How PAS works for various types of income

Micro-entreprise

Taxation of self-employed people under the micro-entreprise simplified tax and social charges system who opt to pay tax via the simple versement libératoire system (this is subject to certain income ceilings) occurs outside the PAS system.

These workers have a monthly or quarterly definitive tax payment arrived at by applying fixed rates to actual turnover in the previous month or three-month period.

However, people must still declare this income in specific boxes in their annual return so it can be taken into account.

Micro-entreprises paying tax via the ordinary bands with an annual declaration are subject to monthly or quarterly, depending on choice, estimated instalments based on their last income declaration (this is updated every September). Regularisation, if necessary, comes later once the year’s income has been declared.

In this case, when starting up, people can choose to start paying instalments based on an estimate of earnings or wait to declare the following year and pay in full in September of that year.

The tax office helpline states that people starting such a micro business should, if choosing estimated instalments, insert full estimated annual turnover without any reduction for expenses.

Foreign income

Foreign income subject to tax in France (eg. because defined as such in a double tax treaty, such as UK state and private pensions of residents in France), as well as the salaried income of frontier workers who live in France but work in a neighbouring country, are subject to the direct debit instalment system.

If you have such income it is important it is declared as being foreign income, including the country of provenance, and that the tax office has your bank details so as to collect instalments.

Note that a salary paid into your French bank account by an employer in a neighbouring country, or a UK pension paid directly into a French bank account, should be declared in the same way as income paid into a foreign account.

UK and US rental income is not affected as it is not taxable in France.

Property income 

Self-employed workers and people with property income from rentals pay regular instalments of tax and social charges based on estimates from previous declarations. These are paid monthly or quarterly. 

The payments are deducted from their bank account by direct debit on the 15th of the month. The first payment of the year for people paying monthly was January 15, for those paying quarterly it was February 16.

If there are significant changes in income during the year, you can request to modify the instalment amount.

People who start to receive French rental income in 2026 are advised to create a new regular instalment plan by estimating the annual income from this in their declaration so the income is taken into account as soon as possible. 

You can do this in your personal space under Gérer vos acomptes. 

Those on the micro taxation regime should note the full rental amount; those on the réel (real expenses) regime should put an estimate of what they think their profit will be after expenses. 

The more accurate this is, the fewer possible issues later with reimbursement or extra tax levies.

If you stop renting out a property, you should note this at Gérer mon prélèvement à la source in your personal space at impots.gouv.fr within 60 days so instalments stop.

Salaried work income

Workers with French jobs or working via portage salarial have a taux (rate) applied by their employer to their work income. Their pay arrives net of social charges and income tax. 

This taux is an averaged-out rate based on the last known year’s declared income. So far, this year it comes from 2025 declarations relating to 2024 income. 

You can opt to have a rate applied based only on your work income but you will have to pay additional monthly sums directly to the tax office if the resulting rate means you are paying less than otherwise. 

If you change jobs, your rate will be given to your new employer by the tax office.

Couples can use an averaged-out rate for their household or individual ones calculated by the tax office based on each person’s declared incomes, calculated to come to the equivalent tax when each person’s tax is combined. In this way, taxation can be adapted to real revenue. If your income drops, for example due to retirement, unemployment, changing jobs… or if your family situation changes due to marriage, a birth or death, your tax will adapt.

Employers use the same online systems for deducting and passing on PAS tax as they use for social charges. Small businesses with fewer than 20 employees can use the free Titre Emploi Service Entreprise (TESE) system.

Access is via the tese-infos and employers can leave it to Urssaf to calculate declaration and payment of their employees’ income tax. 

Note: Since September 1, 2025, tax offices have, as a default, applied individual rates for couples. If you want a couple’s average rate still you will need to opt for it in the prélèvement à la source section of your account at impots.gouv.fr. Prior to this the opposite applied.

Employing people in the home

PAS also applies to salaries paid by particuliers employeurs, ie. members of the public who employ someone, such as a cleaner or childminder, to carry out a regular service for them. Such employers may make the tax payments via the Cesu (cesu.urssaf.fr) or Pajemploi (pajemploi.urssaf.fr) websites.

The former is for employing workers such as gardeners or cleaners and the latter is for parents employing a childminder (assistante maternelle) or nanny (garde d’enfants à domicile).

They declare the employee’s pay via the Cesu or Pajemploi sites. The Cesu/Pajemploi service calculates the amount of tax-at-source using a rate supplied by the authorities, and tells the employer how much net salary to pay after deduction of social charges and tax. 

The same services then deduct the amount of tax and charges directly from the employer’s bank account via direct debit. People declaring a Cesu employee using a paper declaration will be informed by letter of the amount they should pay.

With regards to tax credits relating to these expenses, a part of the money owed for the previous year is paid out in January and the rest regularised at the end of the summer. 

There is also an option to take off your tax credit immediately before paying the salary and have the state pay the worker the rest.

To opt for this ‘avance immédiate de crédit d’impôt’ you need to activate a service called Cesu+ via your online account. 

Tax-at-source timeline

2026

JANUARY 

PAS tax is deducted each month from income such as salaries and pensions. Other income is subject to instalments, debited monthly or quarterly from your bank (in the latter case this will be on the 15th of February, May, August and November). The rate used is calculated based on 2024 income declared in 2025.

APRIL - MAY - JUNE

You file your income tax return for 2025 income and are given a new PAS rate that will be used from September

JULY - AUGUST

You receive your 2026 avis d’impôt for your 2025 income. Tax may be due (payable in September to December) or refunded (reimbursed in August or September)

SEPTEMBER

Your new PAS tax rate, recalculated based on your tax return for your 2025 income, is applied to new income received between September 2026 and August 2027

2027

APRIL - MAY - JUNE

You file your income tax return for 2026 income

AUGUST - SEPTEMBER

You receive your 2027 avis d’impôt on which final household income tax is shown based on 2026 income

SEPTEMBER

Your new tax rate is applied dependent on your declaration of 2026 income, for your income for September 2027 to August 2028

Taux (personal rate)

Your current PAS rate can be seen in your personal online space at impots.gouv.fr by clicking on Prélèvement à la source at the top of the page. 

Unlike the rising bands that are applied to overall annual income after declaration to work out if any further tax or refunds are due, PAS is levied based on a single averagedout rate (or two rates for couples with individualised rates).

This rate is recalculated each year based on your spring declarations and the tax that was payable on your income for the previous year (not including any credits or reductions). The new rate is then sent to employers and French pension caisses to be applied to French salaries and old age pensions or unemployment benefits from September 2026.

Tax deducted is shown on payslips. 

Employees may, instead, opt to have the tax office give their employer a ‘neutral’ default rate, based solely on their salary (and thus not related to their family situation or other income), eg. if they have significant non-work income that they wish to keep private from their employer. This choice is individual and does not concern other family members.

In this case the employee must also make separate monthly payments directly to the tax office if the rate given to the employer is too low considering their family quotient parts and overall income from all sources. 

These default rates are usually updated each January by an inflation rate given in the budget law for the new year.

The default rates are also used for employees starting a new job or for the income of young people who are ‘attached’ to their parents’ household for tax purposes.

A 0% rate ensures that people who usually do not pay tax due to low income are not paying levies that must later be refunded. See below for an example of what you will see in your personal space on the tax website if you are paying instalments of PAS.

You find this by clicking Gérer vos acomptes in the PAS section of your space. It refers to revenus sans tiers collecteur ie. the instalments relate to known income for which there is no intermediary to directly take off tax-at-source.

It shows forthcoming instalments and also buttons to pay off instalments immediately or to create a new one. You can also click supprimer to remove an instalment or augmenter, to increase the amount. 

Other actions you can take by selecting the links on the left of the main PAS page include consulting the history of past instalments, and checking on current and previous rates.

The online and printed form boxes

Your declaration forms (online or printed and prefilled) this year will recap all the tax-at-source levies made in 2025 so you can check them. You can modify the amounts should you consider them to be incorrect. They will also indicate instalments levied on property or self-employment income but these cannot be modified.

The boxes are 8HV to 8KV for PAS on salaries and pensions, 8HW to 8KW for income tax instalments and 8HX to 8KX for social charges instalments. Reimbursements paid out on tax or social charges are shown in 8HY to 8KY and 8HZ to 8KZ. Any tax credit advances received in January 2025 are shown in 8EA.