What a foreign owner actually pays in capital gains tax when they sell in France

The property-tax article on this site gave the short version of what France takes when a foreign owner sells: a flat rate, a taper for how long you owned it, a surtax above 50,000 euros, and a representative if you live outside the EU or EEA. This is the long version, re-verified against official sources rather than the simulator sites used for that summary: a full worked example on a realistically sized villa, and what happens next when a US owner reports the same sale to the IRS. Every figure carries its source and its date, and the last section says plainly what this is not.

The three layers of French tax on the gain

France taxes a non-resident's gain on a French home in three separate layers, and the bill depends on how long you have owned it and where you are resident. Layer one is a flat 19% income tax on the gain, the same rate for every non-resident individual, EU or not, confirmed directly by the French tax authority. Layer two is social charges, and this is genuinely where residence changes the number: a seller affiliated to a health scheme in the EEA, Switzerland or, despite Brexit, the UK pays only a 7.5% "prelevement de solidarite". Everyone else, in practice a US owner, pays the full rate, officially stated as 17.2% as of this verification. Several French notarial sources report that a drafting gap in the law that financed French social security for 2026 left this second group's CSG component at a new 10.6% rather than the 9.2% preserved for French residents, which would push their real total closer to 18.6% from 1 January 2026. That specific point is contested and may still be corrected, which is exactly the kind of figure you confirm with your own notaire on the day you sign, not from this or any article. Layer three is a surtax on gains above 50,000 euros, rising in bands to 6% on the portion of a gain above 260,000 euros. All three layers apply to the same underlying gain, but the first is shrunk by how long you have owned the property before either of the other two is calculated.

The clock: how ownership length shrinks the taxable gain

Before any rate is applied, the raw gain, sale price minus purchase price, can be adjusted by two standard allowances if you cannot document your real costs: a flat 7.5% of the purchase price for acquisition costs, and a flat 15% for works if you have owned the property more than five years. The gain is then reduced again for how long you have held it, on two separate clocks. For the 19% income tax, it shrinks by 6% for every year owned beyond the fifth, up to the twenty-first year, then 4% for the twenty-second year, reaching full exemption from income tax at twenty-two years of ownership. For social charges, the same gain shrinks more slowly: 1.65% a year from year six to year twenty-one, 1.60% in year twenty-two, then 9% a year from year twenty-three onward, reaching full exemption from social charges only at thirty years. A villa held twenty-five years therefore owes no income tax at all on the gain, but still owes social charges on a real, shrinking, slice of it.

A worked example: a villa held ten years, sold by a US owner

For illustration only, not a claim about any real sale: a villa bought for 2,500,000 euros in January 2016 and sold for 3,500,000 euros in 2026, a gross gain of 1,000,000 euros, setting aside the two allowances above to keep the arithmetic readable. Ten years of ownership means five years of abatement, years six through ten. For income tax: the gain is reduced by 5 times 6%, or 30%, leaving 700,000 euros taxable at 19%, so 133,000 euros. For social charges, for a US owner with no EEA health affiliation: the gain is reduced by 5 times 1.65%, or 8.25%, leaving 917,500 euros; at the 18.6% figure some notarial sources report for 2026, that is 170,655 euros, or 157,810 euros at the officially stated 17.2%. For the surtax: the same 700,000 euro base used for income tax falls in the published bracket above 260,000 euros, taxed at a flat 6% of the full amount, or 42,000 euros. Add it up and the French tax bill lands between roughly 332,810 and 345,655 euros on a 1,000,000 euro gain, an effective rate of about 33.3% to 34.6%, before the fee for the mandatory tax representative a sale this size, by a non-EEA resident, must appoint.

The same villa, sold by an owner with EEA health cover

Change only the seller's residence and the bill changes materially. A German, Dutch or, despite Brexit, a UK owner who can show affiliation to a health scheme in the EEA, Switzerland or the UK pays social charges of 7.5% instead of 17.2% to 18.6%: on the same 917,500 euro base, that is 68,812.50 euros rather than 157,810 to 170,655 euros. Income tax and the surtax are unchanged at 133,000 and 42,000 euros, so the total French tax falls to about 243,812.50 euros, an effective rate of roughly 24.4%, some nine to ten percentage points below the same sale by a US owner. That is a structural gap, not a rounding difference, and it is worth knowing before you buy, not after you sell.

Meeting it on the US return: the Foreign Tax Credit

A US citizen or green card holder reports the same sale on their US return, generally as a long-term capital gain if the property was held over a year. Federal tax on it depends on total taxable income: for 2026 the federal long-term rate is 0%, 15% or 20%, and an additional 3.8% Net Investment Income Tax applies above 200,000 dollars of income for a single filer or 250,000 for a married couple, so a gain this size is very likely taxed at the combined top federal rate of 23.8%. Two things change that number. First, the US-France treaty and the Foreign Tax Credit, Form 1116, passive category income, let you credit the French income tax against the US tax on the same gain, and since 2019, following the Eshel v. Commissioner litigation, the IRS accepts CSG and CRDS as creditable French income tax too, not only the base 19%. In the worked example above, French tax already exceeds the 23.8% US federal rate under either of the two social-charge figures, so a US owner in this position typically owes no additional federal tax on the gain, and the unused portion of the French credit can be carried back one year or forward up to ten under the Form 1116 carryover rules. Second, a genuine trap: the US computes the gain in dollars, translating both the purchase price and the sale price at the exchange rate on their own dates, so a decade of euro movement against the dollar can hand you a dollar gain that differs, sometimes significantly, from the euro gain France taxed, and that currency-driven slice has no French tax paid against it to credit. Whether the surtax and the solidarity levy are creditable in the same way as the base income tax and CSG/CRDS is a separate, more technical question that belongs with a preparer, not a general article.

What to actually plan for before you sell

A representant fiscal accredited by the French tax authority is mandatory whenever the sale price exceeds 150,000 euros and the seller is not resident in the EU or the EEA; EU and EEA sellers are automatically exempt from that requirement regardless of price. The fee for that representative is a commercial charge, not a published government rate, so no figure is given here rather than guess one: get it in writing from your notaire before you sign. Ask specifically, at the time of sale and not from this article, for that year's confirmed CSG rate for non-residents, since the 17.2% versus 18.6% question above may well be resolved differently by the time you sell, and ask your US preparer, well before filing, whether Form 1116 and the passive-category limitation leave you owing anything at all. The property tax you pay every year while you own the villa is a separate, ongoing cost, covered in the French property taxes a foreign owner actually pays. To see what a villa in this market could earn while you hold it, estimate it free in three questions, or see how a Riviera address compares with a market with no equivalent to any of this.

The honest disclaimer

This is general information, not tax or legal advice, and we are not tax or legal advisers. Every figure above depends on your residence, your nationality, how you hold the property and the law in force on the day you sign, and both French and US rules change most years, so confirm all of this with a qualified cross-border tax professional before you rely on any of it. Where a figure could not be verified, primarily the cost of a tax representative, we said so rather than guess; where two sources disagreed, primarily the 2026 non-resident social-charge rate, we showed both and said why. Sources, verified 02/08/2026: French non-resident capital gains income tax rate, holding-period abatement schedule and the 150,000 euro mandatory tax-representative threshold (impots.gouv.fr, "Je vends un bien immobilier, comment et a quel taux suis-je impose", updated 27/01/2026); the 7.5% solidarity-levy rate for EEA, Swiss and UK-affiliated sellers and the officially stated 17.2% rate for other non-residents (same source); the 1 January 2026 CSG rise to 10.6% and its apparent omission for non-resident real estate gains under the loi de financement de la securite sociale pour 2026 (Letulle notaires, published 06/02/2026); the surtax on gains above 50,000 euros and its full bracket table (BOFiP, BOI-RFPI-TPVIE-20); the standard 7.5% acquisition-cost and 15% works allowances (BOFiP, BOI-RFPI-PVI-20-10-20); US federal long-term capital gains brackets and the Net Investment Income Tax threshold for 2026 (Kiplinger and CNBC, published late 2025 and 2026); the 2019 resolution making French CSG and CRDS creditable for US taxpayers following Eshel v. Commissioner (Doeren Mayhew and BDO, published 2019); Foreign Tax Credit carryback and carryforward rules (IRS Publication 514 and the Form 1116 instructions).

Published 02/08/2026. Figures generated from our live benchmark data and updated on recalibration.