Although the taxe d’habitation on principal residences has been abolished, it still applies to second homes and other furnished dwellings that are not a principal residence. Whether a property is a principal residence therefore still matters.
The case involved a couple with a home in Caluire-et-Cuire, near Lyon, and an apartment in Lyon.
The wife was charged the taxe d’habitation on the Lyon apartment for 2022 and 2023. She argued that it was her principal residence and should not have been taxed.
The difficulty was that the couple were jointly assessed to income tax, and their joint return gave the Caluire-et-Cuire address.
She supported her claim with a passport, a vehicle registration document, a cheque book, payslips and amendments to her home insurance policy. All of these apparently carried the Lyon address. The Tribunal administratif rejected her claim in May 2025, and she appealed to the Conseil d’État, the Supreme Administrative Court.
Her argument was not that the Caluire-et-Cuire address was irrelevant. She said the lower court had in effect treated the address on the joint return as her principal residence unless she could prove otherwise.
The Conseil d’État rejected her appeal. It held that the principal residence for taxe d’habitation must be determined by the circumstances of each taxpayer, and that joint income tax assessment does not stop spouses from having different principal residences.
The Conseil d’État considered that the lower court had not simply presumed that the address on the joint return was her principal residence. It had weighed that address against the documents she produced and assessed their evidential value.
Couples who genuinely live in different properties, for work or personal reasons, can therefore have separate principal residences even though they file a joint income tax return. But the taxpayer must show that the claimed residence is real. In this case a set of personal documents bearing the Lyon address did not outweigh the Caluire-et-Cuire address on the joint return. The courts attach particular weight to energy and water consumption bills, which were not presented in court.
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