My username should be “thickasabrick” where tax is concerned so apologies in advance. Husband and I moved to France February 2018 so as I understand it our first tax declaration is due May 2019 (Riberac) and should be a paper return. I have printed off form SI 2009 Number 26 which asks for my French tax reference number which I don’t have. How and when do I obtain tax reference and submit this form? Basic questions, sorry.
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SI 2009 is the form France Individual and you need to put your French tax reference on it, for sure.
After you get your first French tax bill (even if it is a zero amount you still get an account paper sent to you) your tax reference will be included on it.
You then need to complete the France Individual form and best take it to your tax office - both parts. The part in French will be retained by them and the English part you send off to the address given in the UK after the French tax office has stamped it.
If you have (incorrectly) paid UK tax in the meantime, you can claim it back from HMRC.
After that , it should be plain sailing 
Thank you Graham. Your powers of explanation are wonderful, I understood it perfectly.
You are more than welcome. Hope it all goes well for you and welcome to la belle France
Hi Graham, you explained when to complete form SI 2009 no 226 and I am cracking on so I can submit it when I have received french tax ref. If you have time, could you help me with a small point please? I have completed Part B sections 1-5 but not sure about 6. Do I tick yes or no? I have been resident in france for tax purposes since 01.02.2018 and have no other property. If answer should be yes, what details on a separate sheet do they require? Sorry for bothering you but any help would be appreciated.
Linda… you need to go in person… to do your first Declaration… at your local Tax Office… ask at your Mairie if you do not know just where the TO is…
Take all your income stuff/personal stuff with you… and they will help you complete the paperwork. That’s what they are there for… 
Have you been not resident for tax purposes in France in any one of the previous four
This is asking whether there has been a break in your residence for tax purposes in the past four years and refers in the main AFAIK to any breaks in your residency to avoid not paying tax in either UK or France and is assessed in conjunction with Q5.
If the answer to that is no, then respond accordingly.
In December 2021 I cashed in a UK private pension in full and although I haven’t lived or worked in the UK since 2089, the UK company sent over a third of the money to the UK tax authorities, presumably because I still have a national insurance number.
My French tax office in Marseille would not sign a form stating that I paid my tax in France until September 2022 when they had reviewed my tax statement for the previous year. Then in September, they said they would not sign the UK form but signed a French tax form written in both French and English N° 730-FR-ANG-SD which stated in the same words that I paid my tax in France. I sent this off to the UK with the rest of the SI 2009 No225 completed. after much solicitation and after 10 months I received the documents sent back with a standard letter asking me for the signed UK form by the French. I made an official complaint and was called by a senior person in the UK tax office who confirmed that the UK would not accept the French form and if my tax office would not sign it I should apply through MAP.
I tried again with my tax office who once again after four visits definitively declined to sign the UK version but the bilingual French version of the form. I have checked on the French government website and it says that MAP takes on average two years. The amount of money is substantial and I can’t wait that long. I am trapped in a Kafkarian bureaucratic nightmare between the two countries. Has anyone experienced this problem? Is there a document that I could take to my tax office where it is stated that the French should sign the UK form in the English version? Repeated emails to the senior person in the UK tax office have gone unanswered.
1989 maybe? 
Have you tried getting a notarised translation of the UK version? Would your tax office be prepared to sign both copies ie French and English under such circumstances?
By ‘UK form’ are you referring to the France Form Individual ? I had the same problem initially with my tax office, who just flatly refused to fill it in saying that is was not necessary. I had to contact the head of the tax office here stating that it definitely was necessary, and that if they did not fill it in, I would be taxed by the UK and not by France oon this income, and that as I was resident in France, I would prefer to pay my taxes in France. I got an appointment within a week and asked to bring in the forms.
As an aside, the person who processed the forms said not a word to me, not even acknowledging my bonjour or au revoir. She signed, stamped and dated the forms, handed them back to me, got up and walked away. She was by far the rudest person I have ever met in France.
Sorry to hear your dilemma, thanks for sharing- I presume you mean Impot will not sign either version of the ‘France form indivduelle’ form? And not that HMRC won’t accept a France / English version?
There’s a lot of threads on trying to get your money back from HMRC. And you need the DTT form so as @hairbear says escalate. It seems quite rare not to have them stamped (without a fuss) - I’ve only seen that you and hairbear have reported difficulties.
I looked up the form you said you did receive and it is for companies, not people, so HMRC seem quite right here.
Good luck - please let everyone know how it goes?
I agree with @hairbear and @larkswood12 that this needs escalation (with the Impôts). As part of this process it might be worth letting your Marseilles Impôts office know you plan to formally escalate this issue to “Le Médiateur des ministères économiques et financiers”, to see if this might concentrate minds. Whether or not you need to actually involve them may hopefully become moot if your Impôt office starts to play nicely.
https://www.impots.gouv.fr/professionnel/les-mediateurs
Best of luck. For completeness I assume you’re now using the France Individual form referred to above
#HMRC DT_Ind_France_01_20.pdf (265.3 KB)
I actually used the old forms as they are duplicated in French and English, rather than the new ones that are in English only. I knew that the French version was no longer required, but once I eventually got the OK to take the forms to the office, I didn’t want to be stopped at the last second with ‘we can’t do this without a translated version’. I also took a filled in copy of the new version just in case 
. HMRC accepted the old version without comment.
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Thanks to everyone for the very useful replies. I don’t this there is any doubt as to what they are signing, I think they just want it on their own headed paper. Total nonsense from both sides. . I have been on the UK government site and they have changed the SI 2009 Number 226 form. Instead of the individual getting the signed UK version of the form from the French tax authorities and sending it to the UK, the new form asks the local tax office to send it to the Centre des impôts des non résidents in Paris who will then send it to the UK. This might make the procedure easier for the local tax office as they don’t take the final responsibility, but it will probably take longer. I am going to try to take this new form to the tax office and see whether they will sign it.
Thanks for the update. You unfortunately seem to have a rogue tax office. Hope this is all resolved soon.
Do you have a link to where the information above is coming from, and could you kindly post it, if possible?
I’ve been onto the UK government website and the link to SI 2009/226 (also known as the France Individuals form) says it hasn’t been updated since 4 Feb 2020 (when the requirement to have the bilingual French and English previous version of the form signed was dropped). I can’t immediately understand why there would now be a requirement for local tax offices to involve the Centre des Impôts des non résidents, since by definition those claiming tax treaty relief from the UK (eg on UK pensions) are tax residents, rather than non residents of France.
Grateful for any light you can shed on this…
Yes, the form states in the part " For use by the Service des Impôts Particulier"
Please sign and enter your official stamp and return the form to the customer
to send on to HM Revenue and Customs, Pay as You Earn and Self Assessment, BX9 1AS. Keep a copy of the form for your records."
also the notes state -
Please send the completed form France Individual DT to
the Service des Impôts Particuliers for the district you reside in.
The Service des Impôts Particuliers will certify that you are resident in France for the purposes of the United Kingdom/ France Double Taxation Convention. The form should then be sent to HM Revenue and Customs, Pay as You Earn and Self Assessment, BX9 1AS, United Kingdom.
It is so strange how individual tax offices react…I got a call today from our Impôts office saying that although I’d made an appointment this week to get the France Individual Form signed and stamped (prior to sending to HMRC), they wouldn’t be able to meet me to sign it.
My heart initially sank and I had visions of having to do battle with them like you. Then the nice man from Impôts said that their main problem is that the official stamp is “under lock and key,” and they won’t be allowed to bring it with them to the meeting with me! However if I’d like to email the form to them via the secure messagerie they would be more than happy to print it out their end, stamp and sign it, and return it to me. Now that’s what I call service!
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Good morning
Hope you don’t mind me joining in.
I’m tax resident in France and have an old UK personal pension with a smallish pot.
I’m planning to take it all out at once. I’ll be contacting Aegon this week to get the ball rolling.
My understanding is that Aegon will apply emergency tax to the lump sum paid out.
I then need to take the France individual form (now available in English only) to our French tax office and ask them to sign and stamp it.
It’s difficult to get appointments so I’m thinking of trying the secure messaging service first.
Does anyone have any idea how to explain briefly in polite French what I require them to do? ie sign and stamp the DT Individual Form so that I can claim back tax paid in the UK and have the lump sum taxed in France?
I would be very grateful for any help you can give with the wording of the message.
Welcome to Survive France
This is the text I used to send the form to the Impôts which they happily printed out, stamped and emailed back via secure messaging…
"Chère Madame, Cher Monsieur
Veuillez trouver ci-joint un formulaire déjà rempli, sous la convention fiscale franco-britannique. L’objectif de ce formulaire est de rendre une pension d’un régime de retraite britannique (insert name of provider) imposable uniquement en France, en vertu de l’article 18 de la convention fiscale susmentionné.
S’il vous plaît veuillez vous signer et dater le formulaire sur le coin inférieur gauche de la page 1 et aussi appliquer votre cachet.
S’il vous plaît pourriez-vous retourner le formulaire une fois signé etc, soit par la messagerie ou soit par la poste à mon domicile (insert address)."
Then the usual formal ending, which I didn’t use in this instance as I’d already spoken to the person concerned (see post above) and used ‘cordialement.’
Good luck…