What makes you a tax resident of France?

The common mistake is to treat France as a 183-day country with footnotes. It is closer to the reverse: the criteria sit in the alternative, so satisfying a single one makes you resident and the others become irrelevant.

The foyer is where your family — spouse or partner and children — habitually lives, even if your work takes you elsewhere. Someone working abroad while their household stays in France can be French resident on this ground alone, with very few days in the country.

The main place of stay is the day-count route. The official wording is more than six months in a given year — close to but not identical with 183 days, which is why both figures circulate. Where there is no settled home, spending more time in France than in any other single country can also be enough.

Main professional activity looks at where you principally carry on your occupation, salaried or not, judged by time devoted to it unless that produces no clear answer.

Centre of economic interests is where your principal investments are, where you manage your assets, or where you draw the majority of your income.

Two further statutory limbs are easy to miss: State agents serving abroad who are not subject to a personal tax in the host country, and — since a 2019 change — directors of large French-headquartered companies above a turnover threshold.

Of the four, the foyer catches the most people out, because it does not depend on you. A posting abroad, a rotational job, or a period of work in another country does not necessarily move your tax residence if the household stays put.

That also means the question cannot be answered by counting alone. A day record shows whether the main-place-of-stay route is engaged; it says nothing about the other three.

France is in the Schengen Area, so a visitor without a residence permit is also subject to the 90/180 immigration limit. The two are unrelated: 90 days is an immigration ceiling for the whole area, while French tax residency is decided on the criteria above, in France alone.

Someone with a residence permit is outside the 90/180 cap entirely and squarely inside the tax rules — which is the combination most likely to produce an unexpected residency.

• impots.gouv.fr — Résident de France
• BOFiP — Domicile fiscal (BOI-IR-CHAMP-10)