Registering an inherited or gifted car in France
The mini calculator compares the cost of the new certificate when a car is inherited, taken over by a spouse or given as a gift.
Inherited or gifted car: the registration cost
New certificate
€373.76
| Y1 regional tax | €360.00 |
| Y4 + Y5 | €13.76 |
A gift is treated like a sale: regional tax is due.
Inheriting a car in France does not exempt you from the regional tax on the carte grise, the registration certificate. The French tax code contains no exemption for inheritance: a child, sibling or nephew who puts the car in their own name pays the same regional tax as a used-car buyer, halved if the first registration is ten years old or more. A gift is treated the same way, because ownership still changes hands. The exception is the spouse or the PACS partner (France’s registered civil partnership): article L421-52 exempts from regional tax a certificate issued after a death, marriage, divorce or end of a PACS whose only purpose is to add or remove one of the couple. That certificate costs €13.76. Example in Centre-Val de Loire: a 6 CV car first registered in 2018 costs €373.76 for a child who inherits it, against €13.76 for the surviving spouse.
Checked by Radif Partners · Editorial policy · Method and sources
Three situations, two prices
In Centre-Val de Loire a fiscal horsepower costs €60 on 20 October 2026. For a 6 CV petrol car from 2018, this is what the new certificate costs depending on who receives it.
| Situation | Regional tax | Certificate cost |
|---|---|---|
| Inherited by a child or other relative | €360 | €373.76 |
| Taken over by spouse or PACS partner | €0 | €13.76 |
| Gift or family sale | €360 | €373.76 |
The rate is set by the region where the heir lives, not where the deceased lived. An heir based in the Paris region would pay €427.76 for the same car, Île-de-France Mobilités surcharge included.
Papers for an inheritance
The application is made online on the ANTS website, the French agency that issues registration certificates, in its section on vehicles of deceased persons. It relies on the deceased’s carte grise and on proof that you are an heir: a certificate of inheritance, or a deed drawn up by the notary handling the estate. Where there are several heirs and only one keeps the car, the others’ written consent is usually required. We have not found a verified legal deadline specific to inheritance: the one-month rule that follows a sale does not expressly cover this case, so ANTS remains the reference for your file.
A gift is handled like a sale
The giver declares the transfer on the ANTS website and hands over the signed transfer certificate, the crossed-out carte grise and the transfer code. The recipient then has the usual deadline to register the car, and the regional tax is charged at the rate of their own region. Whether the car is given or sold makes no difference to the amount, which depends only on horsepower, age and region.
Selling without registering
If nobody wants to keep the car, selling it straight from the estate avoids paying regional tax on a certificate that would only be used for a few weeks. This is possible under conditions set out by ANTS. To estimate what the buyer will pay, use the used-car transfer calculation. All these applications are free on the ANTS website, where you pay only the taxes; an approved professional can handle them for a service fee.