Country guide · France
Moving to France: cost of living, salaries, taxes, visas
Talent Passport for skilled workers and founders; impatriés tax regime for inbound transferred employees; Paris commands a heavy housing premium.
France's Talent Passport consolidates several skilled-migration categories into a multi-year, family-friendly residence permit. The impatriés tax regime offers partial income-tax and wealth-tax exemptions to qualifying inbound employees, typically for several years — narrower than Portugal NHR but materially helpful for senior corporate transfers.
Paris carries a heavy housing premium that distorts the country's overall cost picture; second-tier cities (Lyon, Bordeaux, Lille, Marseille) run materially cheaper but with smaller English-speaking professional pools.
At a glance
France relocation profile
Mundevo coverage in France
Cost-of-living detail pages for each France city in the catalog.
Tax and visa landscape
Headline tax model + entry-point visa overview for relocators.
- Effective income tax: 14.0%
- Social security (employee): 22.0%
- Total payroll deduction: 36.0%
- VAT: 20.0%
- Currency: EUR
Effective rates assume a single salaried filer at country median wage. Special regimes (e.g. expat-favoring schemes) are not applied here — see the visa guide for those.
Visa categories, residency routes, and tax-regime context for relocators are detailed in the dedicated visa guide.
France visa guide →Salary bands at Paris — by role
Illustrative gross-salary bands for 6 senior IC roles in Paris. Derived from NYC anchor × France pay-tier multiplier. Cross-check Levels.fyi, Glassdoor before negotiating.
| Role | P25 | P50 | P75 | NYC anchor (P50) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Software engineer | €80,556 | €100,000 | €127,778 | $180,000 |
| Product manager | €83,333 | €108,333 | €144,444 | $195,000 |
| UX / product designer | €61,111 | €80,556 | €108,333 | $145,000 |
| Marketing manager | €52,778 | €72,222 | €97,222 | $130,000 |
| Data scientist | €75,000 | €97,222 | €127,778 | $175,000 |
| Finance analyst | €71,296 | €100,463 | €142,593 | $155,000 |
Top relocation corridors
Closest peers by cost-of-living index — the moves most commonly considered alongside France.