Tax declaration season is now open and if you are in a couple, you might need to do a joint tax declaration – here’s how this works.
Married? Pacsé? Living together? Co-parenting a child? There may be tax implications if you share a house and a life with someone else – including whether you should file a joint return or individually.
In some countries the decision to file jointly or separately is a personal one, usually made depending on the tax advantages. In France, however, there are set rules on joint filing which depend on your relationship status.
If you live in France you are required to complete the annual déclaration des revenus (income tax declaration) and the first section concerns your personal details, including whether you are married/in a relationship or have children. The tax form also includes a section for other members of your household – but knowing who to include on this bit is not always easy.
Declarations for 2026 are now open, with the deadline in May or June depending on where you live.
The form to fill in is the same for everyone, but while single people only fill out the details for ‘person one’, couples might also complete both ‘person one’ and ‘person two’.
You’re married
Married couples only complete a single income tax return form, including the details and income of both partners.
This joint declaration of both incomes – beyond saving time – has other benefits.
The total income declared on that joint form is reduced by a mechanism called the quotient familial. That figure is multiplied by the number of ‘parts’ that make up the family to decide the amount of income tax payable.
READ ALSO Explained: France’s different marriage regimes
A married couple is considered ‘two parts’ so they’re taxed based on their combined income – this is also the case for extra taxes such as the temporary wealth tax, which is based on a combined household income, as well as qualification for various benefits or grants.
Any children the couple has also add to the number of ‘parts’.
However, it’s not quite as simple as one child = one person. A first child counts as 0.5 of the family nombre de parts, then the second child also counts as 0.5, and from the third child onward you can count each as 1 whole part.
So a family of two married parents and one child would have a household of 2.5 parts, while a family of two married parents and three children would then count as ‘4 parts’, so the family’s total taxable income would be divided by four.
The good news is that all you have to do is complete the personal circumstances section of your tax declaration and the algorithm does the sums for you.
READ ALSO Explained: Tax breaks for parents in France
You’re Pacsé
The PACS social contract was introduced to France back in 1999 as a way of giving same-sex couples similar rights and benefits to those given to married couples.
It’s become such an accepted part of the landscape that its acronym has become a word – pacsé, meaning people who have entered a civil union – ils sont pacsé = they are in a civil partnership.
And that means PACS couples are – like married couples – considered a single household for tax purposes. The number of ‘parts’ of that household – depending on how many children you have is, therefore calculated in the same manner as it is for married couples.
READ ALSO What you need to know about PACS v marriage in France
You’re living together
So what’s the deal if you’re a couple and you live together, but you haven’t gone through the process of officialising your coupledom? If you’re a couple en concubinage, as the French tax man would have it, you have to fill in your own individual tax form.
Each partner is then taxed based on their own personal income, and are not counted as having a ‘household income’.
Where it gets a little more complicated, for tax form purposes, is when unmarried couples have children together.
If you have children together and share responsibility for their care and upkeep, then you can each claim an additional part share on your tax form.
However, only one partner can list the child as a dependent on their tax declaration – listing the same child twice, once on the form of each parent, counts as claiming twice.
However, each parent is entitled to an increased tax share of their individual household based on the number of children they share custody of. In such instances, the tax share is 0.25 per child for the first two children, and a 0.5 share for the third and later children. For the 2025 declaration of 2024 income, any child born in 2006 or later will be considered tax dependent.
You’re divorced
If you are divorced or your PACS has been dissolved, then you revert to filing separately, with each one of the ex partners completing their own tax declaration.
However if you have children you can still claim an increased tax share – in the case of divorced parents the partner who has primary or sole care of the child lists them as their dependent. Divorced parents who have shared custody can still claim the increased tax share, however, based on the same rate as outlined above for unmarried parents.
Change in status
The big differences in the above rules is why it is important to keep the tax office up to date with changes in your relationship status.
When you start your tax declaration each year one of the first questions is whether you have got married, pacsé or divorced in the last year. This is not because the French tax man loves relationship gossip, it’s because it changes how you fill in the declaration.
You don’t need to wait until declaration time, you can inform the tax offices of personal changes here.
