Every spring, the same paperwork lands in French mailboxes: a bill from the Customs administration for the privilege of keeping a pleasure boat on French waters. Since 2022, that bill goes by a new name. The old DAFN (droit annuel de francisation et de navigation) has been replaced by the TAEMUP : taxe annuelle sur les engins maritimes à usage personnel. The mechanics look familiar, but the legal ground under them has shifted, and a few details are worth understanding before you sign a cheque or, worse, sell a boat without checking what is still owed.

What actually changed with the TAEMUP

The DAFN was tied to francisation, the historic act of registering a vessel under the French flag. When francisation was abolished as a standalone procedure and folded into the single pleasure-craft registration (immatriculation) run by the Direction des Affaires Maritimes, the tax had to be rebuilt on new legal footing. The result is the TAEMUP, in force since 1 January 2022 and codified in the Code des impositions sur les biens et services.

Practically, for most owners, very little changed:

  • The tax is still annual, still collected by the Douanes (DGDDI).
  • It is still calculated on hull length and administrative horsepower (puissance administrative in CV).
  • The reductions for older boats (abattements pour vétusté) were carried over.
  • The old droit de passeport, which applied to French-resident owners flying a foreign flag, has been absorbed into the same framework.

What did change is the language, the reference texts, and a few technical thresholds. If you are working from a 2019 forum thread or an old broker's memo, the numbers may no longer match.

Who has to pay, and who is exempt by default

The TAEMUP applies to pleasure craft (usage personnel, not commercial) that meet at least one of the following:

  • a hull length of 7 metres or more, or
  • a propulsion engine rated at 22 CV administratifs or more, regardless of hull length.

Below both thresholds, you are outside the scope of the tax entirely. A 6.50 m open boat with a 15 CV outboard owes nothing. A 6.50 m RIB with a 250 hp outboard, on the other hand, is very much in scope, because the engine power alone triggers the tax.

Registration flag matters too. The TAEMUP covers boats flying the French flag and boats owned by persons resident in France even when flagged abroad, which is where the old passeport rule was tucked in. Chartering out under a proper commercial regime moves the vessel to a different tax logic; if you are on that path, the tax exposure is only one piece of a broader legal setup, and the mistakes tend to be expensive. Our note on the five mistakes that sink boat rental businesses covers the wider picture.

How the tax is calculated

Two components add up to your yearly bill : the hull-length component and the engine-power component. Both are stacked, then adjusted for the age of the hull and, separately, the age of the engine.

The hull-length component

Hull length is measured on the registration document (the acte de francisation or the new fiche plaisance). The scale is progressive by bracket:

  • Under 7 m : nil.
  • 7 m to under 8 m : a modest flat amount.
  • 8 m to 10 m : a higher flat amount.
  • 10 m to 12 m, 12 m to 15 m, and 15 m and above : each bracket steps up, with the top brackets significantly heavier.

The exact per-metre amounts are set by decree and revalued periodically, so always check the current année d'imposition on the Douanes site rather than trusting a broker's spreadsheet.

The engine-power component

This is where owners are most often surprised. The tax uses CV administratifs, a fiscal horsepower figure, not the physical kW or hp rating stamped on the engine. Below 22 CV, the engine component is nil. From 22 CV upward, each CV is taxed at a rate that increases as you climb the ladder, with a steeper rate above roughly 100 CV. A pair of 300 hp outboards on a fast dayboat can easily generate an engine component larger than the hull component on a 40-footer.

If you are shopping used and comparing running costs across candidates, this is one of the numbers to price in early. Our guide on reading engine hours on a used boat pairs well with a TAEMUP calculation : the fiscal cost of a big block does not go away with the previous owner.

Age reductions (abattements pour vétusté)

Both the hull component and the engine component benefit from reductions as they age, calculated independently:

  • No reduction in the first ten years.
  • From 10 to 20 years : a partial reduction, typically around a quarter.
  • From 20 to 25 years : a larger reduction, around half.
  • Beyond 25 years : the deepest reduction, on the order of three-quarters.

Two consequences for owners. First, a repower resets the clock on the engine component only, not the hull. Second, an older wooden or GRP hull with a young engine can end up with a very asymmetric bill : nearly nothing on the hull side, but the full engine tax.

Exemptions and special cases

Several categories fall outside the tax or benefit from targeted reliefs:

  • Historic vessels classified as monuments historiques or holding a BIP (bateau d'intérêt patrimonial) label.
  • Boats used exclusively for professional purposes, including bona fide commercial charter operations declared as such.
  • SNSM and other rescue vessels, along with certain public-interest uses.
  • Sail training and youth sailing schools under specific conditions.
  • Boats definitively withdrawn from navigation, provided the withdrawal is properly declared.

The last point catches people out. A boat sitting on the hard for two seasons while you decide what to do is still, in the eyes of the tax authority, a taxable vessel. Only a formal déclaration de sortie de flotte, or a sale properly recorded, stops the clock. If you are heading toward the sale, our piece on selling your boat at the right price covers the paperwork sequence, including what the buyer needs from you to close cleanly.

There are also legitimate optimisation levers that stay well inside the law : how the boat is registered, who owns it, and how it is used. We walk through those in our note on tax exemptions for boat owners.

Paying, timing, and what happens if you ignore the bill

The TAEMUP is issued by the Douanes for the calendar year in progress. The fait générateur is 1 January : if you own the boat on that date, you owe the full year, even if you sell in February. There is no pro-rating between buyer and seller by default. In practice, the two parties often adjust the sale price to account for it, but that is a private matter between you and your buyer.

Payment is handled online via the Douanes portal, or by paper for those still receiving mailed notices. Deadlines vary by département and are printed on the notice. Late payment triggers a majoration of 10 percent, and prolonged non-payment can lead to a saisie on the vessel itself.

A few good habits:

  1. Update your registration immediately after any change : ownership, engine, address, home port. The Douanes work from that file.
  2. Keep a scan of the current fiche plaisance, the engine invoice with its CV administratifs clearly stated, and any age-related documentation. In a dispute, this is what settles the case.
  3. Budget the tax alongside insurance, mooring, and antifouling, not as a surprise. Our overview of the hidden costs of a pleasure boat puts it in context.

Planning around it, not against it

The TAEMUP is not, by itself, a huge line on most owners' budgets. A 10 m cruiser with a 40 CV inboard sits in the middle brackets, and the age reductions bite quickly. Where it hurts is on high-power dayboats, on recent large motoryachts, and on any boat where the paperwork is out of sync with reality : an engine that was replaced but never declared, a length overstated on the original acte, a change of residence never updated.

None of that is exotic. It is the same discipline you already apply to your maintenance logbook and your insurance renewals: keep the file clean, know what triggers the numbers, and check the current-year decree rather than relying on last season's memory. The rest is arithmetic, and the arithmetic rewards owners who actually read what the Douanes send them.

Once your fiscal file is straight, the interesting question becomes the operational one : is the boat earning its keep, or just accumulating fixed costs while it waits for you? That is a different conversation, and one worth having with real usage data in front of you rather than a rough guess at how many weekends you managed last season.