Property owners’ tax to rise for 7.4 million French homes

Around 7.4 million properties are to have their taxe foncière property tax levels re-evaluated – and increased – next year due to updates to housing records. 

These automatic updates will focus on so-called ‘comfort’ features, such as indoor toilets, water basins and heating systems. 

These add additional fictitious m² to the property when calculating the final amount of the tax which is paid by 32 million home-owners in France.

Tax authorities say that many homes have these features - now standard elements of modern homes - but do not have them listed in housing records, reducing the amount of taxe foncière the owners pay.

Property owners affected will see their taxe foncière bills increase by around €63 on average, reports media outlet Le Parisien. It will bring in an additional €460 million or so for local authorities.

Homeowners affected will be informed by letters sent out at the start of 2026, with the new amounts applying from the 2026 version of the bill (paid in October) and onwards in future years. Owners will be asked to contact tax authorities by April if they believe they have been targeted in error.

Around 20% of properties – 25% of homes, and 15% of flats – in France are set to be impacted.

“It's a matter of efficiency and fairness in taxation: everyone should pay according to the type of housing they own,” said Minister of Public Accounts, Amélie de Montchalin to FranceInfo. 

Tax authorities insist the higher fees are not an out and out increase, but “the application of property tax law and a compliance measure to ensure that the tax is paid correctly by the owners… It's a matter of bringing things into compliance,” (quoted in media outlet Huffington Post).

Authorities are carrying out the updates at the request of local authorities amid a search for revenue streams, as communes are hit by a lack of funding.

However, the plans have been criticised for being 'unfair' and impacting people uninformed about the state of their property. 

"Is it legitimate to maintain a tax on having a toilet in your home? Is it legitimate to maintain a tax on having running water in your home?" said president of real estate site PAP Corinne Jolly to FranceInfo.

She argued that property tax calculations "haven't been updated for decades," and instead of adding to them "the calculation should be greatly simplified... [basing it] on very simple parameters such as surface area, rather than trying to assess the quality of housing."

"It's very difficult to update across tens of millions of homes," she added.

A wider overhaul of the system used to calculate taxe foncière was previously scheduled for 2026, but has been pushed back to at least 2028.

‘Comfort’ elements including electricity and sinks 

As often stated, the full calculations for the taxe foncière based on the theoretical rental value or valeur locative cadastrale (VLC) can be complex.

Current calculations see the national VLC increase each year based on inflation – the main way the tax increases – with local authorities setting additional rates on the final bill sent out, but at an individual level there are many other factors that affect the tax.

In 2025, inflation increased the national VLC by 1.7%, with many authorities choosing to keep the same rate.  

However, one element out of the several impactful variants is the presence of ‘comfort’ features in a property. 

Despite their name, these do not relate to elements homeowners in the 2020s might see as comfort features – such as air conditioning, modern cooking equipment, etc – but those that would have been deemed such in the 1970s when the system was rolled out. 

They include elements such as indoor toilets, running water, heating, connection to mains electricity, sinks and basins, and heating among others.

The presence of these features adds a theoretical amount of m² to the property to take into consideration for the final bill. 

This includes 5m² for a bathtub, 4m² for access to running water, 3m² for a toilet/W.C inside the house, 2m² for connection to mains electricity. 

For example, a property of 70m² may have several comfort elements that ‘increase’ its size, bringing the total taxable size of the property up to 110m². 

This is then halved (50% is deducted for estimated expenses for homeowners) before the local authority sets the final rate. 

Missing records

Property owners must declare the completion of any works that could impact the taxe foncière to local authorities within 90 days (this is also required as they may need to pay the taxe d'aménagement on the works). 

However, authorities believe that this practice has not been done in regards to millions of properties, particularly relating to these ‘comfort features’ which essentially all homes now have as standard. 

In some cases, a change in ownership means current inhabitants would not know that the property technically did not have these elements listed. 

Authorities will focus their efforts on properties at levels 1 - 6 on the eight-run inhabitability scale, meaning all those ranked from the highest ‘luxury’ level to ‘ordinary’ properties.

It is presumed that any property with such a ranking will undoubtedly have these ‘comfort’ features in the 21st century, and information held otherwise is therefore erroneous. 

As stated, property owners who are informed of an incoming tax increase due to the automatic re-evaluation but genuinely do not hold such elements in their property, should inform tax authorities so the new updated records can be altered.

Properties in categories 7 and 8, classified as dilapidated or uninhabitable, are not likely to systematically have such features and will therefore not be targeted in the campaign.