Main residence in France: tax definition and effects

The tax criteria

Service-public.gouv.fr distinguishes two cases.

A single home in France. The main residence is “your place of residence on 31 December of the year in which the income was received”.

Several homes. It is the place of your “principal establishment” on 31 December: the one where you actually and habitually live, for example where you live with your family or where your professional interests are. You can only have one main residence. Exceptions: spouses or Pacs (civil partnership) partners with separate property regimes who do not live under the same roof, or spouses in divorce proceedings authorised to live apart, can each have their own and then file their own tax return.

For capital gains, the BOFiP (official tax guidance) clarifies the notion: it is the “usual and actual residence of the owner”.

• Usual: the place where you live “for most of the year”. This is a question of fact, assessed under the supervision of the courts. If time is split six months and six months, the main residence is the one for which the taxpayer “receives the allowances for taxe d’habitation”, a criterion that has had no effect since this tax was abolished on main residences in 2023.
• Actual: temporary use is not enough; in case of doubt, the taxpayer proves actual occupation “by any means”.

Capital gains: the full exemption

The sale of the main residence and its outbuildings (cellar, garage, parking space, courtyard) is fully exempt from capital gains tax, provided the home is the main residence at the time of the sale (service-public.gouv.fr; CGI, code général des impôts (General Tax Code), art. 150 U).

The BOFiP draws the consequences. Excluded are homes which, on the day of the sale, are let, occupied free of charge by family or third parties, or vacant; likewise where the owner moves back into the home just before the sale, for the purposes of the sale. Several relaxations exist:

• Home occupied until it was put up for sale: the exemption still applies if the sale takes place within a normal period and the home has been neither let nor lent in the meantime. No maximum period is set in advance, but “in a normal economic context, a period of one year is in principle the maximum”.
• Separation or divorce: it is enough for one of the former spouses, partners or cohabitants to have occupied the home until it was put up for sale (service-public.gouv.fr).
• Outbuildings: they are exempt if sold at the same time as the home; land sold as building land is subject to stricter rules (BOFiP).

The home of a child or a parent, even one attached to the tax household, is not in principle exempt on this basis (BOFiP). Other exemptions are listed in our guide plus-value immobilière (capital gains on property).

IFI: the 30% allowance

The property wealth tax applies to net taxable real-estate assets above €1,300,000 on 1 January 2026 (service-public.gouv.fr). The main residence is declared, but its value benefits from a 30% allowance (service-public.gouv.fr; IFI 2026 practical brochure; CGI, art. 973).

So a main residence with a market value of €1,000,000 on 1 January counts for €700,000 in the taxable assets (calculation based on the 30% allowance). The details of the rate scale are in our guide IFI (property wealth tax).

Council tax and the occupancy declaration

The taxe d’habitation on main residences has been abolished since 1 January 2023. It is still due on résidences secondaires (second homes), meaning any furnished home that is not the main residence and can be occupied at any time; it is based on the situation on 1 January (service-public.gouv.fr). A home occupied near your place of work is a second home, but it may give entitlement, on application, to a tax relief.

A person who is not tax resident in France and has a home there on 1 January is liable to taxe d’habitation on it, as it is treated as a second home (impots.gouv.fr). See our guide taxe d’habitation sur les résidences secondaires (council tax on second homes).

The occupancy declaration. Every owner of residential premises tells the tax authorities, before 1 July, whether they occupy it as a main residence or second home, or whether it is vacant, under the “Gérer mes biens immobiliers” (Manage my property) section of their impots.gouv.fr account. It is only required for a home that has never been declared or where there has been a change (service-public.gouv.fr).

Which professional to consult

The notaire (the public official who drafts property deeds) drafts the deed of sale: it is on its date that the main-residence condition for the capital gains exemption is assessed (BOFiP). The agent immobilier (estate agent) helps you keep to a normal sale period after a move. To buy a new main residence, the courtier en crédit (mortgage broker) arranges the financing, the diagnostiqueur (property surveyor) produces the surveys for the sale and the géomètre-expert (chartered land surveyor) marks out the land if a plot is split off.