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What non-residents need to know about French tax on property, bank accounts, and cryptocurrency — and how offshore PPLI addresses each one. The assumption many internationally mobile clients make is a reasonable one: if I don’t live in France, France can’t tax me. For the most part, that is correct. But “for the most part” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. France has a long reach when it comes to assets with a French connection, and the gaps in that assumption — inheritance tax on French property, withholding tax on French income, wealth tax on French real estate above the threshold — can be expensive for clients who have not planned around them. France imposes succession tax

How French residents are using offshore Private Placement Life Insurance to eliminate the annual 30% tax drag, plan their estates, and protect crypto wealth — legally and transparently. If you live in France and hold a meaningful investment portfolio, the French tax system has a simple answer to every decision you make: 30%. Sell shares — 30%. Receive dividends — 30%. Swap one cryptocurrency for another — 30%. Every year, without exception, the prélèvement forfaitaire unique takes its share of everything your money earns. Add 17.2% social charges to that picture, and the cost of holding wealth in France directly is not incidental — it is structural. For a €3 million portfolio generating 5% a year, the annual PFU alone

For non-residents who own property, investments, or other assets in Spain. You do not live in Spain. You have perhaps lived there in the past, or you visit regularly, or you own a property on the coast that you bought as an investment or a holiday home. You may have a brokerage account holding Spanish equities, or a Spanish-situs bond portfolio. You have moved on — to London, to Dubai, to Geneva — and Spain is somewhere in the background of your financial life rather than its centre. But Spain has not moved on from you. Spanish-situs assets — property, shares in Spanish companies, certain financial instruments with a Spanish connection — attract Spanish tax on capital gains, Spanish wealth

For residents of Spain – and for those who have recently arrived. You moved to Spain, or you have lived here for years. You have built a portfolio – equities, funds, some cryptocurrency, perhaps a bond ladder. And every year, without fail, the Spanish tax authority takes its share. Dividends received: taxed. Capital gain on a fund switch: taxed. One cryptocurrency swapped for another: taxed. Each event is a separate charge, a separate calculation, a reduction in the capital that is supposed to be compounding. From 2026, Spain introduced a new 30% rate on savings income above EUR 300,000 per year. That is the headline number. But even before you reach EUR 300,000, the standard rates are 19%, 21%, 23%,

The previous two pieces in this series established the UK tax baseline for life insurance payouts and the mechanics of trust structures that remove a policy from the policyholder’s estate for Inheritance Tax purposes. This third piece addresses a question that arises directly from that analysis: when the life company itself authors the trust structure — as is standard practice across the offshore PPLI market — does that structure hold, and what are the UK IHT implications across the major PPLI jurisdictions beyond the Crown dependencies? THIS SERIESPart 1 – Are Life Insurance Payouts Tax-Free in the UK?Part 2 – Writing Life Insurance in Trust: How the Structure Works and What Changed in April 2025Part 3 – Offshore PPLI and