5% Household Goods Allowance: Why It Does Not Cover Your Jewellery

This is one of the most common—and most costly—confusions in estates that include jewellery. The “5% allowance” exists, but it does not do what many heirs think it does.

What exactly the 5% allowance says

Article 764, I, 3° of the French General Tax Code provides that, in the absence of a public sale or an inventory, the taxable value of household goods cannot be less than 5% of all other movable and immovable assets in the estate.

Two clarifications are necessary. First, this is a minimum, not a cap or a comfort option: it is a floor applicable when nothing more precise exists. Second, and most importantly, it only concerns household goods.

“Household goods”: a precise notion

Article 534 of the French Civil Code defines them as furniture intended for the use and ornament of apartments: beds, chairs, tables, tapestries, mirrors, clocks… In other words, what furnishes a home.

A ring, a necklace, a diamond certificate, a collector’s watch, or a painting does not furnish an apartment in the legal sense. They fall under Article 764 II, which establishes a separate valuation regime. Tax doctrine published in the BOFiP confirms it: jewellery, gemstones, works of art, and collector’s items are excluded from the household goods allowance and must be declared separately.

Practical consequences for heirs

Three errors recur frequently:

• Believing the 5% “covers everything” and declaring nothing for jewellery. In the event of an audit, the tax administration may reinstate their value with late-payment interest.
• Adding jewellery to household goods in a single furniture line. The declaration becomes imprecise and fragile, whereas jewellery is often the most significant movable asset.
• Undervaluing out of inverted caution: declaring a very low value by rough estimate. If an insurance contract exists, it sets a floor that immediately makes such undervaluation contestable.

Conversely, a written expert appraisal as of the date of death secures the declaration both ways: it avoids both risky undervaluation and overvaluation, which would cause heirs to pay unnecessary taxes.

Updated July 24, 2026 — rates and allowances are subject to change with each finance act.