Taxe d’Habitation on a French Second Home: the 2026 Guide (and the 60% Surcharge)

This article is general information for foreign owners of French property, not tax or legal advice. How much you pay depends on your own circumstances and on rules that change from one finance law to the next. Before you act, confirm the current position with the French tax authority or a qualified professional.

Last Updated: June 2026

If you own a place in France that is not your full-time home – a stone house in the Dordogne, a pied-a-terre (literally a “foot on the ground”, the French term for a small city bolthole) in Paris, a sea-view flat on the Cote d’Azur that you use for six weeks a year and lend to friends for the rest – then there is one annual tax bill with your name on it that most foreign owners only discover when the avis (the tax notice) drops into their online account in November. It is the taxe d’habitation, and here is the part nobody flags at the notaire‘s office: France phased this tax out for main homes between 2018 and 2023, and then quietly kept the entire thing alive for second homes. Worse, it handed town halls in the busiest areas a lever to bolt a surcharge of up to 60% on top – and they are pulling it, in greater numbers every year.

This guide walks through who actually pays the taxe d’habitation sur les residences secondaires (the second-home version, “THRS” for short) in 2026, how the bill is built, where the brutal 60% surcharge applies, the handful of ways to get it lifted, and what all of this means specifically if you own from abroad. None of it is hard once you see the shape of it. Let’s get into it.

First, the good news. Then the catch.

The good news is real: the taxe d’habitation on a main residence is gone. As Service-Public.fr puts it plainly, the tax on your principal home has been abolished since 1 January 2023, for every household, regardless of income. If France is where you live, you no longer get this particular bill at all.

The catch is just as real. The tax was never abolished for everything – only for main homes. For a second home, the taxe d’habitation survives in full. If, on 1 January of the tax year, you have the use of a furnished property that is not your principal residence, you owe it. That snapshot date matters more than people expect: it is your situation on 1 January that fixes the bill, so buying in February or selling in March does not change who pays for that year.

Who is “you”, exactly? The owner, or the usufruitier (the usufructuary – someone with the right to use a property and draw its income without owning it outright, a common arrangement in French succession planning). And one twist that catches people: if you are the year-round tenant of a furnished second home – say you rent a small flat near work and keep your real home elsewhere – the bill lands on you, the tenant, not the landlord. The tax follows the use of the home, not the title deed.

What actually counts as a residence secondaire

The definition is broader than “holiday home”, and it pays to know where the edges are. A residence secondaire, for this tax, is any furnished dwelling that is not your main home and is kept available for your use. The property has to be furnished well enough to be lived in – bare walls and no bed is a different story (we’ll come to that). Crucially, the tax also catches the immediate dependencies of the home: a private parking space, a garage, a cellar, even when they sit a little apart from the dwelling and even when they are not themselves furnished.

What is not a second home for this purpose is just as important. If the property is let long-term to a tenant who has made it their main residence, it is their home, not your second one. And if you leave a place empty and unfurnished, it stops being a second home in the eyes of this tax and falls instead under a separate regime for vacant property – a fork we map out below, because choosing the wrong side of it by accident is a classic and avoidable mistake.

One more obligation worth getting right, because it carries a penalty. Since the main-residence tax was scrapped, the authorities lost their easy way of knowing which of your properties is which, so owners now have to file a declaration d’occupation (an occupancy declaration) through the “Gerer mes biens immobiliers” section of your impots.gouv.fr account, stating whether each property is a main home, a second home, or vacant. You only need to refile when something changes (a new property, or a change of use), and the deadline for a change is 1 July. Skip it or get it wrong and the fine is 150 euros per property – small, but entirely avoidable.

How the bill is built

The arithmetic is simple in shape, even if the inputs are buried. Your taxe d’habitation is the property’s valeur locative cadastrale (the cadastral rental value – the notional annual rent the property is deemed capable of producing, as held on the tax register) multiplied by a tax rate set by the commune. That rate varies from town to town, which is why two similar flats in two different communes can carry very different bills.

Two things to keep in mind. First, the valeur locative is revalued every year, notably to track inflation, so the base creeps upward even in a year when your commune leaves its rate untouched. Second, and this frustrates a lot of owners: there is no reliable way to estimate the bill yourself in advance. The official guidance is candid about it – the figure depends on too many property-specific inputs, and if you want an estimate before the avis arrives, you have to ask the local service des impots fonciers directly. Budget from last year’s bill plus a little, and you won’t be far off.

The 60% surcharge: the zone tendue majoration

Here is where a second-home bill can leap. On top of the ordinary tax, communes in so-called zones tendues (high-pressure housing areas, literally “tight zones”) are allowed to vote a majoration – a surcharge – on the second-home taxe d’habitation. The legal basis is article 1407 ter of the Code general des impots, and the surcharge runs anywhere from 5% to 60% of the communal share, decided by a vote of the conseil municipal. The whole point is to discourage homes sitting half-empty in places where locals struggle to find somewhere to live, so the proceeds go straight to the commune that levies it.

Which communes can do this? It started narrow: the classic zones tendues – continuous urban areas of more than 50,000 inhabitants with a marked imbalance between housing supply and demand, the same areas where the taxe sur les logements vacants applies. But a decree of August 2023, in force from 2024, widened the net sharply by adding communes that, whatever their size, have a high proportion of second homes. Per the DGFiP, that change roughly tripled the eligible list, adding some 2,594 communes. The upshot: the surcharge now reaches well past the big cities into exactly the small coastal villages, Basque resorts and Alpine ski towns where foreign holiday homes cluster. If your French property is anywhere desirable – Paris and its ring, the Cote d’Azur, the Basque coast around Biarritz, the big Alpine resorts, Bordeaux, Lyon, Annecy, or a pretty village by the sea – assume you are in scope and check.

And town halls are reaching for the lever in growing numbers. According to DGFiP figures, 1,628 communes levied the surcharge in 2025, up from 1,461 the year before, out of roughly 3,690 now eligible. The average surcharge among them is around 41%, and the share going straight to the ceiling keeps rising: 657 communes set the maximum 60% in 2025 against 539 in 2024, so about four in ten of the communes that surcharge at all now go to the top. Part of that climb reflects the 2024 expansion of who is eligible, but the direction is unmistakable – more communes, and a heavier hand.

What does that do to a bill in cash terms? The DGFiP puts the average second-home tax at about 1,100 euros a property, and closer to 1,250 euros for a flat – and flats are where the surcharge bites hardest, since nearly three-quarters of taxed flats sit in surcharge communes against under a third of houses. Add the maximum 60% and that average flat’s bill climbs from around 1,250 euros toward 2,000 euros for the same four walls. Same home, same year, plus a 750-euro premium for the postcode. That is the number that tends to focus the mind.

Who can get the surcharge lifted

The surcharge is not as inescapable as it looks. The law builds in a degrevement (a relief, or rebate) for three situations where keeping a second home is not really a lifestyle choice, set out in the same article 1407 ter and echoed by Service-Public. You can claim relief from the majoration if:

• your work forces you to live near the second home, away from your actual main residence;
• your former main residence has become a second home only because you have moved durably into a care setting – an EHPAD (a residential care home for dependent older people) or a long-term care unit; or
• the property is not habitable for reasons outside your control – for instance, it needs works before anyone could decently live in it.

The relief is not automatic. You have to ask for it, by lodging a reclamation (a claim) with the tax office that handles the property, online through your secure messaging, in person, or by plain letter. There is a related carve-out worth knowing if you are returning from abroad: someone repatriated in a collective return or after being told to leave their zone of residence can, on a claim, be relieved of the second-home tax on the French home that was their main residence before they expatriated.

There is also a rural exemption that occasionally helps. In zones France ruralites revitalisation (ZFRR – designated rural revitalisation areas), a commune can vote to exempt classified meubles de tourisme (registered furnished tourist lets) and chambres d’hotes (bed-and-breakfast rooms) from the second-home tax altogether. So if your place sits in one of those areas and you are willing to run it as a registered tourist let, classifying it as a registered furnished tourist let with its own set of rules can, in the right commune, switch the bill off. From 2027 the exemption power widens beyond ZFRR, so this is a lever worth watching.

Second home, vacant home, or let? The three forks

A property you do not live in full-time can sit in one of three tax states, and they do not overlap – which one you are in depends on what you actually do with the place. Get this wrong and you can end up paying the wrong tax, or paying when a small change would have spared you. Here is how they line up.

The practical lesson sits in the gap between the first two rows. Owners sometimes strip the furniture out of an unused flat thinking they are dodging the second-home tax, only to walk straight into the vacant-home tax that bites harder the longer a place stays empty – and which, in the tense zones, is climbing fast. An unfurnished, empty flat is not a tax-free flat. It is just a differently taxed one.

One change to pencil in: from 2027 the two vacant-home taxes in the table are being merged into a single levy, the taxe sur la vacance des locaux d’habitation, under the 2026 finance law. As Service-Public.fr sets out, in high-demand zones the new tax will apply automatically to homes empty for a year or more, at 17% of the rental value in the first year and 34% thereafter (with communes able to vote it higher, up to 30% then 60%); outside those zones a commune can opt in for homes empty two years or more, at a rate it sets freely but capped at 50%. None of this touches a furnished second home, which stays squarely in the THRS – but it is the regime waiting on the other side of the fence if you let a place fall empty and unfurnished.

What this means if you own from abroad

None of this turns on your nationality or where you live. The taxe d’habitation on a second home is a tax on the French home, not on the person, so a non-resident owner pays it on exactly the same basis as a French one – by reference to the property and your use of it on 1 January. There is no foreign surcharge and no foreign discount; there is only the home and the commune it sits in.

The sting, for foreign owners specifically, is geographic. The places where overseas buyers most want a base – Paris, the Riviera, the Basque coast, the ski resorts, the smart bits of Bordeaux and Lyon – are precisely the zones tendues where the 60% surcharge lives. The holiday-home map and the surcharge map are almost the same map. So while the tax is nationality-blind in theory, in practice it falls hardest on exactly the kind of desirable, used-a-few-weeks-a-year second home that a lot of foreign owners hold.

The numbers bear this out. The DGFiP finds that 7% of everyone paying the second-home tax lives outside France, and among those non-residents the British are the single largest group, at 23% – ahead of Belgium (15%), Switzerland (12%), Italy (11%) and Germany (10%). The concentration is regional too: in twenty departments more than one second home in ten is owned by someone living abroad, led by the Alpes-Maritimes (23%), the Charente (22%) and the Dordogne (18%) – the Riviera and the classic foreign-buyer belt of the south-west. If you hold a French bolt-hole from abroad, you are squarely in the cohort this tax now leans on.

It also does not travel alone. A French second home counts towards the wealth tax on French real estate once your net French property crosses the 1.3-million-euro threshold, and the day you sell it, a capital-gains regime built specifically for non-residents takes over – neither of which applies to a main home in the same way. The second-home taxe d’habitation is best understood as one line in a bundle of holding costs, not a standalone annoyance.

So what can you actually do about it? Three honest levers. You can let it – a property genuinely let long-term to someone who lives in it is their main residence, and the second-home tax falls away (you keep the ownership tax, but you also keep the rent). You can check the reliefs – if work, a care move, or genuine uninhabitability applies, claim the degrevement rather than paying the surcharge by default. And if your place is rural and you are open to running it as a registered tourist let, the ZFRR exemption may be on the table. What does not work is hoping the bill goes away: it is now one of the most reliable lines in the French local-tax system, precisely because it is one of the few the government chose to keep.

Key dates for 2026

Mark three points in the year and the taxe d’habitation stops ambushing you:

• 1 January 2026 – the snapshot date. Your situation on this day fixes who owes the 2026 bill.
• 1 July 2026 – the deadline to update your declaration d’occupation if the use of a property has changed, on pain of the 150-euro-per-property fine.
• November to December 2026 – per impots.gouv.fr, the avis goes online from early November (around the 2nd for those not paying monthly), and payment falls due in mid-December – 15 December for cheque, transfer or cash, 20 December if you pay online, with the bank debit on 28 December.

If you are still at the buying stage, it is worth folding this into your sums from the start – the full mechanics of a French purchase include more recurring costs than the headline price suggests, and a second-home taxe d’habitation in a 60%-surcharge commune is one of the bigger ones.

The bottom line

France did abolish the taxe d’habitation – but only for the home you live in. For a second home, it is alive, well, and increasingly expensive, with 1,628 communes now layering on a surcharge and 657 of them taking it to the 60% ceiling. The tax is nationality-blind, which is cold comfort when the surcharge map and the foreign-buyer map are nearly identical. Know your snapshot date, file your occupancy declaration, claim any relief you are genuinely entitled to, and price the bill into your holding costs honestly. It is not going anywhere.

Frequently asked questions

Do I still pay taxe d’habitation on my French second home in 2026?

Yes. The tax was abolished for main residences from 1 January 2023, but it remains in full for second homes. If you have the use of a furnished property that is not your main home on 1 January 2026, you owe the taxe d’habitation sur les residences secondaires for that year.

How much is the second-home surcharge?

Communes in high-demand zones tendues can vote a surcharge of between 5% and 60% on the communal share of the second-home tax, under article 1407 ter of the Code general des impots. In 2025, 1,628 communes applied a surcharge and 657 set it at the maximum 60%.

Does the surcharge apply to foreign or non-resident owners?

It applies regardless of nationality or residence. The tax attaches to the French property and your use of it, not to you, so a non-resident pays on the same basis as a resident. In practice the surcharge falls heavily on foreign owners because their holiday homes tend to sit in exactly the high-demand zones where it is levied.

Can I avoid the surcharge by emptying the property?

Not safely. An unfurnished, empty home is no longer a second home for this tax, but in high-demand areas it then falls under the taxe sur les logements vacants, which rises the longer the property stays empty. You would be swapping one local tax for another, often a harsher one.

How do I get the surcharge reduced?

You can claim a degrevement (relief) if your work forces you to live near the second home, if your former main residence became a second home because you moved into a care home, or if the property is genuinely uninhabitable for reasons beyond your control. Relief is not automatic – you must lodge a claim with the tax office that handles the property.

When do I pay the 2026 bill?

The avis appears in your impots.gouv.fr account from early November 2026, and payment is due in mid-December – 15 December for cheque, transfer or cash, or 20 December for online payment, with the bank debit on 28 December.