Hello, I’m looking for advice please.
I purchased my first French property in the Pays de la Loire in April to use as a holiday home.
I’ve set up all the utilities with the various providers but have yet to find out conclusively what I have to do to pay my taxe fonciere and taxe d’habitation as a non resident.
Neighbours say I just wait to be contacted by post but others I asked said I need to create an account on the government tax website. I didn’t see a way to do that without a tax reference as a resident though.
Help appreciated please.
Some friends are in the same situation as you, they bought last year and haven’t heard from the tax people yet.
The friends even went to the local tax office and they said that a bill will be sent in October. They said that the taxe fonciere balance for the rest of 2024 would have been paid to the previous owner when the purchase was finalised with the notaire.
I assume the notaire or the agent tells the tax people about new ownership? Our friends forgot to ask that.
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Our first bill came in the post last year and we used the details on that to open our online account. We didn’t have to do anything specific as they’re informed as part of the legalities of the sale process.
You could check with notaire that they have done the necessary property registration.
I wouldn’t worry, they are pretty good in France in working out who owes what. 30 odd years ago after a visit, I left Fran here alone to water new hedge plants and bought her a tv from a supermarket. Never gave it a thought but we were charged a tv tax the next time round, obviously the shop had automatically informed the impots. 
Completely agree with the advice from others on the thread. The first Impôts contact we had after buying our house (as non residents) was a short questionnaire from the local tax office, sent many months after the purchase, to our house in the UK. That is one thing you can ask your notaire to ensure that the Impôts know to send communications to your UK address (assuming that’s where you normally live) ie that the communication(s) are not sitting getting mouldy, unanswered, in your French house letter box (which is probably the default place to send them ).
They wanted to know very basic details like the size of the house in m2. Eventually a bill appeared for Year 2 (Year 1 having been paid by the vendor/our share of Year 1 taxes reimbursed by us at the completion of the purchase.)
Being a tax adviser, I got a bit concerned at the long delay between purchase and any substantive communication from the tax office. I even called them up from the UK to ask if there was anything I could do to expedite matters. They seemed amused and puzzled at my impatience to get embedded in the taxe d’habitation/foncière system!
As others have said, assuming the notaire has done their work, your details will have been passed to the relevant part of the Impôts for processing…you just have to be more patient than I was!
Best of luck
Hi,
Like you I purchased my property this June and all this years Tax was part of the total costs of the sale as my Notaire confirmed this.
He also did the registration so that I get my bill next year when its due. I was told that when I got this I needed to setup an online account so it was easier to pay each year.
Not sure how you do it as a non-resident as I purchased mine in order to move over to France and it would be my primary home.
My advice would also be make sure you go and introduce yourself to the mairie. We did so when we first bought our house and it was a holiday home. The conversation was in not very good French but they were very kind and since then we have always been greeted with politeness and they even google translated an early email they sent us (regarding the swimming pool completion process we had missed)
They took some contact details etc in case of emergency or otherwise, it surprised us that many of our friends here have not done so.
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Best to visit a bank branch, show some docs proving you’ve bought the property, and ask to open a Non-Resident account.
You can use Wise to pay Euro bills but a direct debit to people like EDF and the tax foncier will be most reliable . Wise’s IBAN is Belgian and no provider in France is supposed to get sniffy about other European IBANs but I think EDF does. Hence my suggestion of setting up a French bank account in a branch you could call on personally if you get stuck, feeding it with Wise and setting up direct debits on the French account for bills when they come through.
You’ll also get billed for taxe d’habitation until it becomes your main home - and then if you inform your bank at that time your bank account will be reclassified to Resident.