B: Permanent exemptions

The following are exempt from property tax on built properties:

1° Buildings owned by the State and local authorities, when they are assigned to a public service or of general utility and do not produce income, in particular:

Palaces, châteaux and national buildings, the Palais-Bourbon and the Palais du Luxembourg;

The Panthéon, the Hôtel des Invalides, the Ecole militaire, the Ecole polytechnique, the Bibliothèque nationale;

Buildings allocated to the accommodation of ministers, administrations and their offices;

Buildings occupied by courts of justice and tribunals;

Lycées, prytanées, schools and maisons d'éducation nationale, public libraries and museums ;

Halls of prefectures and sub-prefectures, communal houses, school houses belonging to communes;

Hospices, beggar's warehouses, prisons, houses of detention;

Shops, barracks and other military establishments, with the exception of arsenals;

Buildings forming a necessary dependency of cemeteries, including cemeteries constituted under Article L. 522-12 du code des pensions militaires d'invalidité et des victimes de guerre pour la sépulture des militaires alliés et dont l'Etat a concédé la libre disposition aux gouvernements intéressés;

Les haras.

By way of exception, departmental buildings located on the territory of another department are exempt from property tax on built properties up to the communal rate applied in 2020 and communal buildings located on the territory of another commune are exempt from property tax on built properties up to the departmental rate applied in 2020.

Subject to the provisions of 9°, this exemption does not apply to buildings owned by public establishments other than public establishments for inter-municipal cooperation, mixed syndicates, metropolitan poles, inter-departmental agreements, public scientific, educational and assistance establishments as well as the establishments referred to in articles L. 451-1, L. 451-2, L. 451-12, L. 452-1 et L. 452-22 of the General Civil Service Code, nor to State, departmental or municipal bodies of an industrial or commercial nature. The exemption also applies to buildings owned by health cooperation groups with public law legal personality mentioned in I of article L. 6133-3 of the public health code, when they are occupied by the public health establishments mentioned in article L. 6141-1 of the same code, assigned to a public service or of general utility and not producing income with regard to these groups.

Buildings that are incorporated free of charge into the domain of the State, local authorities or public establishments, by virtue of an agreement, are taxable until the agreement expires.

1° bis Throughout the term of the contract and under the same conditions as those provided for in 1°, buildings constructed under partnership contracts, contracts concluded in application of article L. 2122-15 du code général de la propriété des personnes publiques, or contracts referred to in the first paragraph of article L. 6148-5 of the public health code, and which, on expiry of the contract, are incorporated into the domain of the public person in accordance with the clauses of that contract.

For the application of the conditions set out in 1°, the condition relating to the absence of income generation must be assessed with regard to the public person into whose domain the property is to be incorporated.

To benefit from this exemption, the holder of the contract must attach to the declaration provided for in article 1406 a copy of the contract and any document justifying the allocation of the building.

2° Under the same conditions as those set out in the first paragraph of 1°, properties belonging to major maritime and river-maritime ports.

3° Works established for the distribution of drinking water and belonging to rural communes or syndicates of communes;

4° Buildings allocated to the exercise of worship belonging to the State, départements or communes, or allocated, by virtue of the provisions of article 4 of the loi du 9 décembre 1905, aux associations ou unions prévues par le titre IV de la même loi ainsi que ceux attribués en vertu des dispositions de l'article 112 de la loi du 29 avril 1926 aux associations visées par cet article et ceux acquis ou édifiés par lesdites associations ou unions ; buildings allocated to the exercise of worship which, in the départements of Bas-Rhin, Haut-Rhin and Moselle, belong to associations whose exclusive purpose is the exercise of an unrecognised religion;

5° Buildings belonging to associations of war or work disabled persons recognised as being of public utility and allocated to the hospitalisation of members of these associations.

6° a. Buildings used for rural operations such as barns, stables, granaries, cellars, wine cellars, wine presses and others, intended either to house the livestock of farms and tenant farms as well as the caretaker of these livestock, or to tighten the crops.

The exemption is maintained, however, when these buildings are no longer used for a rural operation and are not assigned to another use ;

The exercise of an ancillary activity mentioned in article 75 is not such as to call into question the exemption when the average revenue derived from the exercise of this activity in a building mentioned in the first paragraph of this a during the three years preceding that of the taxation does not exceed 10% of the average revenue derived from the total activity carried out in this building during the same years.

When the conditions for maintaining the exemption provided for in the previous paragraph cease to be met, the operator informs the owner no later than 1st February of the year of taxation and the owner submits a declaration, based on the facts existing on 1st January of the year of taxation, on a form drawn up by the administration, no later than 1st March of the year of taxation;

b. Under the same conditions as in the first paragraph of a, buildings allocated for agricultural use by agricultural cooperative societies, by union associations with an exclusively agricultural purpose, their unions, land associations, agricultural collective interest societies, agricultural professional syndicates, livestock societies, agricultural associations recognised by law and dependent on the Ministry of Agriculture whose purpose is to promote agricultural production, their unions and federations as well as unions of agricultural cooperative societies or unions of agricultural cooperatives and consumer cooperatives constituted and operating in accordance with the legal provisions governing them, by economic interest groupings constituted between agricultural holdings or by companies exclusively constituted between farmer members provided that these buildings are only used in respect of the agricultural holdings of these same members.

Wheat cooperatives may, without losing the benefit of the exemption, lease all or part of their warehouses to the national establishment for agricultural and sea products (FranceAgriMer) with a view to housing surplus wheat.

A société coopérative agricole may, without losing the benefit of the exemption, make all or part of its premises equipped with the necessary means of production available to a third party with a view to the exclusive processing of the products of the cooperative's members, in compliance with one or more of the methods of adding value to agricultural products provided for in Articles L. 641-5 to L. 641-12 of the Rural and Maritime Fishing Code.

The benefit of the exemption is also maintained for cereal cooperatives and their unions for transactions they carry out with the national establishment for agricultural and sea products (FranceAgriMer) relating to the purchase, sale, processing or transport of cereals; the same applies to transactions carried out by cereal cooperatives with other cereal cooperatives as part of programmes drawn up by the establishment or with its authorisation ;

7° Shelters against aerial bombardment established pursuant to the laws and regulations relating to passive defence and which meet the conditions laid down by a decree countersigned by the Minister of the Economy and Finance and the Minister responsible for passive defence;

8° Sheds belonging to rescue associations recognised as being in the public interest and used to house their lifeboats ;

9° Buildings belonging to owners' associations provided for by article 23 of the law of 11 October 1940 amended by the law of 12 July 1941 relating to the reconstruction of residential buildings partially or totally destroyed as a result of acts of war;

10° Temporary buildings erected in application of order no. 45-609 of 10 April 1945, relating to preliminary work for reconstruction, and which remain the property of the State ;

11° Tools and other installations and equipment used in the operation of industrial establishments, excluding those referred to in 1° and 2° of Article 1381;

12° Fixed assets intended for the production of electricity from photovoltaic sources;

13° The works of a reversible deep geological disposal centre for radioactive waste referred to in Article L. 542-10-1 of the Environment Code. Surface works are exempt up to 90%;

14° Installations and buildings of any kind assigned to the production of biogas, electricity and heat by methanisation, carried out under the conditions set out in article L. 311-1 du code rural et de la pêche maritime.

The exercise of a photovoltaic electricity production activity, whether income-producing or not, supported by a building mentioned in 1°, 1° bis, 2°, 3°, 4° and 6° is not such as to call into question the exemption from property tax on built properties.