Britons with Property in Paris to be hit by New Tax

Britons with a pied a terre in Paris are due to be hit with hefty new taxes as the Socialist-run city hall takes steps to try to resolve the city's chronic housing shortage.

The city council wants to stop foreign owners leaving their apartments empty for much of the year and hopes to coerce them into selling them off or putting them on the market for long-term rental.

A measure due to be adopted next Monday by the city council would triple the current 20 percent extra that non-resident owners have to pay in council tax, or taxe d’habitation, to 60 percent.

Ian Brossat, the Communist deputy mayor in charge of housing, said the aim of the tax was to ensure that Paris did not end up like London, with the working and middle classes increasingly priced out of the housing market. “That is exactly the model we want to avoid here in Paris.”

The number of non-resident owned homes in Paris rose by 43 percent over the last 15 years, while owner-occupied homes rose by just three percent in the same period.

Non-resident owned homes now make up 10 percent, or around 107,000 residences, of the 1.1 million homes in Paris.

This growing trend is depriving Parisians of homes and driving up rents, the city argues.

The proposed rise in council tax for non-resident owners would bring an estimated extra 43 million euros a year into city coffers as well as making more affordable housing available to permanent Parisians.