France doesn’t bankrupt expat retirees with high prices. It does it with rules.
And those rules are not hidden. They’re all written into French law.
But almost nobody talks about them until it’s too late, and most of the people they hit are Americans, Brits, Canadians, Australians who did their homework on everything except these.
In this article you will discover 5 of those peculiar things in France that might hurt your finances. The first one shows up in winter. The second can take away your right to drive, one year after you arrive.
The next hands the government a big chunk of cash before you’ve even unpacked. One came out of Parliament just months ago, and it’s aimed at people exactly like you and your loved ones.
Some of these cost you a few hundred euros a year. Some cost you tens of thousands the day you move in. And the worst one can cost your family six figures, even if you did everything else right.
Every one of them has a fix, but the fix only works if you know about it early enough. So in this article I will show them to you from the least painful to the most dangerous.
Let’s start with the cheapest mistake. Sort of.
#5 — The Winter Bill
When you check for French properties online, the listing images and scheduled visits are very often in June. Almost nobody checks that same French stone house in January. Have you ever wondered why?
Every home in France gets an energy score called the DPE, short for diagnostic de performance énergétique. Think of it as a report card for how much energy the house eats. It goes from A, the best, to G, the worst.
And the houses retirees fall in love with, the old stone ones in the Dordogne, the Lot, Brittany and Normandy, are usually E, F or G.
Most of them were built before 1948, and many had no insulation at all. Add single-glazed windows, a bare roof, and a tired oil boiler from the 1980s, and most of the heat goes out through the roof.
Now, to be fair, the DPE is a theory. It assumes you keep the house at a constant 19°C (66F) during winter.
Actual bills are often much lower, up to 50 percent, because people in these houses turn the heat down. Which sounds reassuring, until you realize the “savings” come from wearing a coat indoors.
So let’s take a stone house of 150 square meters (1,600 square feet), rated F or G, and see what would be the costs for an entire year.
With an old oil boiler, you can pay as much as €5,700 a year, or $6,500. Electric heaters would save just a bit, up to €5,200.
Gas, if you’re lucky enough to have it: €2,700, but gas prices are going up again this autumn. Heating with logs or pellets puts costs below €1,400, but this kind of heating is heavily regulated.
Of course there is the alternative of installing a modern heat pump, which would put the heating costs as low as heating with logs, but… A heat pump would cost at least €18,000 to be installed.
A serious renovation that moves a G house toward a D costs somewhere between €30,000 and €70,000. And stone walls have to breathe, so if you seal them with the wrong material, you trap moisture inside the masonry.
There is a government grant called MaPrimeRénov’, and it depends on how you use the house and what you earn. The house generally has to be your main home, lived in at least eight months a year, so second homes are mostly out.
And the grant shrinks as income grows. A couple earning more than about €32,000 (an amount similar to the US social security checks) is already in the top band, the one that gets the least grants.
Meanwhile, the rules around these houses are getting tighter. All homes with G class on the DPE were banned from new leases in January 2025, F homes follow in 2028, and E homes in 2034.
You can still live in your G house – but not rent it to someone else. And even if this restriction does not matter because you are buying a house to live, not to rent, be ready for the heating costs.
I have been living in Europe for almost 10 years already, while my brother lives in Texas. When I tell him how much heating costs here in a “historical” property, he thinks I am exaggerating – it is more expensive than the Texan mind can comprehend.
So take care of good insulation in older properties – during winter, you will thank me for that.
The next one doesn’t cost much money, but it costs a lot of time.
#4 — The Driving Deadline
You can drive in France on your foreign licence. For one year. Then, overnight, you can’t.
If you hold a US licence, or any other licence from outside the EU, it’s valid for one year after you become a normal resident of France. After that year, there’s no grace period.
France has separate deals with individual US states. Yes, state by state! If your state is on the Interior Ministry’s list, you can swap your licence for a French one without taking any test.
Florida, Texas, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Virginia and a handful of others are on it. But California, New York, New Jersey, Washington, Arizona and several more are not.
Take a couple from Sacramento, retiring to a town in the Dordogne. The supermarket is a drive away. The train station is a drive away. Their year runs out, and now neither of them can legally take the car.
If your state is on the list, the exchange costs just €40, and it takes around 4 months to process.
If your state is not on the licence swap list, you’re going back to driving school. That means the French theory test, called the code, at €30 per attempt, then the road test.
A driving school package can cost as much as €2,500, about $2,850. And in busy areas, waiting up to six months for a test slot is normal.
There is also another issue: the licence exchange usually means you hand over your US licence to obtain the French licence, so you can’t keep both.
For the Brits, the story is different. If your UK photocard was first issued before January 2021, it’s treated like an EU licence, and you can drive on it until it expires.
But if it was first issued in 2021 or later, you’re in the same boat as the Americans: one year, then exchange or exams.
Some Americans try to get around this by establishing residence in a US state that is on the swap list and getting that state’s licence before they move to France. But… France can refuse a licence if they think you did that.
And I tell you all that because freedom in rural France comes with four wheels. Without a car, many parts of the countryside become a very pretty prison.
So both this problem and the previous one are linked to one of the worst issues in France: bureaucracy. The visa, the licence exchange, the health registration.
#3 — The Tax You Pay With Your Keys
Imagine you buy a €300,000 house, about $343,000. But to buy that house, you must write a check of at least €323,600. And almost nobody finds that strange.
In France, every property purchase comes with what everyone calls frais de notaire, notary fees. A notary is a public official who handles the sale and collects the taxes for the state.
And the name is misleading – of all that value, just a small part (€3,000 in our €300,000 house example) goes to the notary. The rest is tax. More specifically, transfer tax.
Think of it as a toll the government charges every time an existing house changes hands.
And a new law allowed French departments, France’s version of counties, to raise their tax share by half a point until 2028, and almost 90 of them did it. So the transfer tax is now about 6.3 percent in most of the country.
On an old house in one of those departments, at €300,000, the full notary package is about €23,600. That’s close to $27,000, about the price of a Toyota Corolla. At €500,000, it’s about €38,400, around $43,800.
There is a break for first-time buyers of a main home: the extra half-point is waived. But if you own, or ever owned, a house in the US or any other country, you’re not considered a first-time buyer in France.
And some costs don’t appear on the notary’s invoice. First, the real estate agent, who often has commissions as high as 8%. On €300,000, that’s up to €24,000.
Second, the septic tank. Many older houses aren’t connected to the sewer system and have their own tank, which gets inspected as part of the sale. If it fails inspection, the repair can reach €20,000.
Third, the yearly property tax, the taxe foncière. The bill can be around €2,000 a year.
And if you keep your home back in the States and treat France as a second home, there’s a residence tax too. In areas with tight housing markets, the town can add a surcharge of up to 60 percent on top.
There are some ways to pay less. Property taxes and transfer taxes vary by department, so choosing one with lower tax burden (often those with a more rural aspect) will reduce expenses.
You can also negotiate the agent’s commission and ensure an inspection before purchase to avoid surprises. And the good news is that there’s no surcharge for foreigners, so a French buyer pays exactly what you pay.
So when you see all those attractive prices of houses in countryside France, it is often without those extra expenses. But now, thanks to The Expat, you know about them!
However… about the next trap we will show you, nobody, not even the French government, can tell you yet what it costs.
#2 — The New Health Charge
“Healthcare in France is free for residents.”
Maybe you heard that on YouTube a dozen times. As of this year, it’s officially out of date.
At the end of 2025, France passed its social-security budget for 2026, with a new rule inside it called Article 53. It applies if you live in France legally, but don’t work or pay French social charges.
You now have to pay a contribution to get PUMa, France’s public health coverage for residents. Stop paying, and your coverage can be suspended.
This is especially important for expat retirees (and honestly, I think it is fair that people who recently arrived and never contributed, pay to use the system).
To justify the law, lawmakers mentioned a “loophole”: foreigners on visitor visas, often Americans, using the French health system after 3 months without paying any French taxes.
And the worst part… nobody knows yet how much it will cost. The amount will be set by a government decree that still hasn’t been published. Some insurers guess a few hundred euros a year, but nothing is official.
For the Brits, things are different, because if you’re at UK state-pension age, you can register what’s called an S1 form. Then the UK stays responsible for your healthcare and reimburses France.
Americans don’t have an S1 equivalent, so they are not that lucky.
Even if Article 53 ends up modest, two other health bills are already certain.
First, private insurance that you need to have to obtain your visa. The consulate wants a long-stay policy with at least €30,000 of cover. That usually costs up to €2,000 per person per year, about $2,280, and more at older ages, until you’re accepted into PUMa.
Second, the mutuelle, the top-up insurance, which covers the gap between the healthcare prices and what PUMa covers, plus dental care. For a couple in their early sixties, mid-range cover might cost around €2,640 a year. Over 80, up to €4,320.
A common mistake is keeping a big US policy “just in case,” on top of PUMa and a mutuelle. That’s paying for three healthcare systems!
Once your French health card arrives, PUMa, a mutuelle and the new contribution are enough.
French healthcare is still good value. It’s just no longer a free lunch.
The next and last trap, however, is much worse. It waits until you’re gone, and then it sends the bill to the people you love.
#1 — The 60 Percent Rule
You’ve lived together for twenty years. Same house, same dog, same grandkids. Still, in France, for tax purposes, your partner could be treated like a stranger off the street.
The reason is French inheritance tax. Differently from the US, France taxes each heir separately, and the rate depends on how closely you’re related.
Your spouse, or your civil partner, pays nothing in inheritance taxes. Your children each get a €100,000 allowance, then pay on a sliding scale up to 45%.
But an unmarried partner or a stepchild has a tiny tax-free allowance of just €1,594. Anything above that is taxed at 60%. 60% of any inheritance lost to taxes.
France did change something this year. A new law gave some stepchildren a bigger allowance, almost €16,000, if you raised them.
The rules are strict: you had to be married to their parent, and you had to support them for at least five years in childhood, or ten years in total. A stepchild who met you as an adult doesn’t qualify.
And still, the rate above the allowance is that outrageous 60%. On a €500,000 inheritance, the new rule saves only about €8,600.
And there’s a second layer. France has forced heirship, the réserve héréditaire. A fixed slice of your estate legally belongs to your children. With one child, half. With two, two-thirds. With three or more, three-quarters.
You can only freely give away what’s left. If you die as a French tax resident, the French government considers your worldwide estate.
It gets more complicated when we talk about the blended family. A man with two children from his first marriage, a new partner he never married and a house in France is walking into the 60 percent rate and forced heirship at the same time.
His partner can only receive the free share of the estate. And then she pays 60 percent on it.
An even better example: a couple in their sixties, with two adult children, a €500,000 house in France and $1 million in investments in the US.
If the couple is married, there is no inheritance tax once one of them passes away. At the second death, the two children split the estate, and their combined tax is about €239,000, almost $273,000.
Now, if this same couple is neither married nor in a PACS (which is the French civil union contract), things get ugly. The partner can get only one third, about €459,000, and her tax is €274,000.
And the children still need to pay €140,000 on their share. Together, more than €400,000 of taxes!
And the blended family? Leave the €500,000 house to a stepchild you never adopted, and the tax is €299,000, almost $341,000. Your own child, on the same house, would pay just €78,000. A gap of more than €210,000.
And your US investments are not safe either. If you pass away living in France, the French government can tax those investments in your children’s hands too. On that $1 million account, it is around €130,000 for the two of them.
The US and France do have an estate-tax treaty, but it mostly prevents double taxation.
For British people, there’s one extra door. France applies an EU rule that lets you choose the law of your nationality in your will. A clear choice of English, Scottish or Northern Irish law is respected, so forced heirship doesn’t rewrite your will.
But… you can choose who gets what, but the tax stays the same. An unmarried partner still pays 60 percent.
Now, the solutions. The simplest one is marriage: a surviving spouse pays nothing.
In a blended family, you use the free share of the estate, life insurance, and gifts, so your children from the first marriage aren’t cut out when the second spouse dies. Or PACS (civil union), plus a will.
Then there’s the assurance-vie, a French life-insurance savings product. Money paid in before age 70 lets each beneficiary receive almost €153,000 before tax. It’s the most common tool for a partner or stepchild.
You can also give each child €100,000 tax-free every 15 years while you’re alive. Or you can split the house, keep the right to live there for life, while your children own the walls.
The good news is that, with the right paperwork done early enough, your family can avoid most of this bill.
But there’s still one big question I haven’t answered: why would you want to live in France in the first place? What’s really good about it, and what isn’t? I’ve put the main pros and cons in another article, so read it next.
And if France is on your shortlist, the full written report is on our Patreon. More than 1,800 people have already joined to save money and avoid headaches.
Levi Borba is the founder of expatriateconsultancy.com, creator of the YouTube channel The Expat, and a best-selling author. Some of the links in our articles may be affiliated links, meaning the author earns a small commission if you make a purchase.
