Usufruct and bare ownership

There is no room to negotiate here and no place for a valuer. Article 13 of the IMT Code sets the percentage to be deducted from the full ownership value according to the age of the person on whose life the right depends. What is deducted is the value of the usufruct; what remains is the value of the bare ownership.

The logic is obvious once stated: the younger the usufructuary, the longer the usufruct is expected to run and the more it is worth. At twenty the usufruct represents 80% of the value of the property and the bare ownership only the remaining 20%. From eighty-five onwards the relationship is very nearly reversed.

Where there are several usufructuaries, the age used is that of the oldest or of the youngest, according to whether the right ends on the death of any one of them or of the last survivor.

Where the usufruct is for a fixed term the calculation changes: 10% is deducted for each indivisible period of 5 years the right still has to run. Indivisible is not decorative: six years count as two complete periods, just as ten do.

A ceiling sits over that rule. The deduction for a fixed-term usufruct can never exceed the one that would apply if it were for life. That is why the simulator still asks for the age when you choose a term: without it there is no way to know where the limit falls.

In a sale with reserved usufruct, where the bare ownership is sold and the seller goes on living in the house for the rest of their life. It is a way of releasing capital without moving out, and the fair price of that arrangement starts with exactly this table.

In a lifetime gift with the usufruct held back, the classic move of a parent transferring a property to children while keeping the right to live in it and to receive its rents. The gift bites on the bare ownership, and it is that value the taxes are calculated on.

And in divisions of an estate, where one heir takes the use and another the ownership. Without splitting the value there is no way to work out shares or balancing payments.

Outside this simulator sit the right of use and habitation, which is derived from the usufruct value but carries a reduction of its own, and the surface right, which has separate rules in the same article.

The figures in use are those in force in 2026 and are reviewed annually.