News Digest: French Tax Changes for 2025 & Send Us Your Residency Questions

 If your summer vacation plans involve train travel in France, it’s time to start planning! SNCF, France’s national railway, will be releasing tickets for its sought-after summer holiday period tomorrow – Wednesday, 12th March. The best offers, which typically include routes on the low-cost Ouigo services and TGV InOui and Intercités services to other French/European cities (starting from €39), are likely to sell out quickly, so we recommend booking as soon as possible. Purchase your tickets via the SNCF site here.

Not sure where you want to travel to? Popular routes within France include the high-speed TGV InOui connections from Paris-Lyon, Paris-Montpellier et Paris-Marseille, while international departures from Paris include Geneva and Lausanne in Switzerland, Milan and Turin in Italy, Stuttgart, Fribourg, and Europapark in Germany, Brussels in Belgium, and Luxembourg.

We’re just a few weeks away from tax season in France and while we don’t have the full list of dates and deadlines yet (watch this space!), we can confirm a few changes on the horizon for 2025. Firstly, the recently agreed upon 2025 Budget included some inflation-related adjustments to the tax-free allowance and tax bands that will apply to your 2025 French tax return (tax levied on income earned in 2024).

Here are the new tax bands for 2025:

• Up to €11,497:0% tax rate
• From €11,498 to €29,315: 11% tax rate
• From €29,316 to €83,823: 30% tax rate
• From €83,824 to €189,294: 41% tax rate
• More than €189,294: 45% tax rate

Other tax-saving rules that will apply to 2024 income include tax reductions of up to 75% for charity donations up to €1,000 under the ‘couluche’ scheme (read more about that here) and a tax exemption for cash gifts made to close family members for the purpose of a first-time home purchase or energy-efficient home renovations (read more about that here). The tax exemption for tips for hospitality workers and other select service providers (hairdressers, taxi drivers, etc) has also been extended through 2025 (read more about that here).

For our next free webinar, I’ll be joined by Fabien Pelissier of Fab Expat, and we want your questions! Send me your questions on French long-stay visas, carte de séjours, health insurance, and anything else related to visas and residency in France, and I’ll put them to Fab during our hour-long webinar in a couple of weeks.

Email me at [email protected].

Register now to secure your place on the free webinar!

How to get a French Visa in 2025

Thursday 27th March 2025, 4:00 pm London  / 5:00 pm Paris