Buying Dubai property from France: rent, gains and wealth need separate checks

It starts with residence. Article 4 B of the Code général des impôts makes a person tax domiciled in France if any one of three tests is met: home or principal place of stay in France, a professional activity there that is not ancillary, or the centre of economic interests in France. One is enough. Since 16 February 2025 the article also gives a treaty’s residence classification priority over those domestic tests, so older material is out of date. Article 4 A then taxes a domiciled person on worldwide income, and Dubai rent is inside that.

For an unfurnished letting, French domestic rules use the revenus fonciers category. The domestic income-tax calculation is only the starting point: treaty relief and your social-security position must be checked before stating the final charge. Micro-foncier applies automatically where the household’s gross rent is under 15,000 euros a year, giving a flat 30 per cent deduction and nothing else. Above that, or by an irrevocable three year election, the régime réel deducts actual costs on form 2044, which is where mortgage interest and management fees live. The administration applies the same choice to lettings outside France.

Where French property-gains taxation applies, its domestic calculation starts with price less acquisition cost and allowable expenses, and the gain then abates for length of ownership on two schedules that do not run together. For income tax at 19 per cent the abatement is 6 per cent a year from year 6 to year 21 and 4 per cent in year 22, so the charge disappears at 22 years. For the standard social-charge calculation it is 1.65 per cent a year from year 6 to year 21, 1.60 per cent in year 22 and 9 per cent a year after that, so those run on to 30 years. A flat sold in year 23 is free of income tax but not of social charges. The French main residence exemption applies only if the Dubai property was in fact your sole habitual home, which a let apartment is not.

One more line belongs in the model, and we flag it rather than scale it: a taxable plus-value immobilière above 50,000 euros carries a surtaxe under article 1609 nonies G of the Code général des impôts, rising in bands commonly given as 2 to 6 per cent of the gain, on top of the 19 per cent and the social charges. This guide does not calculate that additional charge. Have your adviser confirm whether it applies and use the current statutory scale.

Article 19(1) gives ordinary property rent a credit matching the corresponding French tax. Gains under article 11(1) and (3) instead receive credit for UAE tax paid, capped at the French charge. Paragraph 2 contains a separate rule for certain persons established or resident in the UAE but fiscally domiciled in France. Have an adviser check which rule applies, including social charges and anti-abuse provisions.

French residents generally assess their net real-estate wealth at 1 January against the 1,300,000 euro IFI threshold. Valuation, deductible debts and exemptions depend on the facts. The income-tax credit does not establish an IFI exemption; ask your adviser to apply the separate wealth rule and complete the appropriate return.

There is no exchange control on a bank transfer either way. What French law does require is a declaration of cash: the online DALIA declaration is due where 10,000 euros or more in cash, bearer instruments, gold or prepaid cards is physically carried across an external border of the European Union, and above 50,000 euros carried you are asked to document where the money came from. That regime is about what is in your bag, not what leaves your account. A wire is policed instead by anti-money-laundering source of funds checks, run once by the French bank and again by the Dubai developer or registration trustee. That file, not the transfer, is what takes time on a purchase.

On tax the convention is unusually helpful. Article 17 gives immovable property in an estate to the state where it sits, and article 19, paragraph 4 exempts from French inheritance tax the estate property taxable in the UAE under the convention, while allowing France to use its value in setting the average rate on the rest of the estate. The Dubai flat should escape French estate duty and still push up the rate on everything else.

Who inherits is harder. The Code civil reserves a share of the estate for the children through the réserve héréditaire, and article 913 leaves free to give away one half with one child, one third with two and one quarter with three or more. The spouse’s own reserve is a separate provision: article 914-1 reserves a quarter of the estate to a surviving spouse who is not divorced where the deceased leaves no descendant, which is why three quarters is the disposable portion in that case. EU Regulation 650/2012, for deaths from 17 August 2015, applies the law of habitual residence at death unless you choose the law of your nationality, so a French national living in France who does nothing gets French law and the réserve. A DIFC Courts will governs the Dubai asset under DIFC probate but does not settle a réserve claim against the worldwide estate. French law has its own answer to a foreign law that ignores the réserve: article 913, alinea 3 of the Code civil, inserted by loi n° 2021-1109 of 24 August 2021 and in force from 1 November 2021, lets a child left short by the foreign law take a compensating levy on assets situated in France, where the deceased or a child is a national of or habitually resident in an EU member state. Whether it reaches a particular estate is fact-specific, and the levy bites on French assets rather than on the Dubai flat itself, so take the interaction to a notaire.

The rate carries a warning. The Central Bank of the UAE’s own rate page returned an HTTP 403 error to us on 10 September 2026, as it did for our Germany guide, so the figure below is an aggregator’s republication of Central Bank data: check it live. At roughly 4.27666 dirhams to the euro on 9 September 2026, AED 3,000,000 is about 701,480 euros.

The transfer fee of 4 per cent adds AED 120,000, about 28,060 euros. The trustee fee at that value is AED 4,000 plus 5 per cent VAT, so AED 4,200, with AED 250 for the title deed and AED 10 each for the knowledge and innovation fees. Registration is therefore about AED 124,470, roughly 29,100 euros, for AED 3,124,470 all in, about 730,600 euros before commission or financing. Those lines come from the Land Department’s own Property Sale Registration page, read on 10 September 2026; the trustee will still quote them to you on the day.

The dirham figure is the contract; the euro figure moves at every instalment of a payment plan. Model the purchase on the cost of buying calculator, check the residence threshold on the golden visa calculator, and see what is selling in the off-plan catalogue.

Foreign ownership is a carve-out, not a general right. Article (4) of Law No. (7) of 2006 restricts ownership to UAE and GCC nationals and companies wholly owned by them, then permits freehold for non-UAE nationals “in certain areas determined by the Ruler”, and Regulation No. (3) of 2006 sets those areas by numbered land plot, not by the name a development is marketed under. Off-plan instalments sit in an account which Article (9)(1) of Law No. (8) of 2007 requires to be “dedicated exclusively to the construction of that Real Estate Development project”: ring-fencing, not a refund guarantee.

The Land Department publishes its transfer fee as 2 per cent from the seller and 2 per cent from the buyer, so a buyer carrying all 4 per cent is market practice, not the published rule. On residence the two government sources agree on the money and differ on the term: the portal states five years for a “Minimum capital of AED 2 million”, the ICP service page ten years for ownership worth at least AED 2,000,000, about 467,650 euros at the rate above.

Treaty residence, social charges, IFI valuation and deductions, and succession arrangements need a review of your circumstances. The schedules above are general background, not a personal tax calculation. Have an adviser confirm any additional capital-gains surtax before a sale.

The euro conversion remains an illustrative secondary-source figure from September 2026. Obtain a current bank quote and confirm registration charges and visa eligibility before committing funds.