ by hundreds of euros a year. Ask at the mairie before you choose a plot, not after, because nobody will volunteer it.
The full picture of what a French house costs to run across a year is in the annual cost of owning a house in France.
If you let it out
Letting changes the picture, and two things have moved recently.
Since May 2026, registering a furnished holiday let is compulsory across the whole of France through a single national system. It used to be something only certain communes required. You get a registration number and it has to appear on your advertisements. Separately, any commune may require a change-of-use authorisation before a second home is let short term, which registration does not cover. The mechanics of letting are in letting your French house as a holiday rental.
On the tax, rental income from a French property is taxable in France whatever your own country does with it. For furnished lets the simplified regime gives an allowance against the income — around 30 per cent for an ordinary furnished holiday let, with a modest ceiling, and around 50 per cent with a considerably higher ceiling if the property is officially classified. Classification is a voluntary inspection process, and for a property that lets well it is usually worth doing on the arithmetic alone.
As a non-resident, income tax on what is left is charged at a minimum of 20 per cent, rising to 30 per cent above a threshold of roughly €28,800. If your worldwide income is low enough that your average French rate would be lower, you can elect to be taxed at that average rate instead — and people routinely forget that election exists.
The social charge, and the bit most articles get wrong
On top of income tax come the French social charges, and this is where you should be careful what you read, because the position changed on 1 January 2026.
The full rate rose from 17.2 per cent to 18.6 per cent. Most of what is online still says 17.2.
But there is a reduced rate of 7.5 per cent, and a great many British and European owners qualify for it without realising. The condition is that you are insured under another country's social security system — the UK's, or another EEA state's — and not under the French one.
The post-Brexit position was genuinely uncertain for a while, and it was settled in favour of UK residents: the French tax authority confirmed in February 2022 that Britons insured in the UK keep the exemption. Plenty of guides written in 2021 still say otherwise, and plenty of owners have been paying the full rate ever since without questioning it.
Eleven points of difference on your rental income is not a rounding error. If you have been paying 17.2 or 18.6 per cent and you are insured in the UK, that is a question for an accountant, and there are circumstances in which overpayments can be reclaimed.
Proving the affiliation is the practical obstacle — expect to be asked for evidence that you are in the British system.
When you sell
French capital gains tax on property is 19 per cent, plus social charges at whichever of the two rates applies to you.
The saving grace is relief for how long you have owned it, and the two parts run on different clocks. For the income tax portion, nothing for the first five years, then relief builds until the gain is completely exempt after 22 years. For the social charges, relief builds more slowly and runs to complete exemption after 30 years.
So a house sold after ten years still carries most of the tax. A house held for a quarter of a century carries no income tax on the gain but still some social charges. Held for thirty years and over, neither.
There is also an additional levy on large gains, which most ordinary holiday homes will never meet, and various exemptions — including one that can apply to a former French main residence sold by someone who has since moved abroad, within conditions. Those are worth asking about rather than assuming.
The other thing worth knowing: the costs of improvement works can usually be added to your purchase price when the gain is calculated, which reduces it. Keep every invoice from every builder, for as long as you own the house. People throw them away and it costs them real money two decades later.
The two nobody mentions until it is too late
Wealth tax on property. France charges IFI on net French property assets above €1.3 million. For a non-resident only French property counts. Most holiday-home owners are nowhere near it, but someone who buys well on the coast and holds it for twenty years might be, and it is worth knowing the line exists.
Inheritance. This is the one that genuinely catches people out. French property follows French succession rules, and France reserves a portion of an estate for children in a way that most common-law countries do not. A will made in your own country does not automatically override it. European rules allow you to elect for the law of your nationality to apply, but French legislation since 2021 has complicated what that election achieves.
If you have children from more than one relationship, or you intend to leave the house to someone other than your children, take advice from a notaire before you buy, not after. Structuring is far easier at the point of purchase than later.
What it means in practice
For an ordinary house inland, the annual tax bill is a few hundred euros for the taxe foncière plus the taxe d'habitation on top, and that is the whole story unless you let it.
For a coastal house in a commune that has voted the surcharge, it is meaningfully more, and that difference should be in your sums before you choose between inland and coast rather than after.
And if you let it out, the gap between doing it well — classified, correctly registered, the right social charge rate, the right tax election — and doing it carelessly is easily a few thousand euros a year on a property that lets reasonably.
None of this is a reason not to buy. It is a reason to ask three questions at the mairie and one of an accountant before you commit, which is an afternoon's work against a decision you will live with for twenty years.
If you are weighing up where to buy and the running costs are part of that decision, we can tell you what the position is in the communes we build in. Book a free half-hour, or reach us on WhatsApp or by email for a same-day answer. You can also see what any of our plots comes to, all in, with the build cost calculator.