Capital Gains on a French Property Sale: How It's Calculated and Declared (2026)

• A taxable gain on a French property is charged at 19% income tax plus 17.2% social charges — a combined 36.2% — separate from the 18.6% rate that applies to gains on shares and other financial investments
• Acquisition costs and renovation work reduce the taxable gain before any of that applies — with flat-rate options (7.5% and 15% of the purchase price) available if you've owned the property 5+ years and don't have every invoice
• The longer you've owned the property, the less tax you pay: the income tax portion shrinks to zero after 22 years of ownership, and the social charges portion shrinks to zero after 30 years
• If the property was your primary residence at the time of sale, none of this applies — that gain is fully exempt regardless of how long you owned it
• Non-French-resident sellers from outside the EU/EEA — including UK residents, post-Brexit — may need to appoint an accredited tax representative before completion, unless the sale price is €150,000 or less

Someone sells a French second home, a rental, or an inherited property, and the number that lands on their desk is a shock: 36.2% of the gain, gone before they've even worked out what to do with the rest. The good news is that number rarely applies to the full gain — how long you've owned the property does most of the work in reducing it.

This article covers the sale of a French property that isn't your main home. If the property was genuinely your main home when you sold it, read Selling Your Primary Residence in France: Is the Money Taxable? instead — none of what follows applies to you. If you're selling a UK property instead, the rules are genuinely different — the French 22/30-year allowance schedule below doesn't apply at all, because the gain is first calculated under HMRC's rules. See Capital Gains on a UK Property Sale as a French Resident: How It Actually Works for that calculation instead.

The Basic Rate: 19% Plus 17.2%, Not 18.6%

France taxes a property capital gain — the difference between what you paid and what you sold for, after eligible costs — at 19% income tax, plus 17.2% social charges. Combined, that's 36.2% of the taxable gain before any reduction for how long you owned the property.

The 2026 budget raised social charges on financial capital gains — shares, PEA, PER, dividends and interest — from 17.2% to 18.6%. Property gains were not part of that change. They stay at 17.2%, the same rate that's applied for years. If you see 18.6% quoted anywhere in connection with a property sale, that's the wrong figure for this specific type of gain.

On a €100,000 taxable gain with no holding-period reduction at all, that's €36,200 in tax — which is exactly why the holding-period allowance below matters so much.

What You Can Actually Deduct Before Any of This Applies

Before any rate or allowance touches your gain, the gain itself is smaller than "sale price minus purchase price" — France lets you add real costs to your purchase price, and subtract real costs from your sale price, first.

Added to your purchase price (increasing your cost basis, reducing the taxable gain):

• Acquisition costs — notaire fees, agency commission, and registration duties paid when you originally bought the property. Use the actual amount if you can prove it with invoices, or a flat rate of 7.5% of the purchase price if you can't (or don't want to dig out old paperwork).
• Renovation and improvement work — genuine reconstruction, extension, or improvement work (not routine maintenance or repairs) carried out since you bought the property. If you've owned the property for at least 5 years, you can use a flat rate of 15% of the purchase price instead of actual invoices — a real advantage if you did the work yourself, paid cash, or simply didn't keep every receipt from a decade ago. Under 5 years of ownership, only actual invoiced costs count; there's no flat-rate option.

Both flat rates can be used together: 7.5% plus 15% adds 22.5% to your purchase price with no paperwork required at all, as long as you've owned the property for 5+ years. On a property bought for €200,000, that's an extra €45,000 added to your cost basis before any calculation of the gain even starts.

Deducted from your sale price (reducing the taxable gain from the other side):

• Agency or intermediary fees you paid to sell the property
• Mandatory diagnostic reports required by law before a sale (energy performance, lead, asbestos, and similar)
• Costs of releasing a mortgage still registered against the property at the time of sale

These sale-side deductions need to be genuinely documented — France requires proof of the amount, not a flat-rate substitute, unlike the acquisition-side options above.

Whether the flat rates or actual invoiced costs work out better for you depends entirely on your numbers — if you spent significantly more than 22.5% of the purchase price on genuine improvement work and kept the invoices, actual costs will usually beat the flat rate. A notaire will work through both options as part of the sale, but knowing this exists means you can gather any invoices you do have before that conversation, rather than assuming the flat rate is automatically applied.

Every euro added or deducted here reduces the gain that the rate and holding-period allowance below actually apply to — so it's worth getting right before assuming the worked example figures below apply directly to your situation.

The Holding-Period Allowance: Why Ownership Length Changes Everything

France reduces the taxable gain the longer you've owned the property, and the two taxes — income tax and social charges — are reduced on different schedules, which is where people get confused.

For the income tax portion (19%):

• No reduction for the first 5 years of ownership
• 6% reduction per year from year 6 to year 21
• A further 4% reduction in year 22
• Fully exempt from income tax after 22 years of ownership

For the social charges portion (17.2%):

• No reduction for the first 5 years of ownership
• 1.65% reduction per year from year 6 to year 21
• 1.6% reduction in year 22
• 9% reduction per year from year 23 to year 30
• Fully exempt from social charges after 30 years of ownership

Here's how that plays out on a €200,000 taxable gain, at a few key ownership points:

The practical effect: somewhere between year 22 and year 30, you can owe social charges on a gain with zero income tax due on the same gain — because the two allowances finish on different timelines. Get your exact ownership length in years right, because a difference of even one year changes which allowance percentage applies.

Working out two different allowance schedules on the same sale is exactly the kind of calculation worth double-checking rather than estimating. If you're unsure which year of ownership you're in for allowance purposes, or need the euro figures worked through properly, a notaire will calculate this precisely at the point of sale — but knowing the schedule in advance means you can sanity-check the number you're given.

The Surtax on Larger Gains

A "large gain" for this surtax means a taxable gain over €50,000 — that's the threshold itself, not a rough guide. Below it, no surtax applies at all. Above it, a separate sliding scale of 2% to 6% applies on top of the standard 36.2%, rising with the size of the gain.

This is assessed per seller, not per property. A married or PACS'd couple selling jointly split the gain between them for this purpose — a €90,000 total gain between two sellers is €45,000 each, under the threshold, so neither pays the surtax even though the property's total gain exceeds €50,000.

How and When It's Declared

For a French property, the notaire handles the entire declaration and payment as part of the sale itself — you don't file anything separately afterward. The tax is calculated, withheld, and paid to the tax authority at completion, using Form 2048-IMM, which the notaire completes on your behalf.

This is different from selling a UK property, where there's no French notaire involved in the transaction at all, and the calculation, deadlines, and even the tax rates work differently. If that's your situation, see Capital Gains on a UK Property Sale as a French Resident: How It Actually Works rather than applying anything above to a UK sale.

If You're a Non-French-Resident Seller: The Accredited Representative Question

This is where it gets important for anyone who has moved back to the UK, or never lived in France at all, but still owns French property.

If you're a non-French-tax-resident selling French property, and you're domiciled outside the EU/EEA, you may need to appoint an accredited tax representative (représentant fiscal accrédité) before the sale completes. This representative checks the capital gains calculation, certifies the declaration with the tax authorities, and is jointly responsible for ensuring the tax is actually paid.

Since Brexit, UK residents fall into the "outside the EU/EEA" category for this rule — a change that catches people who assume nothing changed for them specifically because they're not moving assets, just selling a property they already own.

You're exempt from needing a representative if any of the following apply:

• The sale price is €150,000 or less per seller (a married or PACS'd couple selling jointly is treated as one seller for this threshold, so it's assessed against the combined price)
• You've owned the property long enough to qualify for full exemption under the holding-period allowance above (broadly, 30 years)
• The property being sold was your former French primary residence, sold within the normal timeframe after you left it

If none of those apply, the representative needs appointing before completion — leaving it until the day of sale risks delaying the transaction itself, since the notaire won't complete without one where it's required.

Where to actually find one: your representative needs to be one of a specific list of eligible parties — a bank or credit institution operating in France, the buyer (only if they're themselves French tax-resident), any other French tax-resident individual (notaires and lawyers are specifically excluded from acting in this role), or an organisation already holding permanent accreditation from the French tax authority. In practice, most non-resident sellers use one of the permanently accredited firms, since they specialise in exactly this and don't need a fresh accreditation request. The official, regularly updated list of permanently accredited representatives is published on BOFiP (see the Sources line below) — your notaire will also typically already work with one and can point you to it directly, since they need the representative in place before completion regardless.

What to Do Now

1. Confirm whether the property was your primary residence at the point of sale — if so, none of this applies, and you should read the primary residence exemption guide instead.
2. Confirm the property is actually in France, not the UK — a UK property sale follows completely different rules; see Capital Gains on a UK Property Sale as a French Resident instead.
3. Gather any invoices for your original acquisition costs and renovation work, or confirm whether you've owned the property 5+ years and can use the 7.5%/15% flat rates instead — this changes the gain everything else is calculated on.
4. Work out your exact ownership length in whole years — it determines both allowance percentages, on separate schedules.
5. If you're a non-French-resident seller from outside the EU/EEA (including UK residents, post-Brexit) and your sale price is over €150,000, arrange an accredited tax representative before completion, not after.

For more on getting property-related tax right, see the Strategies & Pitfalls category.

Common Mistakes

1. Forgetting the deductible costs entirely and taxing the full "sale price minus purchase price" figure. Acquisition costs and renovation work — actual or flat-rate — reduce the taxable gain before any rate or allowance applies. Skipping this step means paying tax on a larger gain than actually exists.
2. Applying this French 22/30-year allowance schedule to a UK property sale. It doesn't apply at all — a UK property gain is calculated under HMRC's rules first. See Capital Gains on a UK Property Sale as a French Resident for the actual mechanism.
3. Assuming Brexit changed nothing for a UK resident selling French property. It moved UK sellers into the "outside the EU/EEA" category for the accredited representative rule — a genuinely new requirement for sales over €150,000 that didn't exist before 2021.
4. Confusing the property gain silo with securities or crypto gains. Property capital gains are a separate category from shares and crypto — a loss on one cannot offset a gain on another. See Capital Losses in France: Can You Carry Them Forward? for how property losses specifically are treated.

Frequently Asked Questions

What costs can I deduct when calculating my property gain?

Acquisition costs (notaire fees, agency commission) can be added to your purchase price, either at their actual invoiced amount or a flat rate of 7.5% if you can't prove them. Renovation and improvement work can also be added, either at actual invoiced cost, or a flat rate of 15% of the purchase price if you've owned the property for at least 5 years. On the sale side, agency fees, mandatory diagnostic reports, and mortgage-release costs can be deducted from your sale price, but only with genuine proof — no flat-rate option applies there.

What tax rate applies to a French property capital gain?

19% income tax plus 17.2% social charges, a combined 36.2% of the taxable gain before any holding-period reduction. This is different from the 18.6% social charges rate that applies to gains on shares and other financial investments — property was not part of the 2026 rate increase.

How long do I need to own a property before the gain is tax-free?

Full exemption from the income tax portion (19%) is reached after 22 years of ownership. Full exemption from the social charges portion (17.2%) takes longer — 30 years. Between those two points, you can owe social charges on a gain with no income tax due on the same sale.

Does this article apply to a UK property I'm selling?

No. A UK property sale by a French tax resident is calculated and declared completely differently — the French 22/30-year holding-period allowance doesn't apply at all, since the gain is first worked out under HMRC's non-resident CGT rules. See Capital Gains on a UK Property Sale as a French Resident: How It Actually Works instead.

Do I need an accredited tax representative to sell my French property?

Only if you're a non-French-tax-resident domiciled outside the EU/EEA — which includes UK residents since Brexit — and the sale price is over €150,000 per seller, and you don't already qualify for full exemption through long ownership or a former-primary-residence exemption. If none of those exceptions apply, the representative needs to be appointed before completion.

Is a property capital gains loss deductible against other income?

No. A loss on a personal property sale in France cannot be offset against your other income and cannot be carried forward against a future property gain, with one narrow exception for property acquired in successive fractions under the same deed. See Capital Losses in France: Can You Carry Them Forward? for the full detail.

Sources: Je vends mon bien immobilier, vais-je payer de la plus-value immobilière ? — impots.gouv.fr (confirms the 19% income tax + 17.2% social charges combined rate, and the holding-period allowance schedule) · BOI-RFPI-PVINR-30-20 — Désignation d'un représentant accrédité — BOFiP (accredited tax representative requirement, the €150,000 threshold, the EU/EEA exemption, and the published list of permanently accredited representatives) · Je vends un bien immobilier en France où je suis non résident — impots.gouv.fr (confirms who is eligible to act as an accredited tax representative — a bank, the buyer if French tax-resident, another French tax-resident individual excluding notaires/lawyers, or a permanently accredited organisation) · BOI-RFPI-TPVIE-20 — Taxe sur les plus-values immobilières élevées — BOFiP (confirms the €50,000 surtax threshold is assessed per seller, with the joint-sale example used in this article) · BOI-RFPI-PVI-20-10-10 — Détermination de la plus-value brute — Prix de cession — BOFiP (confirms sale-side deductible costs — agency fees, mandatory diagnostics, mortgage-release costs — require documented proof)