Where to make the online declaration or find paper forms
All residents of France and most non-residents with income to declare to have an account on impots.gouv.fr
Online declarations are made on impots.gouv.fr via your personal account on the site.
It is possible for all residents of France and most non-residents with income to declare to have an account on the site (see chapter 4, 'Online declarations') and anyone with an account may use it for their declaration.
Everyone, apart from first-time declarers and those without internet at home or living in certain designated mobile phone black spots, is now asked to declare online if possible.
Usually, once you have started making online declarations, you will no longer receive paper forms in the post in subsequent years.
You may, though, find paper forms useful to help with online declaration as box references are the same – if you fill in the paper forms first you will be sure of having all the figures to hand to complete the sections online.
If you do receive paper forms in the post then you will not necessarily receive all the relevant ancillary forms and it is for you to obtain missing ones. It is considered your responsibility to make your tax declaration and not receiving forms in the post is no excuse for non-declaration. If necessary, forms are available from tax offices or via a search with the relevant form number at impots.gouv.fr. There are penalties for not declaring income as well as for not paying tax.
Note that the main 2042 form is often not available for some days after the opening of declarations as the tax offices want those who have declared before to use the forms it has sent out, which include pre-filled elements, or to declare online.
If looking for a form at impots.gouv.fr you need to put the number of the form into the search box – a link to it should come up towards the top of the search results. Select this year’s version which will be referred to as Millésime 2026 (the 2026 ‘vintage’).
The 2042 form usually comes up in a combined list with other similarly-named forms with extra letters attached.
Each form also has a corresponding document of explanatory notes (called a notice in French).
If you search using the form number, you should see the notice among the options. It needs to be downloaded separately from the related form.