Check your French taxe foncière bill (2026 guide)

If you own a house or an apartment in France, you have just received, or are about to receive, your 2026 taxe foncière bill. Most owners pay it without reading it. Yet the amount rests on a description of your property that the tax administration recorded once, often decades ago, and has never checked since. This guide explains where the figure comes from, why it is so often wrong, and how to get it corrected, including from abroad.

What taxe foncière is, and who pays it

Taxe foncière is the annual property tax owed by whoever owns a built property on 1 January. It is due whether the home is your main residence, a second home, a rental or an empty property. Non-resident owners pay exactly the same tax, on the same basis, as French residents.

The bill, called the avis de taxe foncière, arrives at the end of August or in September, on paper or in your personal space on impots.gouv.fr. Payment is due in mid-October. It should not be confused with the taxe d'habitation, which since 2023 applies only to second homes, nor with the new tax on vacant homes that takes effect in 2027. We cover both in a companion guide: owning a second home in France, the taxes you pay in 2026 and 2027.

How the bill is calculated

The tax is not based on the market value of your property. It is based on its valeur locative cadastrale, an administrative estimate of the annual rent the property would have produced on the rental market of 1970, the year of the last general revision. That value is reduced by a flat 50% allowance for expenses, then multiplied by the rate voted by your commune and its intercommunal body.

The rule. Taxable base = cadastral rental value × 50%. Tax = taxable base × local rates. Every year, the State also applies a national revaluation coefficient to all rental values: +0.8% for 2026.

The rate is public and identical for every property in the commune. You cannot contest it. What you can contest is the rental value of your own property, because it depends entirely on how your home was described to the administration.

Why so many bills are overstated

When a property is built, the owner or the builder files a declaration describing it: surface area, number of rooms, comfort features, outbuildings. The administration then classifies the property into one of eight categories and calculates a weighted surface which is the real basis of the tax. Nobody comes to inspect the property, and there is no obligation to update the declaration afterwards.

Three mechanisms explain most of the errors we see:

• Fictitious square metres. Comfort features are converted into additional surface area. A bath adds 5 m² to the weighted surface, a shower 4 m², running water 4 m², a washbasin 3 m², mains drainage 3 m², and central heating adds 2 m² per heated room. These figures are not physical floor space, but they are taxed as if they were, and they stay on file even after the fixtures have been replaced or removed.
• An outdated condition coefficient. A new property typically receives a coefficient that adds around 20% to its weighted surface. As the property ages, that coefficient should fall. It rarely does, because nobody asks.
• Outbuildings and gardens. Garages, cellars, parking spaces and gardens are frequent sources of error: a garden recorded as built space, an outbuilding counted twice, a garage that no longer exists. In one case handled by Orka.tax, a garden attached to an apartment had been treated as built property; the owner recovered €1,600 covering six years.

Among more than 1,600 cases analysed by Orka.tax to date, 87% of bills were overvalued, by an average of €260 per property and per year. The French rules behind these calculations are detailed, in French, in our guide to the calculation of taxe foncière and in the article on fictitious square metres.

How to check your own bill

Step 1: get the assessment sheet. The document that contains every parameter used for your property is the fiche d'évaluation cadastrale, form 6675. You can request it free of charge through the secure messaging service of your personal space on impots.gouv.fr. Ask for the "fiche d'évaluation" of each property, outbuildings included: a cellar or a parking space has its own sheet.

Step 2: read it against reality. Compare the number of rooms, the surface, the comfort features and the condition coefficient with your property as it is today. Reading the sheet takes some practice: the weighted surface is often twice the real one, which is normal in itself, and the question is whether each component is justified.

Step 3: get an order of magnitude first. Orka.tax offers a free simulator that asks for your commune, surface, condition and comfort features, and returns in about 60 seconds an estimate of what you should be paying. It does not tell you whether your bill is wrong; it tells you whether the gap is worth investigating.

How to claim a refund

If the sheet contains an error, you can file a claim (réclamation) with the tax administration. Two things decide its outcome.

The deadline. A claim against a taxe foncière bill is admissible until 31 December of the year following the one in which the tax was assessed. A claim filed before the end of 2026 can therefore cover 2026 and 2025.

The evidence. You must prove the error. To dispute a surface area, you need a properly established floor plan. To dispute a fixture, a photograph is generally accepted: a shower instead of a bath, for instance. Having already paid the tax does not prevent a refund.

The standard rule allows a refund for the current year and the previous one. Where the error is attributable to the administration, you can request four additional years under a discretionary extension (délai gracieux), which can bring the period covered to six years. The tax office does not grant it in every case, but it should always be asked for.

What Orka.tax does. The simulation is free. The complete analysis of one property, outbuildings included, costs €78 including VAT: we obtain the official assessment sheet on your behalf, rebuild the rental value parameter by parameter, and deliver your result, the real amount of your property tax, together with the claim file ready to be submitted. You file it yourself, from your impots.gouv.fr space, and you remain the signatory. No commission on the refund, no subscription.

What if the tax office says no

A refusal is not the end of the process. You can first refer the matter to the conciliateur fiscal départemental, a conciliator available in every department, and then, if necessary, to the administrative court. In practice, refusals almost always come down to a lack of evidence, which is why the assessment sheet, plans and photographs matter more than the argument itself. The steps of a claim are described, in French, in our guide to contesting taxe foncière.

A note for owners living abroad

Nothing in this process requires you to be in France. The assessment sheet is requested online, the claim is filed online, and the tax administration answers in writing in your personal space. If you own a second home, correcting its rental value also reduces the taxe d'habitation on second homes, because both taxes rest on the same value.

Key points

• Taxe foncière is calculated on a 1970-based rental value, not on the market value of your property.
• The description behind that value is recorded at construction and almost never updated: fictitious square metres, an outdated condition coefficient and misrecorded outbuildings are the usual errors.
• The assessment sheet (fiche 6675) is free and available through impots.gouv.fr.
• A claim filed before 31 December covers the current and the previous year, and up to six years in total when the administration is at fault.
• Everything can be done from abroad, online.

The rate is voted; you cannot change it. The description of your home is a file; you can.