How does France view a SIPP pension for income tax purposes?

Reader question. We moved to France in 2019 and so declare our income, including state and SIPP pensions, here. We are concerned about the treatment of the SIPP, which pays out monthly in ‘drawdown’, and whether tax is also due to gains from various individual stocks held with fund managers within the SIPP?

SIPPs – self-invested personal pensions – are often held by Britons who have moved to France. There is the standard UK version, into which you should not pay if you have moved out of the country, and also an ‘international’ version. The latter can be paid into and even set up from abroad. It can be denominated in euros, if you wish, for ease of making transfers to France.

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The ‘drawdown’ option is where, rather than using all the money in the pension to buy an annuity, it is left invested in the fund while also used to provide income via drawdowns.

Money taken this way is still considered as pension income by France, so there is no need to declare to France details of what happens inside the ‘pot’ of investments.

The drawdown money you have had from the SIPP can be declared in the French tax return in the same way as the UK state pension.

In both cases, however, you should also have completed the 2047 declaration of income from abroad. Note that it is not too late to make corrections to this year’s declaration of 2022 income, if necessary.

If you declared online this year, then the corrections service is now open at impots.gouv.fr under Accéder à la correction en-ligne inside your personal online space.

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