smartervo

Off the top of my head... in France, you pay tax as a household rather than an individual. So if you are married with children you get a tax cut for each child up to 3.

Private pension contributions are also tax deductible and don't actually have to be used for retirement (you can use it to fund a first house for example)

Other things that you can take off your tax bill include alimony payments, charitable donations and investments made in certain French initiatives.

So yes, there are many ways to legally reduce your tax bill quite significantly here.

Orange Bank is another option in France which is free for basic current account activities, although they don't offer Livret etc.

The best way to do this in France seems to be to keep a "legacy" bank just for handling savings without a current account (that way you don't pay for current account, card etc.), and use one of the free challenger banks for current account, direct debits etc.