and…? 
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Your quote (my underlining):
which means - you have to be resident - and before 31st December to boot! Nothing is said about just being an owner of a French property and paying French taxes… You might want to move but that is not sufficient in the context of your quote. You have to have moved to France by that cut off date to qualify.
ps thank you so much for your posting in bold… you obviously knew that I had an eye intervention earlier in the week and it helped a lot 
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Lesley
I do hope you manage to move yourself permanently into your holiday home… before the end of December.
Here are some of the steps you need to take to prove you intend your move to be permanent… get on with them before 31st December 2020
You’ll need to change the house insurance policy from Maison Secondaire to Residence Principale
Get yourself a French bank account… and if you already have one… tell your Bank you are now here permanently and they will change your designation in their files.
Also, you will need your French chequebook to carry your French address
Contact the French property tax folk to tell them that your home is no longer Maison Secondaire
Make sure all your utilities only carry the French address
Make contact with CPAM to start on the road to joining the Health Care
Put your name clearly on your letterbox
Re-register your car… (at least get started, as it can take a little while to complete)
Take out French Car Insurance
contact UK DWP to say you are moving now and to ask for S1 (if such is available to you.)
All the above can be done between now and the end of this year… 31/12/2020
Next year you will be doing a French Income Declaration around May
and with everything done in the correct time frame… you can apply for your Residency card any time before the end of June 2021… yippee
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And send in form P85 to tell HMRC that you are moving abroad, so the split year tax treatment can be put in place.
Taking advantage of the rules means moving here before 31/12/20. The French are being remarkably generous about the situation, requiring very little. But were you to be point blank asked the question in your interview “were you fully resident in France before the 31st December 2020?” what would you reply? Saying we paid taxes on our holiday home in 2020 would not get you very far!
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If you read the GOV website, it clearly indicates that we have until the 30th of June 2021 to apply and until October 2021 to move.
The only reason we are not there now is due to Covid, we had planned to take early retirement this year. We have a small business over here which we can easily do from our house in France.
Hopefully covid permitting for what it’s worth to you all on here we plan to move in December to enable us to apply and keep our business running as we close for two weeks over Xmas. So we do plan to apply legally. But as I have said we have owned our house, which is furnished for 18 years and have paid all of the taxes etc that we needed to. So why shouldn’t we be able to get residency?
Anyway, I’m out of this conversation now.
Happy Xmas and New year to you all! Let’s hold 2021 is better than 2020! 
Thanks Stella,
Hopefully it will all work out Covid allowing.
There is word that the dates may extended due to the pandemic, but hopefully next year we will be fully settled in France!
It’s been our dream for years!
Reading UK information is a bit one sided. What you actually need to read is the French regulations which are completely clear about the cut off date here (other countries may differ).
And as to why you shouldn’t get residency if you arrive after 31/12 - please! You have obviously missed some of the essentials of Brexit.
And you have had over 4 years to plan this.
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Lesley, I wish you all the best with your plans.
I sincerely hope that you manage to arrive in France permanently before 31/12/2020, if you don’t you will not have the ‘Withdrawal Agreement’ rights and it will be more difficult to gain residency.
Its all about being here before the 31/12, owning a holiday home here for 18 years will unfortunately not make any difference to your rights
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Unfortunately, many people think owning a house in France gives you the same status and rights as permanent residents although the French government have been very clear all along ; it isn’t the same. Having a holiday home in France gives you the same rights as any other foreign tourist, it’s just easier because you don’t have to book your accommodation! 
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Because it doesn’t just depend on owning a house, there is the actual living in it that is taken into account. We are very keen on bureaucracy.
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Please keep it civil!
Everyone has a right to voice their opinion it’s called a democracy!
I happen to be disabled and find comments like this less than helpful!
Would you say it to my face or a man! Nope I don’t think so!
Be kind!!! Message of 2020
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I know how the stuff the ssystdm is believe me!
We cut a very damaged and dangerous tree out from our garden, a French guy in the hamlet where we live is trying to claim that it was on his boarder and had taken us to court with an ancient law from 1814, code civil 670!
Of course as we are second home owners we cannot get legal protection through our insurance company ( Credit Arricole) and have had to employ an Advocate to get this whole debacle sorted for us! The other guy is covered by his insurance! We lost the first round but the judge didn’t believe we knew anything about it! We didn’t and he ordered all the documents to be served in English, thank god he was on the ball!
We had a date for Nov 12th but Covid cancelled that!
3 years ago we cut this tree down! Our man said he has never been to court to defend such a thing!
Luckily we are keen photographers and have so many photos from when we bought it in 2003 to present day to prove its in our land!
But how many people know about this ancient law about trees on boundaries?
Unfortunately Jane our plans to move were curtailed 3 years ago when I was made disabled in an accident.
If it hadn’t of happened we would have been all signed up and living there now!
We moved to France 18 months ago to ensure we were here without any doubt before the deadlines kicked in - and I thought we were cutting it fine.
I am puzzled by people leaving it to the absolute last minute (and beyond) prior to moving to France.
I would be very wary of what has been agreed in the Withdrawal Agreement as the UK government is already proposing to overrule parts of the agreement it sees fit to - I can’t see why EU (or in this case France) should not reciprocate.
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Of course as we are second home owners we cannot get legal protection through our insurance company ( Credit Arricole)
That doesn’t sound right.
You are getting your dates muddled.
If you want to claim residential rights you need to be physically resident before 31.12 20.
You then have until July 2021 to apply for a card. This date also applies to all of us already here.
The October 2021 date is the point at which French authorities will be able to start requesting to see your card.
The three month time lag is presumably to give the issuing prefectures time to hand out the last batch of cards.
I understand that you feel you have been ‘paying your taxes’ but TF and Tax d’hab are the equivalent to rates / council tax so no, you are not ‘a French tax payer’ in the sense of income / business / corporation tax etc etc.
So, like everyone else has said, you need to be tax residents before 31 December 2020 if you want to benefit from the withdrawal agreement terms. Good luck!
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Thank you for you best wishes Peter, we are doing all we can to be honest to get it all done, my disability doesn’t help. We hope to get all our ducks lined up if possible. If not we will have to apply like any other non EU person.
We have had a bank account for many years as we pay all of our bills by DD, water, electric, taxes etc.
Like I’ve said we have always been honest by declaring that our house is furnished! If it wasn’t we wouldn’t pay much at all.
Fingers crossed we can keep to our plan A which is to retire to our house. Brexit and Covid might mean a plan B but we will cross that bridge when or if it comes.
That was exactly what we were told by the Bank Manager!
Legal protection is an add on policy, perhaps it’s just our bank that doesn’t offer it to second home owners who don’t live in them permanently?
Yes it is an add on policy. We were insured with CA for many years when our flat was our second home, and we just paid the extra premium to have it.
(Edit: thinking back I seem to recall it was more expensive as we were non-resident, but still available if we wanted it.)
I have deleted my post which was flagged and hidden,yet bizarrely also liked by some. In answer to the questions I would have said it to your face,I would have said it if you were a man but I wouldn’t have said it if I had known you were disabled and for that I apologise
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