Month: July 2023

When you are considered a French tax resident, you are required to report all your income to the French tax authorities, regardless of where you earned it. So, if you receive income from abroad, you are obliged to declare this income to the French tax authorities.

If you do so, you may be subject to double taxation. The double taxation mechanism means that French tax residents are taxed twice. Income could therefore be taxed in two countries at the same time. This situation arises when an individual or a company is located in two different countries that have not signed a tax treaty with each other.

In this case, a treaty between the government of the French Republic and the government of the United Arab Emirates (“UAE“) for the avoidance of double taxation was signed on 19 July 1989 and amended by an addendum dated 6 December 1993 (the “France-Emirates Tax Treaty“).

Germany announced last February that it had purchased tax data on millions of people living in Dubai.

Questioned by Les Echos,the Directorate General of Public Finance confirmed that the sharing of this data with the French tax authorities has already taken place.

The French authorities are therefore now seeking to get their hands on possible fraudsters in these data and the presence of “undeclared income” and “unknown possessions” of people wishing to escape taxation in their country. In particular, the aim is to verify whether French entrepreneurs who have gone to Dubai have paid the “exit tax” which affects unrealised capital gains realised in France and abroad (1).

This article will retrace the contours of the concept of exit tax in order to inform French expatriates residing in Dubai on their compliance or not with French tax law due to their change of tax residence from France to the Emirates.