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Last Updated: August 2026
This is a follow-up to our analysis of the Paris vote to push its vacant-property tax to 30 and then 60 percent. That piece covered the rates and the politics. This one answers the question that decides whether any of it applies to you at all: how does the French tax administration decide that a flat is empty?
The question stops being theoretical on 1 January 2027, when the taxe sur la vacance des locaux d’habitation, the TVLH, replaces the two existing vacancy taxes across France. An owner who understands the rules of evidence can usually stay out of the net, or get out of it quickly. An owner who does not learn them can end up with a four-figure bill attached to a flat they thought of as merely between uses.
The scale explains the appetite for enforcement. Paris counts 139,075 vacant homes on the INSEE definition, about one dwelling in ten, and the city’s surtax vote is explicitly aimed at returning some 20,000 of them to the market. A tax designed to move tens of thousands of owners is not going to sit unenforced in a drawer.
What “Vacant” Means to the Tax Office
Fiscal vacancy has a precise legal definition, and it is narrower than most owners assume. Under the framework summarised in the official explainer on the new tax, a property is vacant when it is residential, unfurnished or too sparsely furnished for anyone to actually live in it, habitable in itself, and free of any occupation for a qualifying period ending on 1 January of the tax year. In a zone tendue, a tight housing market like Paris, one full year of vacancy is enough. Outside those zones the threshold is two years, and the tax only applies where the commune has voted it in.
Each element of that definition carries weight, and the habitability condition in particular cuts in the owner’s favour: a property that is not wind and watertight, or that lacks basic electricity, running water and sanitation, sits outside the tax entirely while it needs major works. The ministry’s own TVLH questions and answers is explicit that an uninhabitable property taxed by mistake should be refunded on request.
The Couch Test: Furnished, Second Home, or Vacant
The furnishing condition is where owners look for an exit, and where most of them misjudge the geometry. Token furnishing has been tried many times before, and a flat with a couch and little else simply remains insufficiently furnished for habitation, which keeps it fiscally vacant. Furnish it properly, though, and you have not escaped taxation. You have created a second home, and a Paris second home carries the taxe d’habitation on secondary residences with the city’s 60 percent surcharge on top.
So the real choice for an empty Paris flat is between the vacancy tax and the second-home tax, and which of the two costs less depends on the property. The one option the law never offers is a free exit. We ran the full numbers on that comparison in our real cost of a Paris pied-à-terre analysis.
One Word, Three Taxes: Untangling the Categories
Much of the confusion around empty homes comes from three taxes sharing one vocabulary. Until the end of 2026 France runs two vacancy taxes side by side: the TLV, a state tax applying automatically in tight zones after one year of vacancy, and the THLV, a communal tax that other communes can vote in after two years. From January 2027 article 108 of the 2026 finance law merges both into the single TVLH, keeping the same one-year and two-year thresholds. The third tax, on furnished second homes, is a different regime entirely and survives untouched.
Which regime you face therefore depends on geography. The list of tight-zone communes is fixed by decree, a new one is expected during 2026 for the TVLH, and in the meantime the current zoning can be checked commune by commune on the official data.gouv.fr dataset. Paris, unsurprisingly, has been in the tight zone from the start.
Where the Taxman Gets His Information
Here is the part that surprises people: the city assesses nothing. The tax is administered by the national tax authority, the DGFiP, and its primary source is you. Since 2023 every owner of French residential property must file a déclaration d’occupation, a statement of who occupies each property, through the Biens immobiliers section of their impots.gouv.fr account, and update it whenever the situation changes. That declaration is the assessment base for the TVLH. Occupation on 1 January of the tax year is what the ministry calls the taxable event.
Where an owner declares nothing, the administration does not shrug. The ministry’s guidance describes a fallback the DGFiP calls the taxation chain, an internal process that establishes occupation from the data the state already holds when declarations are missing or contradictory. Not declaring keeps nothing at bay, since the file simply gets built from the state’s own data instead of yours.
The 90-Day Rule, and What Counts as Proof
The first and cleanest way out of the tax is actual use. A property occupied for more than 90 consecutive days during the reference period is not vacant, per the official guidance. In a zone tendue the 90 days must fall within the previous year. Elsewhere they can fall anywhere in the previous two. The days must be consecutive: twelve separate weekends do not add up to an exemption.
As ever with the French tax administration, documents carry far more weight than explanations. Utility consumption that matches habitation, declared rental income, a tenant’s lease. A home-insurance policy in an occupant’s name can support the file too, though on its own it proves little. An owner who genuinely used a flat for a season should have no difficulty, and an owner who is tempted to claim use they cannot document should remember who holds the consumption data.
The Involuntary-Vacancy Defence
The second defence is that the vacancy is not your fault. The law exempts properties whose emptiness results from circumstances beyond the owner’s control, and the ministry’s guidance gives the canonical example: a property genuinely offered for sale or for rent at the market price that finds no taker. The tax administration’s doctrine treats a property marketed at market price as involuntarily vacant.
Every word of that sentence is doing evidentiary work. Genuinely offered means agency mandates, dated listings and the correspondence around them. Market price means a figure a professional would defend, because a flat listed 30 percent above comparables is not being marketed, it is being parked. If the sale or letting drags on, keep the record of price adjustments. That descending series of figures is precisely what persuades an inspector the vacancy was suffered rather than chosen. The same evidence-first logic applies to blocked successions and properties awaiting major works, which is worth knowing for anyone holding an inherited flat while an indivision, a joint-ownership deadlock, works itself out.
What Evidence Counts, at a Glance
| Question | What the administration looks at | What you should keep |
|---|---|---|
| Was it occupied 90+ consecutive days? | GMBI declaration, utility consumption, declared rental income | Lease, bills showing consumption, insurance in occupant’s name |
| Was the vacancy involuntary? | Marketing at market price with no taker | Agency mandates, dated listings, price-adjustment trail |
| Is it habitable at all? | Basic electricity, water, sanitation, wind and watertight | Works quotes, surveyor or diagnostic reports |
| Is it furnished enough to live in? | Sufficiency of furniture for normal habitation | Inventory if furnished, THRS status if a second home |
When a Neighbour Reports You: the Signalement
There is a third channel, and foreign owners are its natural blind spot. Local authorities can file a signalement, a formal report that a supposedly occupied property is in fact empty, to push it into the tax base. The ministry’s guidance sets a real evidentiary bar: the report must rest on a bundle of converging indications, water or energy consumption, written exchanges, a key box on the railing, a short-term letting advert, and it states in terms that a simple visual observation is not enough. Dark windows do not make a case. A near-zero water meter starts to.
What happens next is a procedure with a clock. If a signalement is taken up, the local tax office writes to the owner. From that letter you have 30 days to contest. Say nothing and a supplementary assessment is issued on the strength of the file. And the administration can reach backwards: corrections can be issued until 31 December of the year following the tax year concerned. Here is what to do if that letter arrives.
- Check the reference date. The whole question is the property’s status on 1 January of the tax year named in the letter, not its status today.
- Pull your déclaration d’occupation. Confirm what you declared on impots.gouv.fr and correct it if reality has moved on since.
- Assemble the evidence for your exit. Occupation proof for the 90-day route, or the marketing trail for the involuntary-vacancy route.
- Reply within 30 days. The deadline is short and silence converts the file into a tax bill. If you manage the property from abroad, make sure someone opens the post, a point we keep returning to in our guide to managing a French property remotely.
- If taxed anyway, file a réclamation. The ordinary tax-claim procedure applies, through the messagerie of your tax account, with the tribunal administratif behind it if needed.
What Losing Costs
A word on the stakes, briefly, since the full arithmetic is in the companion article. The TVLH is calculated on the property’s cadastral rental value. The default rates in tight zones are 17 percent for the first taxable year and 34 percent after, and communes can vote up to 30 and 60, which Paris has done. The state collects, keeps 5.4 percent in collection costs, and passes the rest to the commune. Outside tight zones the commune sets its own rate up to a 50 percent ceiling. None of it is trivial money on a Paris valuation. Jacques Baudrier, the deputy mayor for housing who carried the measure, has said publicly that a typical bill of €1,500 to €2,000 could reach up to €4,000 from 2027 once the city applies the maximum rates.
The Bottom Line for Foreign Owners
The system runs on declarations and data, which means it rewards owners who manage their file and punishes owners who ignore it. Keep the déclaration d’occupation current. If the property is between uses, decide which lawful exit you are claiming, use or marketing, and build the paper for it as you go rather than after the letter arrives. What protects an owner living abroad is a file the administration can read and accept, and that file can be assembled and kept current from anywhere.
FAQ: How France Decides a Home Is Vacant
Can I avoid the vacancy tax by putting some furniture in the flat?
No. Token furnishing leaves the property insufficiently furnished for habitation, which keeps it fiscally vacant. Furnishing it properly makes it a second home, taxed under the taxe d’habitation on secondary residences, with a 60 percent surcharge in Paris.
How does the tax office know whether my property is occupied?
Primarily from the déclaration d’occupation every owner must file on impots.gouv.fr. Where owners do not declare, the DGFiP establishes occupation from its own data, and local authorities can file evidence-based reports on properties they believe are wrongly recorded as occupied.
How long must the property be occupied to escape the tax?
More than 90 consecutive days during the previous year in a zone tendue, or during the previous two years elsewhere. The days must be consecutive, and occupation is proven with the usual paper trail such as utility consumption and declared rental income.
My flat is on the market but not selling. Do I still pay?
Not if you can evidence it. A property genuinely marketed for sale or rent at the market price with no taker is treated as involuntarily vacant and exempt. Keep the mandates, listings and any price adjustments, since the exemption is evidence-based.
What is a signalement and can neighbours trigger the tax?
A signalement is a formal report by a local authority that a property recorded as occupied is actually empty. It must rest on converging evidence such as consumption data, and a simple visual observation is not sufficient. The owner then has 30 days to contest before a supplementary assessment is issued.
Is an uninhabitable property subject to the TVLH?
No. A property lacking basic electricity, running water or sanitation, or requiring major works to be habitable, falls outside the tax, and one taxed by mistake can be refunded through a réclamation.
