HMRC dual taxation form - problem with French tax office

Banking & Financial Tax & Social charges
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We’re looking for ideas on how to deal with this please. It’s become important because OH hopes to start drawing his pensions at the end of this year and doesn’t want to pay double tax if at all possible.

OH keeps receiving annual letters from HMRC telling him he owes around £100 for the previous tax year. He’s paid tax in France since 2018. Each time he’s rung them and they’ve said they’ll sort it.

Earlier this year HMRC told him they don’t have a dual taxation form signed by the French authorities and that getting this would solve all his problems. So he printed off a France Individual DT form, took it into the Narbonne tax office and asked them to sign it. The person on the desk said they couldn’t sign it themselves but would pass it on.

Time passed and nothing happened. HMRC said they had received nothing. This time he printed another form and sent it via LRAR, which was signed for in early June. OH has just had another UK tax demand and has rung HMRC yet again. They say they can’t do anything without the form signed by the French tax people.

What would people here suggest he should do please? Is it something our accountant could help with?

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We had no trouble gettinmg the DT forms signed (when I sent them to the correct place! which was the place our tax forms came from: the local office was unhelpful).

I have always done our tax, but am coming to the view that the complication of living in one country and paying tax in another is maybe something I should get accountancy help with.

I would get the acountant - who probably has more clout than you or your husband - to deal with it.

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Thank you.

Having the accountant does take some of the stress out of doing the tax return and our lady said that they had a later filing date than we did this year. I still got the stuff in on time but I could have been a day or two late without a problem, I suspect.

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HMRC is simply taking literally month and months to process stuff from what I read on here.

You could get another one done and send it for belt and braces, also call politely once per month till they tell you it’s been processed.

I quite understand you want to avoid having to claim a refund later too, because of course the months and months reported that HMRC is taking applies there too :slight_smile: .

Is there anywhere you can upload it with a note that the hard copy was sent on… snd signed for on… dates?

I’m not sure I would engage an accountant just for this.

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Yes – and there’s another problem. They seem to send everything via the Netherlands. It takes anywhere between 5 weeks and 2 months to arrive.

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Hi Karen, thank you for the suggestions.

Do you mean upload the form to the Narbonne tax office somehow? I’ve never done that.

We already have the accountant, they’ve just sent us a tax summary for our 2025 declaration. I’ll hold off asking them unless someone thinks it’s worth doing.

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No, to UK HMRC (the France Form Individual signed by French Impôts).

Narbonne, being French, will only want paper

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As far as we know, Narbonne haven’t sent off the form. They certainly haven’t sent it to OH. All we know is that they got the paper form last month because the AR came back.

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I think you best get the signed form from them - make an appointment if you have to - and send it yourself.

I think that’s what others have been doing. You could post it with an s a.e. and ask them to send it back but I suspect would take longer than you think and prone to same failure as when you’d previously left the form with them.

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When I do mine I’ll try first by sending it to the tsx office that handles my declaration with an s.a.e. asking them to return it signed. As I don’t have transport for me thar’s worth a try.

Then send to HMRC myself.

But then I have time to try that. If I had transport or needed it done asap, I’d be making an appointment and asking them to sign it then and there.

Then forwarding to HMRC hard copy and also finding a way to upload or email it (though they’ll insist on hard copy I sm sure)

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Thank you. I’ll ring the Narbonne office this afternoon and ask for an appointment, with someone who speaks English if possible. Not so much for OH but so they understand the form.

And try not to be fobbed off without a meeting. Every time I’ve been in about my own tax I’ve had a resolution.

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Yes make an appointment if you can..take form to the office then leave with the signed and stamped form. I expect Impots give it back to you. Then copy and send original to uk and then wait several months for hmrc to action it.

Do ensure you have filled in all details not just the front page. The details you need should be on your hmrc account.

Ideally if you are travelling to the uk soon wait until you go back then post in the uk. I dont know where the post gets delayed or lost but easier if you send uk to uk.

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Thank you Paul, I’ll pass that on.

No plans to travel back to the UK so I think OH will probably send it signed for.

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Hi Jennifer

This business of French tax offices sometimes not signing the form is precisely what put me off taking my personal pension lump sum. It can wait until I move back to the UK in my dotage.

You don’t say what kind of income is involved right now but I seem to remember that, in the context of pension lump sums, George contacted his tax office via the secure messaging service, and got them to sign the form and return it to him.

Is the box requiring the French tax office’s stamp still in the lower left corner of page 1 of the form?

If so, try sending the tax office a scanned copy of the form via the messagerie in your personal tax space. Accompanied by a message worded roughly as follows:

“Chère Madame, Cher Monsieur,

Veuillez trouver ci-joint un formulaire prérempli, qui concerne la convention fiscale franco-britannique. Avec ce formulaire, l’objectif est de rendre ( insert the type of income) imposable uniquement en France, en vertu de (insert the relevant article if you know it) la convention fiscale susmentionnée.

Pourriez-vous, s’il vous plaît, signer et dater le formulaire dans le coin inférieur gauche de la page 1 et appliquer votre cachet ?

Il faudrait me renvoyer le formulaire une fois signé, daté et tamponné, soit par courrier électronique, soit par courrier postal, à l’adresse suivante : (insert address).

Je vous remercie d’avance pour votre collaboration.

Avec mes meilleures salutations,”

Good luck!

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I’ll be very interested to hear how you get on with the French tax office because, although I’ve managed to postpone the evil day as regards my personal pension, no doubt by the time I start drawing my UK state pension, it will push me over the personal allowance and HMRC will tax it so I’ll have to make a treaty claim.

I was also thinking of putting all our UK savings into my name only (because unlike my husband, I’m not liable to CSG/CRDS in France), but doing that would put me in the slightly unusual position of having no UK income other than bank interest and yet exceeding the personal allowance. I have no idea what, if anything HMRC, would do in that case. And am in no rush to find out so will probably leave half the savings in my husband’s name out of laziness/cowardice.

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Hi Helenotchka, thank you for your thoughts.

Yes, that’s the form. To answer your question, OH is working atm and declares salary that’s paid in euros to his French bank account, with tax already deducted.

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I’ll update the thread with how it goes. OH is back on the phone to HMRC (work isn’t busy today). They said he hadn’t filled in a P85 and he’s just found a copy of what he sent them some years back. I don’t know if that will make any difference.

I went through the same process but earlier than OH did. It’s long enough ago not to remember the detail of what I did but I know it wasn’t difficult back then.

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I’m a bit puzzled, I am not clear to which tax authority he is declaring his income. Aren’t you and your husband resident in France?.If so, re his salary, (France?UK?) that’s nothing to do with Form France Individual (FFi)/Impôts stamping it , and everything to do with ensuring HMRC know he is non UK resident. That would have been the purpose of the P85. Any UK tax on his salary would not be creditable against his French tax liability unless he is working in the UK.Once non UK resident, he would generally only need to report UK taxable items via a UK return, such as UK rent, UK capital gains, earnings for UK work etc. Not UK private sector pensions (see below).

As and when he comes to get his UK pension, then and only then does he need the FFI signed and stamped by the Impôts (he can also get them to sign and return the FFI via his secure messages facility as mentioned above). Then personally send it to the UK with registered mail, as others have said, with regular follow up calls to HMRC. There are usually a few months of PAYE being paid until HMRC issues a No Tax NT code and refunds the UK tax. It is not possible to get an advance NT code. There is a lengthy separate thread all about FFI….

Apologies if I’ve misunderstood….

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Hi George, thank you for looking at this.

I don’t think you have misunderstood, from what you say I think it’s HMRC.

OH has been resident and paying tax here since 2018, with no UK income since then. No UK rent, no UK capital gains, no UK earnings and no UK pensions in payment currently. (Amended below.)

We do a joint French tax return.

I’ll let him know this, very interesting.

ETA: Apologies, I just remembered that he does have one small UK occupational pension coming in (below the level of the personal allowance), paid in sterling to a UK bank account and declared here since 2022. Maybe that’s part of the problem.

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Hi Jennifer, what I would do is two things:-

  1. File an FFI for the UK pension already in payment. It is exempt from UK tax (assuming it is not a government service pension) under the pensions article of the UK France tax treaty. This should ultimately generate at least a partial, if not full refund of UK tax withheld..The thread below explains exactly how to go about filing the FFi, which in substance is a formal claim under the treaty for UK exemption for the pension.

  1. If they’ve been sending him UK returns, if I was your husband I would consider alerting HMRC (using the link below) to the fact that he has been French resident and non UK resident since 2018. He has no taxable sources or income or gains in the UK, other than income which is already exempt from UK tax under the pensions article of the UK France tax treaty (and any additional pensions will be exempt once Form France Individual is in place). They should then remove him from self assessment going forward - ie no obligation to file UK returns going forwards unless his circumstances change significantly…

  2. Self Assessment tax returns: If you no longer need to send a tax return - GOV.UK

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