French government clarifies how long you must keep paperwork for

Local France

09-07-2025

It's fair to say that France is a country that likes its bureaucracy and admin, and many new arrivals are issued with strict instructions to never throw away any piece of paper, just in case it proves vital at a later date.
With more and more admin moving online things are perhaps less paper-based than they used to be, but still the terror of throwing away the wrong item remains.
Now, however, the French government's Service Public service
has issued a list
of the papers that must be kept forever, and the things that can safely be thrown away.
Here's what they say;
Must be kept forever
Livret de famille - the booklet you are given upon the birth of a child, to record their childhood
Carnet de santé - if applicable, these health records are usually given to children born in France, there is also a digital version via Ameli
Marriage certificate
Decree of adoption
Deed of sale for a property
Any kind of certificate should generally be kept, including language test certificates or degree certificates.
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Your birth certificate should of course be kept - but for certain French admin tasks you may be required to supply a 'recent' one - which means
requesting a new copy, rather than being born again
.
Keep for a limited time
Then there are the pieces of paper that only need to be kept for a certain length of time. According to Service Public these are;
Three years
- a property rental contract and inventory can be disposed of three years after the tenancy ends.
Four years
- tax declarations and tax notices can be disposed of at the beginning of the fourth year following the tax year (so you can dispose of your 2025 tax declaration from the beginning of 2029). If you do your declarations online, then you can request duplicates of old documents.
One year
- property tax bills, on the other hand, only need to be kept for one year.
Five years
- bank statements should be kept for five years, although you only have 13 months to contest a payment you believe to be suspicious or fraudulent.
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Retirement
- payslips, on the other hand, should be kept until you have asserted your right to receive a pension in France - either upon retirement or after you have set up your pension account and had calculated the contributions you have made throughout your career in France.
Throw it away
Service Public advises that other documents can be thrown away once they reach the end of their validity - for example once a guarantee for an item has expired, it can be thrown away.
There is, however, an online simulator which gives more detailed advice, allowing you to enter a wide range of documents from a certificate of having your boiler serviced to vehicle or insurance paperwork and get an estimate of how long you should keep it for. Find that
here
.
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Request new
There are certain pieces of paperwork that you can, if necessary, request new copies of online - the most common of these is the
justificat de domicile
. It's fairly common to be asked for a recent proof of address - previously that meant a utility bill issued within the last three months, but as more and more people move to paperless billing, utility companies offer an online service in which you download an
Attestation de domicile
, dated that day, which is accepted as proof of address for all official purposes. You can do this as often as you like.
You can also request proof that you are covered by the French health system at any time, by going to the Ameli website and downloading an
Attestation des Droits
.
The impots.gouv.fr tax website also offers the option to download various documents as needed including previous years' tax declarations and bills, which may also be required as proof of your income.
Immigration paperwork
The Service Public website is mainly aimed at French people, so it doesn't really touch upon the immigration paperwork that is vital for the life of non-EU citizens in France.
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The general rule of thumb is to keep anything that shows your period of legal residency in France - so copies of old visas, residency permits etc that you can use to prove, if necessary, how long you have been a legal resident in France.
For Brits who moved to France before Brexit, the advice is to keep something from the first or early years of your stay in France - for example a work contract, rental contract or old utility bill which will show that you were in France during the relevant period.
Copies
For really vital paperwork it's a good idea to have a back-up - foreigners in France with a residency permit/visa are advised to make a copy (a phone photo is fine) and store it in a different place, either physically or digitally, so that you have proof if the document is lost.
If you are asked to send a certain document, pay careful attention to whether the request is for the original document or a copy, and whether it is
required to be
apostillé
.