🇫🇷 Home country and destination
Retire in France, priced from your own plan
France pairs a genuinely simple flat tax on investments with famously heavy taxes on almost everything else. For an early retiree living off a portfolio, the PFU makes the drawdown maths surprisingly clean.
What Runway models in France
- The PFU flat tax on investment gains, 31.4 percent for 2026 (it rose with this year's social-charge change)
- No wealth tax on financial portfolios: the IFI applies to real estate only, and Runway models exactly that split
- Net rental income carrying both income tax and social charges, among the heaviest rent taxes Runway models
- The PEA and PER wrappers model French accumulation when France is your home country; arriving as a destination, the accounts you bring are what move
| Tax area | What Runway applies (2026) |
|---|---|
| Investment gains | 31.4% flat (PFU, 2026) |
| Rental income | 47.2% on net rent (income tax + social charges) |
| Wealth tax | None on portfolios; IFI on property |
| Leaving home | Any exit tax your home country charges, priced into the move |
The move itself is part of the price
A move to France is never just France's tax rules. Leaving a country that charges an exit tax, Norway among them, can trigger a bill on unrealised gains as if you sold on the way out, and Runway prices that into the plan before a single EUR of spending is modelled. The mechanics are in what an exit tax costs when you leave, and the wider tooling question in which FIRE calculators handle a move abroad.
Once you are there, your spending runs in EUR through an exchange-rate scenario you control, so a weak krone decade is a plan you can stress, not a surprise.
Price the whole move, not the postcard
Runway prices a retirement in France end to end from your own plan: any exit tax on the way out, France's taxes on the drawdown, and your spending in local currency. Your freedom age is free.
Download free on the App StoreFrequently asked
What tax does Runway assume on investment gains in France?
Runway applies France's PFU flat tax, 31.4 percent for 2026 after the social-charge rise, to investment gains, taxes net rent with income tax plus social charges, and models the IFI, which applies to real estate only, not to your portfolio. The figures are 2026, income-year-stamped, and refreshed as rules change.
Do I still pay an exit tax if I retire to France?
It depends where you leave from. Norway charges utflyttingsskatt on unrealised gains and several other home countries charge an exit tax of their own. Runway prices whichever one applies to you into every plan that retires to France, as a cost of the move, before the destination's own rules take over on the drawdown.
Is there a French wealth tax on my investments?
Not on securities. France's IFI taxes real-estate wealth only, and Runway models it that way: your portfolio pays no annual wealth levy, while property above the threshold does.
Figures are 2026, income-year-stamped estimates from the Runway country pack for France, produced by the same engine the app runs. They are educational estimates, not financial or tax advice: rules change, and personal cases differ. See the full country list.