France–Mauritius — Tax Treaty

0Executive summary

The decision dashboard

Each question below is developed in the section indicated; the closing column records where a case-specific review is required before acting — this brief documents the published position and does not replace it.

Law reviewed as at 24 July 2026 — verified against Légifrance and BOFiP through the Chiron Legal Corpus

1The France–Mauritius convention — 1980, income and fortune, and a 2011 turn

The relationship rests on one convention and a single decisive amendment. The convention signed at Port-Louis on 11 December 1980, to avoid double taxation in matters of taxes on income and on fortune, was published on the French side by decree 82-912 of 14 October 1982, after the approving law 82-483 of 10 June 1982, and entered into force on 17 September 1982. Its avenant, signed at Port-Louis on 23 June 2011, was approved by the law of 7 March 2012 and published by decree 2012-816 of 25 June 2012; it entered into force on 1 May 2012 and has applied since 1 January 2012. The avenant's central work was the recasting of article 27, which brought exchange of information to the full standard adopted after 2009 and provided expressly that a request may not be declined merely because the information is held by a bank or other financial institution — the lifting of fiscal bank secrecy that defines the transparency era. On top of the bilateral text sits the multilateral instrument, in force for France since 1 January 2019 and for Mauritius since 1 February 2020; the two states signed it in 2017 and lodged their instruments in 2018 and 2019 respectively.

The scope is an income-and-fortune convention, and that is the organising fact. Article 2 covers, on the French side, the income tax and the corporation tax, and on the Mauritian side the income tax; the French social contributions, the CSG and the CRDS, are not among the covered taxes, so their treatment runs on domestic law alone. There is a fortune article — article 23, examined in section I — but there is no succession or gift convention: the administration's list of conventions in force records the relationship as covering income and fortune only. Succession and gift taxation on a Riviera villa therefore run entirely on French domestic law, examined in section I bis.

Residence does the sorting, on the full cascade. A person taxed by both states is assigned by article 4 §2: permanent home first, then the centre of vital interests, then habitual abode, then nationality, and failing all of these by mutual agreement — the complete tie-breaker of the standard model, habitual-abode step included. A person taxed in a state only on income arising within it is not a resident of that state for the convention's purposes (article 4 §1), a limit that matters where a Mauritian resident is taxed only on income remitted to or arising in Mauritius. Mauritius keeps its own accents — no annual wealth tax, no inheritance or gift duty, income taxed at flat rates, and a remittance basis for non-domiciled residents under recent Finance Acts; this brief states Mauritian law at orientation level only, and its verified ground is the French side and the treaty text.

From the case law — what the supreme court has said about Mauritius structures

The modern record of this convention before the Conseil d'État is a single sustained story about substance. A French energy group held, through a Mauritian company that employed no one and occupied no premises on the island and whose receipts were, for the years examined, 80% and 85.7% gains on the disposal of subsidiaries exonerated locally under the Mauritian regime, a structure the administration reached under the controlled-foreign-company rule of CGI article 209 B. The court upheld the reassessment: the Mauritian company's principal activity was the realisation of share-disposal gains exonerated by reason of its location, and the taxpayer had not shown that locating the subsidiary there had an object and effect other than principally fiscal, so the article's safeguard did not apply (CE, 9e-10e ch. réunies, 25 April 2022, n° 439859, and again, published in the recueil, 13 March 2025, n° 488080). The treaty holding is the point of lasting interest. Income deemed received under article 209 B is, in French law, income from movable capital; and because neither the business-profits article (article 7) nor the dividends article — which reaches only distributions decided by a general meeting (article 10 §6) — covers income of that nature, it falls under the other-income article (article 22 §1) and is, on those terms, taxable only in the beneficiary's state of residence, which is France. The convention does not block the anti-abuse machinery. For a private-wealth reader the lesson is narrow and worth stating plainly: a Mauritian entity that carries on no real activity gains nothing from this treaty against French anti-abuse law, and the 2011 avenant that opened the books is the other half of the same story — the era those structures belonged to is closed. Nothing in that record touches the villa: the immovable allocation of articles 13 §1 and 23 §1 has generated no dispute at this level in forty-five years, and the situs analysis below stands unlitigated.

Sources considered: convention arts. 3 §2, 7, 10 §6, 22 §1; CGI arts. 209 B, 238 A; CE, 25 April 2022, n° 439859; CE, 13 March 2025, n° 488080 (publié au recueil Lebon) — decision texts read in full. Scope note: both decisions arise on corporate controlled-foreign-company facts and are retold for what they establish about the convention's other-income article and the substance requirement; neither rules on the taxation of a villa, its rental income or its gain, which articles 6, 13 §1 and 23 §1 allocate at situs.

Law reviewed as at 24 July 2026 — verified against Légifrance and BOFiP through the Chiron Legal Corpus · Convention of 11 Dec 1980, avenant of 23 June 2011 (French consolidated text) arts. 1, 2, 4, 22, 27; MRA synthesised text (MLI dates and matched provisions); BOI-ANNX-000306; BOI-INT-CVB-MUS (2012 vintage — the text prevails); CE n° 439859, n° 488080

2The market seen from Mauritius

Seen from Mauritius, the entry market leads with Cannes: 306 qualified €3M+ villa sales for €2,066M across 2014–2025 in Cannes and its hills alone, at a €4.9M median — the deepest international gateway on the coast, ahead of the Saint-Tropez peninsula's larger register and Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat's narrower, more expensive one. The registers attribute no current ownership position to Mauritian residence, a documented absence recorded in the aggregates below, so this brief reads the market coast-wide rather than through a national cluster. Where this office's own execution runs deepest is the back-country arc behind Cannes — Mougins, Valbonne, Grasse — transacted in recent seasons at the sector's record level; the worked examples of sections I and II are anchored on the Cannes median for that reason. Direct air links between the island and the French mainland make personal attendance at the milestones of a purchase realistic, which shapes the process notes of section I. The fuller commune-by-commune apparatus lives on the published Riviera Intelligence pages; this brief keeps the law in the foreground and the market as context.

Source: DVF (« Demandes de Valeurs Foncières », DGFiP), villa sales ≥ €3M, 2014–2025, estate-deduplicated — the same convention as the published Riviera Intelligence hub, so this brief and the public pages cannot disagree. DVF through 2025-12-31.

Ownership, in aggregate

The public record itself describes how the Riviera is held, and this brief reads it in aggregate — the State's transaction register alongside the public company registers, all of it already published and anonymised in processing. Across the 20 Riviera communes surveyed, the aggregates record, at this edition, no ownership position held from Mauritius. An absence in a surveyed sample carries its own information: the Mauritian presence on these pockets remains to be written, and the column opens with the first recorded positions. The figures refresh with each edition.

Aggregates only, drawn from public sources under their re-use conditions; no individual holding is identified or published. Residence attribution follows the address of record, within the communes surveyed.

Law reviewed as at 24 July 2026 — verified against Légifrance and BOFiP through the Chiron Legal Corpus · DVF register, estate-deduplicated · ownership aggregates from public registers only

IBuying in France as a Mauritius resident

The process and its costs

Acquisition follows the French order of events — an offer, then the compromis de vente with its ten-day withdrawal period and its customary 10% deposit, the conditions precedent, and finally the authentic deed before the notaire, who levies the duties and enters the title on the register. The notaire acts as a public officer and not as the buyer's own lawyer, so a purchaser running the file from Mauritius usually keeps independent advisers alongside and signs the deed under a power of attorney — though the island's direct air links make attending the signature in person a real option for a buyer who would rather. What the deed sets up largely governs how French law will later treat wealth and succession, which is why the structuring choices of section I bis are best settled before the compromis is signed; once the transaction is moving, the holding vehicle is not easily changed.

The cost of owning, and the fortune article

The annual charge arrives first, and here the treaty speaks. CGI article 964 taxes real-estate wealth above €1,300,000; for persons not domiciled in France the base is French-situs property together with the fraction of any company's shares that represents French property (article 965, 2°). Article 23 §1 of the convention assigns the fortune constituted by immovable property, as article 6 defines it, to the state where the property is situated, so the French wealth tax on a directly held Riviera villa rests on a treaty allocation as well as on domestic law. The same article then draws a boundary that deserves precise words: under its fourth paragraph, all other elements of a Mauritius resident's fortune are taxable only in Mauritius. How the property fraction of company shares — which French law taxes under article 965, 2° — meets that residual allocation is a question the 1980 text does not answer in terms, its fortune article containing no property-company clause; it is examined with counsel at engagement, within the principal-purpose test the multilateral instrument has added, and it is never treated as an exemption to be assumed. Mauritius levies no annual wealth charge, so nothing arises on the other side to double the French tax or to require a credit. The IFI itself is examined on the identical-or-analogous footing applied to conventions of this generation: it succeeded the wealth taxes in force when the text was signed, and the administration's current list of conventions records the relationship as covering income and fortune.

For the family weighing a full move to France, the statute provides its own window: a person who becomes French-resident after five years abroad is taxed, for the five years that follow, on French assets only (article 964, 1°, al. 2). The window is a creature of domestic law, so its calendar is planned on the statute as written and confirmed at engagement. The property then carries recurring charges of its own. Taxe foncière is set by each commune; on furnished second homes, the marquee Riviera communes — all within the zone tendue — may vote a second-home surtaxe on the taxe d'habitation, and every owner must file the annual occupancy declaration. These are communal, year-by-year figures, which the brief's edition cycle re-verifies at each pass rather than fixing once.

Law reviewed as at 24 July 2026 — verified against Légifrance and BOFiP through the Chiron Legal Corpus · CGI arts. 964–965; convention arts. 2, 23 §§1, 4; cost scales stated for orientation, itemised at engagement

I bisStructures, as questions

The structure question

Holding structures are presented here, in keeping with this line's doctrine, as questions for analysis rather than as recommendations. For a Mauritian buyer the analysis carries one organising fact drawn straight from the case law: French domestic and anti-abuse law reads through a wrapper that lacks substance, and the treaty does not shelter it.

Debt against the IFI — what the code anticipates

One financing pattern recurs across this coast: the buyer borrows against a pledged securities portfolio, leaving the capital invested while the loan lowers the taxable base. The code does not merely tolerate the arrangement; it legislates for it. Acquisition debt owed to a bank reduces the IFI base under CGI article 974, and financial holdings are never in that base to begin with. Three limits shape the deduction. A loan that repays its principal only at term is treated as if it amortised, so the deductible amount shrinks in step with the years run, or by a twentieth each year where the loan carries no term at all. Above €5M of taxable property, debt beyond 60% of value is deductible only by half, unless the borrower establishes that tax was not the loan's principal motive. And the borrowing has to be genuine — drawn in fact, serviced on market terms — since a loan parked in an SCI shareholder account no longer counts when the shares are valued (article 973). The effect is front-loaded: leverage softens the IFI while the loan is young and tapers away thereafter by the working of the text.

From the case law — financing from a Mauritian entity

Where the lender is a Mauritian affiliate rather than a bank, a second body of law comes into view, and the convention itself invites it. A French company deducted the interest it paid to a related Mauritian company that benefited from the island's 80% special abatement, bringing its effective rate below the minimum the French thin-capital rule requires. The Conseil d'État upheld the disallowance: article 212 I b of the tax code denies the deduction unless the lender is taxed on the interest at least at a quarter of the French rate, and the taxpayer's claim that the Mauritian company had renounced the abatement failed for want of any act of the Mauritian authorities drawing the consequences of that renunciation (CE, 8e-3e ch. réunies, 13 July 2022, n° 451533, Thaï Union France Holding 2). The convention does not stand in the way: its non-discrimination article makes interest paid to a resident of the other state deductible on the same terms as interest paid to a resident, but Protocol §8.b provides expressly that nothing in that clause prevents France from applying article 212. The reading for a family file is measured: the deductibility of interest on a loan from a Mauritian entity is a question to be examined against the minimum-taxation test, not a result to be assumed.

Sources considered: convention art. 25 §4; Protocol §8.b; CGI art. 212 I b; CE, 13 July 2022, n° 451533 — decision text read in full. Scope note: the decision concerns corporate group financing on a 2013 exercise under the article 212 then in force, and the abatement figures are that era's; it is retold for the reserve the Protocol places on the thin-capital rule and for the discipline it applies to intra-group financing generally, not as a ruling on any family's arrangement.

Succession, with no convention to soften it

No succession or gift convention sits behind this relationship, so the French position is stated in full by domestic law. Under CGI article 750 ter the French villa enters a non-resident's estate whether it is owned outright or through companies in which the deceased — counting spouse, ascendants, descendants and siblings — controls more than half the interests along any chain, and the same reach captures gifts made in life. If an heir has himself been domiciled in France for six of the ten years before the transfer, the French charge widens to the whole of what that heir takes, wherever situated — a point that bears directly on Mauritian families whose child has settled in France. Duty follows the article 777 scale, climbing to 45% in the direct line above €1.8M per share, once the €100,000 per-child allowance of article 779 is applied, the surviving spouse taking free of duty. Article 784 A relieves foreign tax only where France taxes a worldwide estate and only on the foreign assets within it; the villa draws no relief, and with no Mauritian death duty to offset, none is needed. The French figure is the entire figure — the exact counterpart of the island's own liberty, where nothing is levied at death and the estate devolves as the will directs.

Who inherits is settled before any duty is worked out, and on that the two systems part. A reserved portion goes to the children under French law; a will drawn under another law need not provide it. A Mauritian national habitually resident in France may, under EU Regulation 650/2012, choose the law of his nationality to govern the whole succession. That choice does not close the matter: under the law of 24 August 2021, where either the deceased or one of the children is a national or habitual resident of an EU member state and the chosen law offers children no reserved-share protection, each child may levy a compensatory share on the French-situs assets — the villa foremost — up to what the French reserve would have given (Civil Code, article 913, al. 3). Whether the clause engages depends on the family's EU ties: a child with an EU nationality or resident in France brings it into play, a family Mauritian in every member does not. The trust regime rounds out the picture. Once a trust holds a French asset, or counts a French-resident settlor or beneficiary, the trustee declares its constitution, terms and annual values (CGI article 1649 AB); trust assets within the IFI's scope are taxed in the settlor's hands, the dedicated levy of article 990 J standing behind the declaration duty; and transmissions through the trust answer to article 792-0 bis, at rates that reach 60% where beneficiaries' shares are not determined. Whether the villa belongs inside a Mauritian trust or beside it is, in practice, the first structuring question such a file presents, and it is best answered with counsel on both sides before the compromis.

The démembrement — bare ownership gifted, use retained

A companion structure to the loan cuts the ownership itself in two: the buyer keeps the usufruct — the enjoyment of the villa and its income for the remainder of a lifetime — and makes a present gift of the bare ownership to the children. Age fixes the value of each part. On the scale of CGI article 669 the bare ownership is worth 60% of the whole between ages 61 and 70, and 70% between 71 and 80; only that fraction bears gift duty, taken at the value of the day, and when the two rejoin at the usufructuary's death no further duty falls. The conditions sit in article 751 — the gift must be notarised, made more than three months ahead of death, and valued on the article 669 scale — while article 968 leaves the whole value in the usufructuary's IFI base, so the wealth tax is unaffected. Because the relationship holds no gift convention, France charges the gift purely as the state of situation, with nothing laid over the domestic reading; what the gift means on the Mauritian side, alongside the choice-of-law election set out above, is for the family's Mauritian advisers.

Law reviewed as at 24 July 2026 — verified against Légifrance and BOFiP through the Chiron Legal Corpus · CGI arts. 212, 669, 750 ter, 751, 777, 779, 784 A, 792-0 bis, 968, 973–974, 990 J, 1649 AB; Civil Code art. 913; EU Reg. 650/2012; convention arts. 13, 25 §4; Protocol §§6.b, 8.b; CE n° 451533

IISelling as a Mauritius resident

On the villa itself the first taxing right is France's. Article 13 §1 gives France the gain on French immovables, and for a seller resident in Mauritius the charge is levied through CGI article 244 bis A: from the taxable gain the code subtracts a duration allowance — 6% for every year held past the fifth, plus 4% in the twenty-second (article 150 VC) — after which the income-tax layer runs at 19% (article 200 B) and disappears at the twenty-second year. Where the taxable gain clears €50,000, the progressive surcharge of article 1609 nonies G applies on top, reaching 6% at the values this market sees. Two things set the Mauritian file apart from a European one, both of them procedural. Because Mauritius lies outside the Union and the European Economic Area, the seller must as a rule name an accredited fiscal representative in France to sign and stand behind the gain computation; the automatic waiver reaches only sales at or below €150,000 per seller, or cases where the duration allowances have already wiped out tax and levies together — neither of which a Riviera villa commonly presents. The social levies, in turn, fall at the full rate: as a third country beyond the European coordination rules, Mauritius earns no access to the reduced solidarity levy, and the whole 17.2% reaches gain and rents alike — a line the Conseil d'État has fixed with precision.

The share-gains precision — where 244 bis A meets a partial allocation

The sale of shares in a French property-holding company is the passage that most rewards care, because domestic law and the treaty do not reach the same distance. In French domestic law, article 244 bis A taxes a non-resident's gain on shares of a company whose assets are principally French real estate. The convention allocates the same gain differently: article 13 §4 places gains on all property but immovables with the alienator's state of residence, which for a Mauritius resident is Mauritius, and its only inroad is Protocol §6.b, under which a gain on shares forming a substantial participation — a holding of at least 25% of the company's profit rights, alone or with associated or related persons, directly or indirectly — is taxable in the state of which the company is a resident, here France. Two points frame the reading. First, the multilateral instrument added no land-rich clause to this convention, so the 1980 allocation stands unaltered by the 2020s reforms on this point; the official synthesised text lists only the preamble, the principal-purpose test, mutual agreement and arbitration among the provisions it modifies. Second, the principal-purpose test now overlays any arrangement that leans on the residence allocation, so a structure assembled to place a French property gain outside France's reach where its principal purpose was to obtain that result may be denied the benefit. Where France's domestic reach under article 244 bis A meets a treaty allocation that only partly matches it, the position turns on the participation level and the facts, and is best settled at engagement rather than assumed either way.

Sources considered on the social levies: CSS art. L. 136-6; CGI arts. 4 B, 244 bis A; CE, 5 March 2018, n° 400329, following CJUE, 18 January 2018, Jahin, C-45/17 — third-state affiliation outside the coordination carve-out; the retold version appears in the Australia edition of this line. Scope note: the decisions concern Monegasque and other third-state affiliations; their application to a Mauritian affiliation follows from the coordination regulation's personal scope, not from a ruling on Mauritian facts.

Leaving after the sale — a note on the exit tax

A recurring question from families who sell and then leave is whether departure itself triggers a charge. It is a narrower instrument than its name implies. The exit tax of CGI article 167 bis bears on securities and not on property; it applies to someone who had been domiciled in France for six of the preceding ten years, and it fixes, at the date of departure, the latent gains on substantial securities — a portfolio worth more than €800,000, or any stake reaching 50% of a company's profits, that second limb reaching a controlling interest of any value at all. The villa, once sold, has already answered for its gain under the regimes set out above, and the cash it raised falls outside the measure entirely. A family SCI is read with the property, not with the portfolio: while it keeps the ordinary income-tax regime its property-rich shares stay inside the real-estate regime of CGI article 150 UB, beyond the exit charge — France's claim on a future sale resting instead on article 244 bis A — whereas an SCI that has elected corporation tax is reclassified, and the election therefore earns a line on any pre-departure checklist. Timing decides as much as substance: someone who departs with fewer than six years of French domicile behind them over the preceding decade never enters the latent-gains charge, which spares the trial-years family almost as a matter of course, while gains already carried in a deferral keep to their own rules and are reviewed at engagement. Where the charge does apply, collection is ordinarily deferred, and it falls away by operation of law once the securities have been held for two years after departure — five above a €2.57M portfolio — or on a return to France. The treaty adds one consideration peculiar to this pair. Where the departing seller is by then a Mauritius resident, article 13 §4 assigns the later gain on securities to the residence state, and the substantial-participation exception of Protocol §6.b, at the 25% threshold, is the one lever France retains, the principal-purpose test sitting over both readings. How the domestic charge and that allocation meet is a precise, destination-specific question settled at engagement; for most who sell, the exit tax is a matter of dates and filings rather than of money.

Law reviewed as at 24 July 2026 — verified against Légifrance and BOFiP through the Chiron Legal Corpus · Convention arts. 13 §§1, 4, 24; Protocol §6.b; CGI arts. 150 UB, 150 VC, 167 bis, 200 B, 244 bis A (incl. IV bis), 1609 nonies G; CSS L. 136-6; CE n° 400329; CJUE C-45/17

IIIRenting — as tenant and as owner

Renting as a tenant

A year of renting before buying is still the natural way in, and it comes with one warning that repays plain statement: French tax domicile under CGI article 4 B rests on where the foyer lies, where the principal stay is, and where the professional and economic interests centre — not one of which yields to a lease. Let a Riviera villa become the family's real home and French residence, with its worldwide reach, can attach well ahead of any purchase; where the trial stretches on, the residence question is read together against article 4 of the convention — whose full cascade decides a competing claim — and against the domestic test. Furnished seasonal lettings and the one-to-three-year civil lease differ in how freely one can leave, so the form is best chosen to fit what the trial is really for.

Renting the villa out

Where a non-resident lets the villa, the French-source rents — furnished lettings, the usual form at this level, included — meet the minimum-rate regime of CGI article 197 A: 20% at least to the top of the second bracket and 30% beyond, unless a lower worldwide effective rate is shown, with the social levies added at the full third-country rate of section II for a Mauritian-affiliated owner. On the allocation the convention leaves no room: article 6 taxes income from immovable property in the state where the property lies. Mauritius, for its part, exempts that income under article 24 §1 a precisely because the convention hands it to France, keeping it only to compute the effective rate on other Mauritian income (article 24 §1 c); how that exemption meets the remittance basis, for a resident taxed on remittance, is a Mauritian-law point noted here at orientation level. The charge that decides the return, in practice, is the French one.

Law reviewed as at 24 July 2026 — verified against Légifrance and BOFiP through the Chiron Legal Corpus · CGI arts. 4 B, 197 A; convention arts. 4, 6, 24 §1 a, c

4What changed

Edition 1 — the baseline as the instruments stand (July 2026). The relationship rests on the convention of 11 December 1980, in force since 17 September 1982, as amended by the avenant of 23 June 2011 (in force 1 May 2012, applied from 1 January 2012), whose central work was the recasting of article 27 to the full exchange- of-information standard with the lifting of fiscal bank secrecy. The multilateral instrument applies to the convention — in force for France since 1 January 2019 and for Mauritius since 1 February 2020 — and its effects run, on the French side, from 1 January 2021 for withholding taxes and from taxable periods beginning 1 August 2020 for other taxes, and on the Mauritian side from 1 July 2020 for withholding taxes and 1 August 2020 for the rest. The instrument matched to this convention only the preamble, the principal-purpose test, mutual agreement and arbitration; it added no land-rich clause, so the capital-gains allocation of article 13 stands as drafted. No succession or gift convention exists, and none is under negotiation to this office's knowledge; the Mauritius Revenue Authority lists France among the treaties in force with no pending protocol. Watch items for edition 2: any France–Mauritius protocol; Mauritian Finance Act movements on the remittance basis and the flat-rate income regimes; annual Loi de finances movements on the IFI and transfer duties; communal surtaxe votes on the Riviera arc; any change to either state's MLI reservations, which would alter the consolidated text; and any refresh of the administration's 2012-vintage commentary page on the convention, which predates the multilateral instrument. The ownership aggregates of section 2 refresh with each edition.

Law reviewed as at 24 July 2026 — verified against Légifrance and BOFiP through the Chiron Legal Corpus

5Questions, answered

Does a Mauritius resident pay French wealth tax on a Riviera villa?

Yes, once French real-estate assets exceed €1.3M, whether held directly or through the property fraction of company shares (CGI art. 964). This is an income-and-fortune convention, and article 23 §1 assigns the fortune constituted by immovable property to the state where it is situated, so France's charge rests on a treaty article; Mauritius levies no annual wealth tax, so nothing arises there to double it.

Is there a France–Mauritius succession or gift treaty?

No. The relationship covers income and fortune only, and no succession convention has ever been concluded. French duty on a French villa in a Mauritian estate runs under CGI article 750 ter at the scale of article 777 — 45% in the direct line beyond €1.8M per share — with the spouse exempt; Mauritius levies no inheritance duty and no credit mechanism applies, so the French bill is the whole bill.

Who taxes the gain when a Mauritius resident sells French company shares?

The starting rule is that Mauritius does: article 13 §4 places gains on all property but immovables with the seller's state of residence. The exception is Protocol §6.b — where the shares form a substantial participation, meaning at least 25% of the company's profit rights held alone or with associated persons, the gain is taxable in France. The principal-purpose test overlays any arrangement leaning on the allocation, and France's domestic article 244 bis A reaches property-company gains; where the two meet, the participation level and the facts decide, and the position is settled at engagement.

Did the multilateral instrument add a property-rich clause to this convention?

No. The official synthesised text of the convention as modified by the multilateral instrument matches only the preamble, the principal-purpose test, mutual agreement and arbitration. The 365-day land-rich provision was not matched, so the capital-gains allocation of article 13 — and its 25% substantial-participation exception — stands as it was drafted in 1980.

Who taxes the gain when a Mauritius resident sells the villa itself?

France, as the situs state (art. 13 §1), under CGI article 244 bis A with the ownership-duration allowances — the income-tax component extinguishing after 22 years — plus the social levies at the full third-country rate. Mauritius exempts the gain with effective-rate progression under article 24; the treaty settles the direction, and the villa's own gain is never in doubt.

What has the Conseil d'État actually decided about Mauritius structures?

That substance governs. In the Rubis decisions (n° 439859 of 2022 and n° 488080 of 2025, the latter published in the recueil) the court upheld the taxation in France of a Mauritian holding company that carried on no activity, treating the income deemed under the controlled-foreign-company rule as other income taxable in the residence state (art. 22). The convention shelters no empty structure against French anti-abuse law; equally, none of that record touches the taxation of a villa.

Is rental income from France taxed if the owner lives in Mauritius?

Yes — by France as the situs state (art. 6), under the minimum-rate regime of CGI article 197 A at no less than 20% and 30%, with social levies in addition. Mauritius exempts the income under article 24 §1 a and retains it only to set the effective rate on other Mauritian income; a remittance-basis resident should confirm that interaction under Mauritian law.

Can a Mauritian will keep testamentary freedom over a French villa?

Largely, yes: EU Regulation 650/2012 lets a Mauritian national elect the law of his or her nationality for the succession as a whole. Since 2021, however, where the deceased or a child is an EU national or habitual resident and the chosen law allows no reserved share, each child may take a compensatory levy on assets situated in France, the villa first among them (Civil Code, art. 913). A family with a child settled in France engages the clause; a family Mauritian throughout does not.

Does a French exit tax apply after selling and leaving?

Rarely, and never on the villa itself. The charge (CGI art. 167 bis) reaches only persons French-domiciled for six of the ten years before departure, and only their unrealised gains on securities — above €800,000 in value, or a stake of at least 50% of a company's profits; the sold villa and its proceeds stand outside, as do family-SCI shares kept under the ordinary income-tax regime (art. 150 UB). For a departing resident, article 13 §4 places later securities gains with Mauritius, subject to the 25% substantial-participation exception; where the machinery applies, payment is generally deferred and the assessment lapses after two years — five above €2.57M — or on return.

What is the Chiron Legal Corpus?

The Chiron Legal Corpus is the research library behind this brief, maintained by this office's offshore legal-research partner: an extensive cross-border collection of consolidated statutes, tax-authority doctrine, treaty instruments and case law, including the French primary sources in full text. Every statement of law in these pages is verified against it, re-checked against Légifrance and BOFiP at each edition, and stamped with its review date section by section.

Law reviewed as at 24 July 2026 — verified against Légifrance and BOFiP through the Chiron Legal Corpus

6Methodology, sources & qualifications

Method. Legal statements are verified against the Chiron Legal Corpus, the research library maintained by this office's offshore legal-research partner — an extensive cross-border and international collection of consolidated statutes, tax-authority doctrine, treaty instruments and case law, including French primary law held in full text and re-checked against the official sources at each edition. The review of 24 July 2026 covered Légifrance (CGI arts. 4 B, 150 UB, 150 VC, 167 bis, 197 A, 200 B, 212, 244 bis A incl. IV bis, 669, 750 ter, 751, 777, 779, 784 A, 792-0 bis, 964–965, 968, 973–974, 990 J, 1609 nonies G, 1649 AB; Civil Code arts. 912–913; CSS art. L. 136-6 — consolidated texts), the convention of 11 December 1980 as amended by the avenant of 23 June 2011 in its French consolidated text from the DGFiP recueil — published by decree 82-912 of 14 October 1982 (law 82-483) and, for the avenant, decree 2012-816 of 25 June 2012 (law 2012-320) — with the Mauritius Revenue Authority's English synthesised text of the convention as modified by the multilateral instrument consulted for the instrument's dates and matched provisions, the two presentations of the treaty being read together and the authentic texts prevailing; the administration's list of conventions in force, which records the relationship as covering income and fortune only; and the jurisprudence read in the decision texts: CE n° 439859 of 25 April 2022 and n° 488080 of 13 March 2025 (published in the recueil) on the convention's other-income article and the substance requirement, CE n° 451533 of 13 July 2022 on the thin-capital reserve of Protocol §8.b, and CE n° 400329 of 5 March 2018 with CJUE Jahin C-45/17 on the third-country social-levy boundary. The administration's commentary on the convention consists of a single page of 2012 vintage (BOI-INT-CVB-MUS- 20120912) predating the multilateral instrument; this brief follows the treaty text where the two would differ. It is a true and distinctive feature of this edition that the Mauritian primary sources are themselves held in the corpus; even so, Mauritian domestic law — the absence of an annual wealth tax and of inheritance and gift duty, the flat-rate income regimes, the remittance basis for non-domiciled residents, the Trusts Act — is stated at orientation level and is never load-bearing for a legal claim. Market data: DVF (DGFiP), villa sales ≥ €3M, estate-deduplicated, register through 2025-12-31. Ownership aggregates: compiled from public land and company registers, anonymised, as at 24 July 2026, within the communes surveyed. Items flagged "at engagement" — communal rates, the Mauritian return of French income and gains, the participation level on a share sale, the deed-level gain base — are stated at mechanism level pending case-specific verification.

Qualification. This brief documents published law and public transaction data; it is research rather than personalised legal or tax advice, and individual circumstances — residence history, nationality, matrimonial regime, the chain of title — change outcomes. For a live transaction, this office coordinates the appropriate French counsel (avocat fiscaliste, notaire) and executes the property side.

Law reviewed as at 24 July 2026 — verified against Légifrance and BOFiP through the Chiron Legal Corpus

Further intelligence

The Riviera villa market — the coast-wide €3M+ index

Riviera property tax & relocation — the incoming buyer's primer

France–Germany — the convention pair

France–Switzerland — the convention pair