How French Income Tax Works in 2026 (Barème, Parts, Décote)

French income tax (impôt sur le revenu) has two features that surprise newcomers. It is progressive, so your income is split into bands and each band is taxed at its own rate, and it is levied on the household rather than the individual, so a couple and their children are assessed together. Getting from a salary to a tax figure means understanding the barème (the rate table), the parts system (the quotient familial), and a low-income reduction called the décote. This guide walks through each on 2025 income, which is declared and taxed in 2026.

The 2026 barème (2025 income)

The barème has five bands. Only the euros that fall inside a band are taxed at that band's rate, so reaching a higher band never lowers your take-home pay. The rate on your last euro is your marginal rate; the tax divided by your total income is your average rate, and it is always lower than the marginal one.

What counts as taxable income

The barème is applied to your net taxable income (revenu net imposable), not your gross salary. For employees, a standard 10% deduction for professional expenses is subtracted first (you can opt for actual expenses instead if they are higher). That is the figure the French income tax calculator asks for, and it is also the number printed on your avis d'imposition. If you are working from a payslip rather than a tax notice, see how gross becomes net in our guide to the French gross-to-net salary.

A worked example: a single person on 30,000 EUR

Take a single person (one part) with 30,000 EUR of net taxable income. The tax is built band by band:

• 0% on the first 11,600 EUR = 0 EUR
• 11% on the next 17,979 EUR (11,600 to 29,579) = 1,977.69 EUR
• 30% on the final 421 EUR (29,579 to 30,000) = 126.30 EUR

That totals about 2,104 EUR of tax. The average rate is roughly 7.0% of the 30,000 EUR, even though the marginal rate (the band the last euro sits in) is 30%. This gap is why a raise is never fully taxed at your top rate: only the part of it above the next threshold is.

Parts: the quotient familial

France taxes the household, so total income is divided by a number of parts, the barème is applied to that per-part figure, and the result is multiplied back. A single person is 1 part and a couple is 2; each of the first two children adds half a part, and the third and later children add a full part each. Splitting the income into more parts pushes each part into lower bands, which lowers the tax.

The effect is large. A couple with 60,000 EUR and no children is 2 parts, so each part is 30,000 EUR and the tax is 2 x 2,104 = about 4,208 EUR. A single person on the same 60,000 EUR is 1 part and pays about 11,104 EUR, because more of the income is taxed in the 30% band. Same income, very different tax, purely because of parts.

Because that advantage could grow without limit for large families, it is capped: the plafonnement du quotient familial limits the tax saving to 1,801 EUR for each extra half-part from children. Above the cap, the tax reduction stops growing even if you add more children's parts.

The décote for modest incomes

When the tax from the barème is small, a reduction called the décote lowers it further or cancels it. For 2025 income it is 897 EUR minus 45.25% of your gross tax for a single person (1,483 EUR for a couple), and it can never be more than the tax itself. A single person with 16,000 EUR of taxable income has about 484 EUR of gross tax; the décote works out larger than that, so it wipes the tax to zero. The décote fades out as income rises, so it only ever affects modest incomes.

What the estimate leaves out

The barème calculation above is the core of the bill, but the final avis can differ. It does not include tax credits and réductions d'impôt (childcare, donations, some home improvements), the specific rules for pensions or investment income, or local considerations. Note too that the prélèvement à la source (the monthly withholding from your pay) is only how the tax is collected through the year, not a separate tax; any gap is settled after you declare. Value added tax is a separate story, covered in how French VAT works.

Sources

• Service-Public: barème de l'impôt sur le revenu
• impots.gouv.fr: impôt sur le revenu