Families who “count to 183” and then declare a move have not applied tax residence France foyer law. Article 4 B of the Code général des impôts treats a person as having a French tax domicile if any one of several tests is met: the foyer or the place of principal stay is in France, the principal professional activity is exercised in France, or the centre of economic interests is in France. A day count can support the stay test. It does not exhaust the statute. Common-law domicile is a different word, with a different history, and it does not substitute for article 4 B.
This article is general information for families and family offices. It is not a tax opinion, a mandate, or personalised advice. Residence, treaty tie-breakers, and exit consequences depend on the facts of the household and on counsel who can read those facts against the CGI, the BOFiP comments, and the relevant convention.
Tax residence France foyer is a household test, not a day count
The official overview for individuals is the service-public page on determining tax domicile. Article 4 A CGI says that persons who have their tax domicile in France are taxable on worldwide income. Article 4 B then says who has that domicile. The tests are alternative. One is enough. Families collapse them into a single 183-day story because other countries, and many treaties, use a day count. France’s domestic law does not.
The administration’s comments are in BOFiP BOI-IR-CHAMP-10. The statutory text is on Légifrance, article 4 B CGI. Returns are filed through impots.gouv.fr. None of those pages replaces a file. All of them contradict the idea that a calendar of flights is the whole analysis.
A household that still owns the Paris apartment, still schools the children in France, still holds board meetings of the operating company in Toulouse, and still banks the family’s investment income through a French holding can remain French-resident after a year in which the principal spent 200 days in Geneva. The reverse is also possible: a person with no French foyer, no French principal stay, no French principal activity, and no French centre of economic interests is not made resident by a summer of weekends. The work is to apply the tests, not to average them.
Foyer: where the household actually lives
Foyer, in this statute, is the place where the taxpayer normally lives, the centre of family interests. Conseil d’État case law, reflected in the BOFiP, treats foyer as the habitual residence of the household. Temporary stays elsewhere for work or for exceptional reasons do not, by themselves, move the foyer if the family continues to live in France and if the taxpayer’s normal home remains there. A furnished pied-à-terre used on business trips is not automatically the foyer. The house where the spouse and children live, where mail arrives, where the doctor and the school sit, often is.
This is why a “I live in a hotel 200 days a year” narrative fails when the family home is still in Neuilly. It is also why a genuine move of the whole household, with schools, doctors, and daily life, can succeed even if the taxpayer still visits France. The foyer test looks at the household, not at the frequent-flyer statement. Couples who separate in fact, or who keep two genuine homes, need a fact pattern, not a slogan. Article 4 B does not let one spouse’s story rewrite the other’s facts, and the income-tax household of article 6 CGI is a different, later question.
Séjour principal and the 183-day misunderstanding
The place of principal stay is a subsidiary personal criterion. BOFiP and the Conseil d’État treat it as relevant when the taxpayer has no foyer. Service-public tells readers, in plain language, that a principal stay is generally a presence of at least 183 days in the year, more than six months. That sentence is a useful indicator. It is not a complete code. The BOFiP says that, as a general rule, people who stay in France for more than six months in a given year should be treated as having their principal stay there. “As a general rule” is not “the only test in article 4 B.”
Why 183 days is not a complete test
Three mistakes still dominate family-office memos. First, treating 183 days as a safe harbour: under 183, therefore not resident. That ignores foyer, professional activity, and economic interests. Second, treating 183 days as a trap that cannot be escaped: over 183, therefore resident, even when a treaty later allocates residence elsewhere. Third, counting days with a method borrowed from another country (midnight rules, parts of days, transit days) as if France had enacted that method in article 4 B. It has not. Presence is a facts-and-degree question. A day count supports the stay test. It does not replace the other three limbs, and it does not bind a treaty tie-breaker.
A principal who spends 100 days in France and whose family, companies, and investment holdings remain French has not “passed” a 183-day test. There was never only one test. Adjacent wealth files such as the IFI 2026 taxable-wealth inventory still start from residence, because a French-resident household includes foreign bricks in IFI, while a non-resident household does not. Getting the residence answer wrong is how those files start wrong.
Activité professionnelle principale
A person who exercises a professional activity in France, employed or not, is tax-domiciled in France unless the activity is shown to be accessory. Principal versus accessory is a facts test: time, nature, and economic weight of the French activity compared with activity elsewhere. A chair who still runs the French operating company from an office in Lyon, with staff, minutes, and decision rights, is not made a non-resident by a foreign title on a holding company. A person whose only French activity is a non-executive seat with modest time and pay, while the real profession sits abroad, may be able to show that the French activity is accessory. “May” is the correct verb. The statute puts the burden on the taxpayer to justify accessory status.
Remote work has not repealed article 4 B. A founder who “works from Lisbon” on a French employment contract, with a French employer, French social security, and a French team, is still exercising an activity in France for this test unless the facts say otherwise. The social-security file, the immigration file, and the tax-residence file are three files. They sometimes rhyme. They are not the same form.
Centre of economic interests
The centre of economic interests is the place where the taxpayer’s main investments, where the centre of the business, and where the seat of the fortune sit. BOFiP looks at the location of the assets that produce the income, and at where the taxpayer manages them. A family whose operating company, whose holding, whose bank accounts, and whose real estate remain in France has a French centre of economic interests even if the principal now prefers to sleep in another country. Moving a suitcase does not move the centre. Moving the seat of the fortune might, if it is real.
This limb is where “I am a consultant in Dubai” stories fail. If the consulting is a thin overlay on a French group that still pays the family, the economic centre has not moved. If the family has sold the French company, relocated the holdings, and genuinely manages a new fortune from the new country, the centre can move. The test is not a percentage invented in a slide. It is a comparison of where the wealth is seated and directed. Holding-company leverage, discussed in ATAD interest limitation 2026, does not by itself fix residence. It can, however, show where the economic centre still sits.
Treaties after domestic law, not instead of it
Article 4 B itself says that a person who meets a domestic test is nonetheless not treated as French-domiciled when a double-tax convention regards that person as resident of the other State. Domestic law first. Treaty second. Families who start with the OECD model tie-breaker (permanent home, centre of vital interests, habitual abode, nationality) and never apply article 4 B are reading the file backwards. The French administration will apply 4 B. Only if two States both claim residence does the convention’s article 4 (or its equivalent) decide which claim survives for treaty purposes.
A treaty residence is not a full exemption from French tax on French-source income. It reallocates taxing rights. A person who is treaty-resident abroad can still have French tax on French property, French directors’ fees, or French-source gains, depending on the convention. Exit-tax questions, IFI perimeter, and gift-tax residence are neighbouring files. They are not solved by a boarding-pass total.
Common-law domicile is a different legal object
English, and many common-law systems, use domicile as a connecting factor for succession, sometimes for tax, with a meaning built on origin, dependence, and choice. A domicile of origin is sticky. A domicile of choice requires residence plus an intention to remain. One can be UK-resident for tax under a statutory residence test and still be domiciled in France, or the reverse, depending on the year and the statute. France’s article 4 B is not that doctrine. Translating “domicile fiscal” as “domicile” in an English memo is how families import the wrong test.
US concepts (substantial presence, green card, domicile for estate tax) are another stack. Swiss tax domicile and residence under cantonal practice are another. None of them is a substitute for 4 B, and 4 B is not a substitute for them. A family with a London will, a French foyer, and a Swiss apartment needs three analyses, then the treaties. Vellum Finance keeps that map as a residence file, not as a slogan. How an independent office organises the facts sits with Vellum Finance services: calendars of presence, household facts, activity, and the seat of the fortune, so that counsel can apply the statute.
Conclusion
Tax residence in France is article 4 B: foyer or principal stay, principal professional activity, centre of economic interests. One limb is enough. A 183-day count can illustrate the stay test. It is not a complete test, and it is not a safe harbour against the other limbs. Treaties apply after domestic law, not instead of it. Common-law domicile is a different word. Families who inventory household, activity, and the seat of the fortune will have a file. Families who only count days will have a story that the CGI does not recognise.
Discretion. Stability. Prosperity.
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