Your First French Income Tax Return After Moving from the US

Your first return is filed the spring after the year you arrive

If you move to France and become a French tax resident in year N, your first French income tax return is filed in year N+1, during the annual filing campaign. The French tax year is the calendar year, so a move in the summer of one year means a first return the following spring.

The exact dates are set every year and differ by department, grouped into zones. As an example of how the calendar works, in the 2026 campaign (covering 2025 income) the online service opened on 9 April 2026, and the deadlines were as follows.

• Paper returns: Tuesday 19 May 2026 at 11:59 pm, including for French residents abroad, with the postmark date being decisive
• Online, zone 1: Thursday 21 May 2026, for departments 1 to 19 and for non-residents
• Online, zone 2: Thursday 28 May 2026, for departments 2A to 54, including Corsica
• Online, zone 3: Thursday 4 June 2026, for departments 55 to 95 and beyond

Start by fixing the date your French tax residency began

Before you can fill in anything, you need the date your French tax domicile began. That date divides the year: income before it is taxed as a non-resident (French-source income only), and income after it is taxed as a resident (worldwide income).

Under the impots.gouv.fr guidance, your tax domicile is in France if any one of these criteria is met; you do not need to meet all of them. Your household (spouse or PACS partner, and children) lives in France habitually; failing a household, your main place of stay is in France; you carry on your main professional activity in France; or the center of your economic interests is in France, meaning your main investments, the seat of your business, or the place you draw most of your income from. The full tests are set out in our guide to French tax residency.

The United States can also treat you as its resident under its own rules. In a genuine dual-residency conflict, the France–US tax treaty’s tie-breaker rules, not French domestic law alone, decide which country prevails for treaty purposes.

The arrival year is split at your arrival date

For the calendar year you arrive, the rules for French tax residents apply only to income from the period of French residency. Your worldwide-income obligation runs from your arrival date through 31 December; before that date, only French-source income is within French tax.

Pre-arrival French-source income and post-arrival worldwide income are combined into one taxable total for the year. The effective-rate mechanism (taux effectif) can bring certain pre-arrival or exempt foreign income into the calculation solely to set your marginal rate, without taxing it twice, though it generally does not apply to income earned while you were not a French tax resident.

Your first return is usually on paper

Filing online requires an existing tax number (numéro fiscal) and an account in your espace particulier on impots.gouv.fr, which new arrivals generally do not yet have. The tax authority lists declaring your income and/or assets in France for the first time as a situation where you must file a paper return, form 2042. Guidance for people moving to France says the same: the year after your arrival, you declare your income online or, failing that, on paper by sending a form 2042 to the tax service of your new home in France.

Paper forms can be downloaded from impots.gouv.fr, or requested from your Service des Impôts des Particuliers or a Maison France Services if you have no printer. You file the completed return at your SIP or send it by post to the SIP covering your new French address.

Your numéro fiscal and your numéro d’accès en ligne come out of that first filing. The online access number appears on the first page of your last tax return, and with it and your fiscal number you create your online account for later years.

The forms an American usually needs

France taxes by tax household (foyer fiscal), not individually. Once resident, married couples and PACS partners file a single joint return covering all household income and receive one combined tax assessment. That return is built from these forms.

Form 2042déclaration des revenus

The base income tax return, required for everyone, on paper or as the base of the online return

Form 2042-Cdéclaration complémentaire

The complementary return, for items such as foreign professional income, certain credits, and the taux effectif lines for income exempt in France but used to set your rate

Form 2047revenus de source étrangère

Required if you are domiciled in France and have foreign-source income to declare, such as US wages, self-employment income, pensions, interest or dividends received after you became resident; attached to the 2042

Form 3916 / 3916-biscomptes à l’étranger

The declaration of bank accounts and digital-asset accounts held abroad, filed at the same time as your income return

Every foreign account goes on form 3916

Form 3916 covers each foreign bank, brokerage or life-insurance-type account, including ordinary US bank and investment accounts, and foreign digital-asset accounts on the 3916-bis. The obligation applies even if the account produced no taxable income, and it covers accounts you held, opened, used or closed during the year. It is filed every year an account is open.

The penalty for not filing is €1,500 per undeclared account, rising to €10,000 for accounts held in states without an anti-fraud agreement with France. Reporting the same accounts to the US is a separate obligation, covered in our guide to FBAR and FATCA.

Where the tax treaty touches year one

The 1994 France–US income tax convention, as amended, can change how pre- and post-arrival income is actually taxed. Two provisions matter to people mid-move.

• Short stays: wages a US resident earns for work in France can be taxable only in the US if the stay does not exceed 183 days in total, among other conditions. This matters mainly for work in France before the move became permanent; it does not exempt wages earned after you have relocated and become a French tax resident
• Government wages: pay, other than pensions, from government service is taxable only by the country that pays it, which is relevant if you are a US federal employee or similar

Ending your US state tax residency is a separate job

No federal law ends state tax residency when you move abroad, and there is no exit process: each state applies its own tax code, and the burden of proving you changed domicile is on you. States distinguish residence (where you are physically present) from domicile (your permanent home, the place you intend to return to). You can hold several residences but only one domicile, and moving abroad does not by itself end it.

Some states also use a statutory residency test based on day counts, regardless of domicile. States with confirmed rules include the following.

• California (FTB Publication 1031): residency turns on domicile and a closest-connections test. A safe harbor treats a Californian abroad under an employment contract for at least 546 consecutive days as a nonresident, with exceptions such as intangible income over $200,000 in the year or a principal purpose of avoiding tax
• New York: you are a resident if domiciled there, or if you keep a permanent place of abode in the state for substantially all the year (over 10 months, effective 2022) and spend more than 183 days there. Domicile is judged on home, active business involvement, time, items near and dear, and family connections
• Virginia: changing domicile requires abandoning it with no intent to return and establishing a new one. Virginia has ruled that renewing a Virginia driver’s license while abroad is strong evidence of continued domicile
• New Mexico: anyone domiciled there or physically present 185 days or more in the year is taxed as a resident, and a domicile change must be clear and convincing
• South Carolina: domicile persists until abandoned and replaced, but specific official rules for Americans moving abroad could not be confirmed; treat South Carolina claims as unverified until checked with a professional or dor.sc.gov