Attestation sur l'honneur de résidence principale

Your main residence is the dwelling you actually and habitually occupy for the greater part of the year — in practice at least eight months per year, unless professional obligations, health reasons or force majeure justify a shorter presence. You can only have one main residence at a time. Furnished tourist lets, second homes and pieds-à-terre never qualify, however long you stay there occasionally.

Common cases include: claiming the capital-gains tax exemption when selling your main home (Article 150 U, II-1° of the French General Tax Code), contesting the taxe d'habitation charged on second homes, applying for CAF housing benefit, enrolling a child in a catchment-area school, taking out a mortgage reserved for main residences, or subscribing insurance and utility contracts. The requesting body may combine it with documentary proof of address.

Rarely. Most administrations ask for the attestation plus a recent proof of address (justificatif de domicile de moins de 3 mois): an electricity, gas or water bill, a rent receipt, a home-insurance certificate or a recent tax notice. The attestation formalises your declaration; the supporting documents corroborate it. For tax matters, the DGFiP may also check electricity consumption or telephone records in an audit.

Drafting a false attestation — or using one — is punishable under Articles 441-1 and 441-7 of the French Penal Code by up to one year's imprisonment and a 15,000 € fine. In tax matters, a wrongly claimed main-residence exemption also triggers reassessment with late-interest and penalties of 40 % (deliberate breach) or 80 % (fraud). Never date the statement earlier than the facts it asserts.

The exemption under Article 150 U, II-1° of the CGI applies when the property is your effective main residence on the day of the sale (or within a normal selling period after you move out). The notary generally records your declaration in the deed, but the DGFiP may later ask you to substantiate effective occupation — utility bills, insurance, tax notices at that address. The sworn statement is one element of that evidence file, not a magic shield.

A student living most of the year in a studio near their university has their main residence there, even if they return to the family home at weekends. Conversely, an expatriate who spends most of the year abroad generally cannot declare a French dwelling as their main residence — it becomes a second home for French property-tax purposes. Cross-border situations (frontier workers, split families) should be assessed case by case, ideally with a tax adviser.