France Inheritance Tax Calculator (Droits de Succession, 2026)

French inheritance tax -- droits de succession -- is assessed per heir, not on the estate as a whole. What you personally owe depends on two things only: how much you personally receive, and your legal relationship to the person who died. The tax code (Code Général des Impôts, articles 777 and following) grants every relationship category its own abattement (tax-free allowance) and its own barème (rate schedule), and the two interact in a specific order that this calculator replicates exactly: the abattement is subtracted from your inherited share FIRST, and only the remainder is taxed, starting the progressive scale from €0 -- not from the abattement threshold.

The gap between relationship categories is enormous. A surviving spouse or PACS partner owes nothing at all, on any amount, since the 2007 TEPA law abolished spousal succession tax entirely. A child or grandchild gets a substantial €100,000 allowance and a progressive scale topping out at 45% on amounts above roughly €1.8 million. A sibling gets only €15,932 and faces a steep 35%–45% band. A niece or nephew gets just €7,967 before a flat 55% rate applies to everything above it. And an unrelated person -- a friend, an unmarried partner, a distant cousin beyond the 4th degree -- gets a token €1,594 allowance before a flat 60% rate consumes most of what remains. This calculator makes those enormous differences concrete for your own numbers.

This structure exists for policy reasons rooted in France's traditional emphasis on protecting family wealth transmission down the direct bloodline while discouraging large tax-free transfers outside it. The ligne directe category -- the calculator's "child, grandchild, parent, or grandparent" option -- reflects that a grandchild who inherits directly (for instance because their own parent, the decedent's child, died first and the grandchild inherits "by representation") is treated identically to a child for both the allowance and the rate scale. That symmetry does not extend even one relationship degree further: a niece or nephew, despite being just as close in ordinary family terms, falls into a completely different and far harsher category.

### Computational Execution Steps 1. Identify your relationship category to the deceased: spouse/PACS partner, child/ascendant (the "ligne directe"), sibling, niece/nephew, or other/unrelated. 2. Check for full exemption. Spouses and PACS partners owe nothing at all -- this is checked first and short-circuits every other step. 3. Subtract your category's abattement from the amount you personally inherited. This is a genuine subtraction from your share, not a threshold the rate schedule starts counting from -- the remainder becomes your taxable base. 4. Apply your category's rate schedule to that taxable remainder, starting from €0: - Ligne directe (child/ascendant): 5% to €8,072; 10% to €12,109; 15% to €15,932; 20% to €552,324; 30% to €902,838; 40% to €1,805,677; 45% beyond. - Sibling: 35% to €24,430; 45% beyond. - Niece/nephew: flat 55% on the entire taxable remainder. - Other/unrelated: flat 60% on the entire taxable remainder. 5. Subtract the resulting tax from your inherited amount to arrive at your net inheritance.

$$\text{Taxable Share} = \max(0, \text{Inherited Amount} - \text{Abattement})$$ $$\text{Tax Due} = \text{Barème}(\text{Taxable Share})$$

Using the calculator's default inputs -- a child inheriting €250,000 from a parent:

1. Abattement: €100,000 (ligne directe, child/ascendant category).
2. Taxable share: €250,000 − €100,000 = €150,000.
3. Apply the ligne directe scale to €150,000, bracket by bracket: - €0–€8,072 at 5% = €403.60 - €8,072–€12,109 at 10% = €403.70 - €12,109–€15,932 at 15% = €573.45 - €15,932–€150,000 at 20% = €134,068 × 20% = €26,813.60
4. Total tax due: €403.60 + €403.70 + €573.45 + €26,813.60 = €28,194.35.
5. Net inheritance: €250,000 − €28,194.35 = €221,805.65.

Contrast this with a niece or nephew inheriting the identical €250,000: abattement of only €7,967 leaves a €242,033 taxable share, taxed flat at 55% = €133,118.15 -- nearly five times the child's tax bill on the exact same amount.

• Prior gifts (donations) within the same 15-year rolling period. Under French law, any donation the deceased made to this same heir within 15 years before death reduces the abattement available at death -- this calculator assumes a fresh, unused abattement.
• Disability allowances. A beneficiary with a qualifying disability receives an additional €159,325 abattement, cumulative with their relationship-based allowance -- not modeled here.
• Life insurance proceeds, which follow separate, more favorable rules under Article 990 I of the CGI rather than ordinary succession tax.
• Reversionary usufruct/bare-ownership splits (démembrement de propriété) common in French estate planning, which change the taxable value of what a bare-owner heir actually receives.
• Estate-level debts, funeral expense deductions, and notarial fees, which reduce the net share available to distribute before this calculator's "amount inherited" input is even applied -- you should enter your net share after those deductions, not a gross estate share.
• Special reduced rates for large families (3+ children) that apply narrowly to certain donation contexts, not standard succession.

• Assuming the abattement is a rate-schedule starting point rather than a genuine subtraction. French law subtracts the allowance from the amount received BEFORE the scale begins at 0% -- this is the opposite convention from some other countries' inheritance tax systems, where the allowance instead raises the floor of the lowest bracket without full subtraction.
• Treating all "family" relationships the same. A grandchild is ligne directe (same €100,000 allowance and scale as a child); a niece or nephew is not -- the gap between those two categories is roughly €93,000 of allowance and a jump from a top marginal rate of 45% to a flat 55%.
• Forgetting that unrelated heirs and distant relatives face a 60% rate, not a rate anywhere near what children or even siblings pay -- bequests to friends or unmarried partners without a will naming them as legal heirs can be taxed extremely heavily.
• Confusing inheritance tax with wealth tax (IFI) or capital gains tax. These are three entirely separate French taxes with different triggers, bases, and rates -- see the France wealth tax calculator and France property capital gains calculator for those.
• Not accounting for prior donations within 15 years, which can silently shrink or eliminate the abattement this calculator assumes is fully available.

• Code Général des Impôts, articles 777, 779, 788, 796-0 bis -- legifrance.gouv.fr.
• Service-Public.gouv.fr, droits de succession and abattements by relationship.
• Verified abattement and barème figures cross-checked against current (2026) French tax-advisory publications citing Article 777 CGI, unchanged from prior years.
• [France wealth tax calculator](/france-wealth-tax-calculator): For the separate IFI real-estate wealth tax computation.