Your French company is finally making money, and you want to take some of it home. You live in London, New York, Dubai or Singapore, you own all or most of a French SAS (société par actions simplifiée, the flexible limited company almost every foreign founder chooses) or a SARL (société à responsabilité limitée, the more rigid traditional limited company), and a simple question is keeping you awake: how do I legally move last year’s profit from the company’s bank account to mine, how much French tax disappears on the way, and how do I get the excess back? This guide answers that exact question from start to finish. French company profits follow a strict two-stage path. First, the profit must become a lawful dividend under company law: only distributable profits can be paid out, only the shareholders’ meeting can vote them, and the money must actually reach you within a fixed legal deadline. Second, the dividend crosses the tax border: France takes corporate tax (IS, impôt sur les sociétés) on the profit while it is still inside the company, then levies a withholding tax (retenue à la source) when the dividend leaves France for a foreign owner, unless a tax treaty between France and your country caps that levy and lets you reclaim the difference from abroad. Each stage has traps that routinely cost foreign owners months of delay and thousands of euros, from dividends voted by the wrong meeting on the wrong date to withholding applied at the full domestic rate because nobody filed the treaty paperwork. The pages below walk through both stages in order, with the exact legal texts and court decisions that decide real cases, so you can check every step against official sources before money moves.

I. Can your French company legally pay you a dividend this year?

Before any tax question arises, your dividend must exist in law. A bank transfer labelled “dividends” that was never properly voted from genuine distributable profits is not a dividend at all: it can be cancelled by a court, and the directors who paid it can be ordered to repay the company. Foreign owners discover this the hard way when a minority shareholder, a new buyer, or an auditor challenges a distribution made casually between meetings. Everything in this first part therefore comes before the money moves, and every paragraph can be checked in the Code de commerce (the French Commercial Code) and in a 2025 decision of the Cour de cassation (France’s supreme court for civil and commercial matters).

A. Does your French company have distributable profits you can actually touch?

French law starts from a simple protective idea: shareholders share only the wealth the company can genuinely spare, never its core capital or the reserves the law locks away for creditors. Article L232-11 of the Code de commerce defines the pool you may distribute, word for word: “Le bénéfice distribuable est constitué par le bénéfice de l’exercice, diminué des pertes antérieures, ainsi que des sommes à porter en réserve en application de la loi ou des statuts, et augmenté du report bénéficiaire.” In plain English, the distributable profit is the profit of the financial year, minus losses carried over from earlier years, minus the sums that must go into reserves under the law or your articles of association (statuts), plus retained earnings carried forward (report à nouveau, literally the balance brought forward from prior years). The same article adds two rules foreign owners constantly overlook. First, the shareholders’ meeting may also distribute sums taken from reserves that are freely available, but the decision must expressly state which reserve accounts the money comes from: “l’assemblée générale peut décider la mise en distribution de sommes prélevées sur les réserves dont elle a la disposition. En ce cas, la décision indique expressément les postes de réserve sur lesquels les prélèvements sont effectués.” Second, dividends are taken first from the current year’s distributable profit: “les dividendes sont prélevés par priorité sur le bénéfice distribuable de l’exercice.” You cannot cherry-pick an old reserve while leaving this year’s profit untouched. The full official text is published here: Article L232-11 du Code de commerce sur Légifrance.

Behind that definition stands a hard floor that protects creditors, and it kills many planned distributions. The end of Article L232-11 provides: “Hors le cas de réduction du capital, aucune distribution ne peut être faite aux actionnaires lorsque les capitaux propres sont ou deviendraient à la suite de celle-ci inférieurs au montant du capital augmenté des réserves que la loi ou les statuts ne permettent pas de distribuer. L’écart de réévaluation n’est pas distribuable.” (Article L232-11 du Code de commerce sur Légifrance) In other words, outside a formal capital reduction, no distribution is allowed if the company’s equity (capitaux propres, everything the company owns minus everything it owes) is already below, or would fall below, the share capital plus the non-distributable reserves, and the revaluation surplus can never be distributed. A company can therefore show an accounting profit for the year and still be legally unable to pay a single euro of dividends, typically because past losses have hollowed out equity. Your accountant’s first job before any dividend talk is to run this equity test on the approved balance sheet, not merely to confirm that last year ended in profit.

Three practical consequences follow for a foreign owner. First, only approved accounts count. The distributable profit is computed from accounts the shareholders have formally approved, and the company’s Kbis (the official registration certificate issued by the greffe, the commercial court’s clerical office, proving your company legally exists) tells your bank and your counterparties who may sign, but it never proves a dividend was lawful. Keep the signed annual accounts, the meeting minutes recording the profit allocation, and the updated equity calculation together: if the dividend is ever challenged, those three documents are your shield. Second, every French acronym on those documents matters. The liasse fiscale is the annual tax return bundle, the BODACC (Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales, the official gazette where company events are published) records capital changes that affect the equity test, and the commissaire aux comptes (statutory auditor, mandatory above certain size thresholds) certifies the interim figures if you want an advance dividend, as explained below. Ask your French accountant to annotate each acronym the first time it appears, exactly as this guide does, so nothing gets lost between Paris and your home office. Third, never distribute from unaudited optimism. Paying yourself from a profit figure that later turns out to be wrong exposes the distribution to cancellation and exposes whoever received it to a repayment claim. When the numbers are uncertain, vote a smaller dividend that the equity test comfortably covers, and leave the rest in retained earnings for next year rather than gambling on figures the auditor has not yet blessed.

B. Who must vote the dividend, when, and can you do it from abroad?

Even with ample distributable profits, the dividend does not exist until the right body votes it at the right time. Article L232-12 of the Code de commerce states the rule in one sentence: “Après approbation des comptes annuels et constatation de l’existence de sommes distribuables, l’assemblée générale détermine la part attribuée aux associés sous forme de dividendes.” Only the shareholders’ general meeting (assemblée générale), acting after it has approved the annual accounts and formally recorded that distributable sums exist, sets the share paid out as dividends. Neither the president of the SAS (président, the legal representative who runs the company day to day) nor the manager of the SARL (gérant) can decide a dividend alone, whatever your shareholders’ agreement says informally. The meeting that approves the accounts and the decision that fixes the dividend belong together in the same annual ordinary meeting, and the minutes must show both steps in that order: approval first, distribution second. The official text is here: Article L232-12 du Code de commerce sur Légifrance.

What if you need cash before the annual accounts are approved, which in practice happens months after the year ends? French law offers exactly one anticipatory route, the interim dividend (acompte sur dividende), and it is fenced with conditions. The second half of Article L232-12 allows it only “lorsqu’un bilan établi au cours ou à la fin de l’exercice et certifié par un commissaire aux comptes fait apparaître que la société, depuis la clôture de l’exercice précédent, après constitution des amortissements et provisions nécessaires, déduction faite s’il y a lieu des pertes antérieures ainsi que des sommes à porter en réserve en application de la loi ou des statuts et compte tenu du report bénéficiaire, a réalisé un bénéfice”, and caps it strictly: “Le montant de ces acomptes ne peut excéder le montant du bénéfice défini au présent alinéa.” (Article L232-12 du Code de commerce sur Légifrance) No certified interim balance sheet from a statutory auditor showing a real profit computed exactly like the annual one, no interim dividend. Foreign founders who wire themselves a mid-year “advance on profits” on the sole basis of management accounts are not paying an acompte in the legal sense, and that transfer sits exposed until the annual meeting either regularises it against genuine profits or the recipient repays it.

The Cour de cassation drew the timing line with unusual sharpness on 12 February 2025, in a case every foreign owner with retained earnings should read. Two groups of shareholders in a French SAS fought over dividends voted on 3 July 2017 out of retained earnings that an earlier meeting of 30 April 2017 had parked in the report à nouveau account. The commercial chamber first recalled the two governing texts: “Aux termes de l’article L. 232-11, alinéa 1er, du code de commerce, le bénéfice distribuable est constitué par le bénéfice de l’exercice, diminué des pertes antérieures, ainsi que des sommes à porter en réserve en application de la loi ou des statuts, et augmenté du report bénéficiaire”, then “Aux termes de l’article L. 232-12, alinéa 1er, de ce code, après approbation des comptes annuels et constatation de l’existence de sommes distribuables, l’assemblée générale détermine la part attribuée aux associés sous forme de dividendes.” From that combination it derived a rule with immediate practical bite: “le report bénéficiaire d’un exercice est inclus dans le bénéfice distribuable de l’exercice suivant et que, par voie de conséquence, seule l’assemblée approuvant les comptes de cet exercice pourra décider son affectation et, le cas échéant, sa distribution. Il s’ensuit qu’encourt la nullité la délibération d’une assemblée générale autre que celle approuvant les comptes de l’exercice et décidant la distribution d’un dividende prélevé sur le report à nouveau bénéficiaire d’un exercice précédent.” Only the meeting that approves the accounts of the year into which old retained earnings flow can allocate and distribute them; a separate later meeting voting a dividend out of previously parked retained earnings incurs nullity. The full decision, pourvoi n° 23-11.410, is published here: Cass. com., 12 février 2025, n° 23-11.410 sur Légifrance.

One subtlety in that ruling deserves your full attention, because it cuts both ways. The Court quashed the appeal judgment precisely because the irregular 3 July resolution, although it incurred nullity, remained binding until a court actually annulled it: the Court recalled that “les délibérations d’une société commerciale s’imposent aux associés tant que la nullité n’en a pas été prononcée.” (Cass. com., 12 février 2025, n° 23-11.410) An improperly voted dividend is therefore not automatically void paperwork you can ignore; it produces effects, including a payment obligation, until annulled, which means a buyer of the shares or a creditor may rely on it. Draw the operational lesson in both directions. If you are the foreign majority owner, vote your dividends in the annual accounts meeting itself, never in a freestanding later meeting pulling from old retained earnings, so no one can ever threaten the distribution with nullity. If you are buying into a French company that has a history of informal mid-year distributions, make the seller warrant in the purchase agreement that every past dividend was voted by the accounts meeting from certified distributable profits, and have your lawyer check the minutes before closing. Distance does not excuse informality: SAS articles routinely allow written consultation and videoconference voting, so organise a proper remote meeting with signed minutes rather than settling matters over messaging apps from another timezone.

Finally, a voted dividend must actually be paid, and the clock is statutory. Article L232-13 provides that “la mise en paiement des dividendes doit avoir lieu dans un délai maximal de neuf mois après la clôture de l’exercice”, extendable only by court order: “La prolongation de ce délai peut être accordée par décision de justice.” A dividend voted but left unpaid in the current account (compte courant d’associé, the shareholder’s loan account with the company) past the nine-month line without a judge’s extension is a breach in itself, and it muddies the tax analysis below, because the French tax administration may treat long-unpaid dividends differently from cash actually received abroad. Calendar the payment date the day the dividend is voted, instruct the bank transfer to your foreign account at once, and keep the SWIFT confirmation stapled to the minutes. See the official text: Article L232-13 du Code de commerce sur Légifrance.

II. How much French tax is taken from your dividend, and how do you recover the treaty rate from abroad?

Once your dividend is lawfully voted, it travels through two layers of French tax before it reaches your foreign account, and each layer has its own refund logic. The first layer already happened inside the company: French corporate tax took its share of the profit before anything became distributable. The second layer strikes at the border when the dividend is paid to you as a non-resident. Understanding both layers is the only way to compute your real net return and to see exactly which euros you can claim back under the tax treaty between France and your country. This second part maps the full journey of one euro of profit from the company’s income statement to your foreign bank account, with the official rates and the court-tested reclaim route.

A. How is your dividend taxed before it reaches your foreign account?

The first tax is invisible on the dividend slip because it was paid earlier by the company itself. French companies pay corporate tax on their profits at the standard rate, and Article 219 of the Code général des impôts (CGI, the French general tax code) fixes it plainly: “Le taux normal de l’impôt est fixé à 25 %.” Small companies meeting strict turnover and ownership conditions enjoy a 15 % reduced rate on the first 42,500 euros of profit, a detail confirmed in English by the official service-public.fr business portal, but every euro above that line bears 25 %. By the time the shareholders’ meeting votes a dividend, roughly a quarter of the underlying profit has therefore already gone to the French Treasury, and no treaty refunds that corporate layer to you. The treaty game concerns only the second layer. For the broader corporate tax picture, including branches versus subsidiaries, read our companion analysis here: French corporate tax (IS) for foreign owners: 25 %, branch versus subsidiary, and paying on time. Official rate text: Article 219 du Code général des impôts sur Légifrance.

The second layer, the withholding on the dividend itself, is where foreign owners either save or lose the most money. French tax law defines distributed income broadly: Article 108 of the CGI states that “Les dispositions des articles 109 à 117 fixent les règles suivant lesquelles sont déterminés les revenus distribués par : 1° Les personnes morales passibles de l’impôt prévu au chapitre II du présent titre”, which covers your SAS or SARL as an ordinary company subject to corporate tax: Article 108 du Code général des impôts sur Légifrance. When those distributed revenues go to someone without a French tax domicile or registered office, Article 119 bis, paragraph 2, triggers the levy: “Les produits visés aux articles 108 à 117 bis donnent lieu à l’application d’une retenue à la source dont le taux est fixé par l’article 187 lorsque leurs bénéficiaires effectifs sont des personnes qui n’ont pas leur domicile fiscal ou leur siège en France”, subject to a narrow exception for certain foreign collective investment vehicles. Two words in that sentence decide entire files. The “bénéficiaires effectifs”, the beneficial owners, are the real economic recipients, not mailboxes or conduits, and as shown below, treaty protection belongs only to them. Official text: Article 119 bis du Code général des impôts sur Légifrance.

The domestic rates that apply without treaty relief are set by Article 187, and they differ sharply by who you are. For corporate shareholders and bodies of any form, the levy follows the corporate tax rate: the article points to “Celui prévu au deuxième alinéa du I de l’article 219 pour tous les autres revenus”, meaning 25 % for ordinary dividends paid to a foreign company. For individual shareholders, the same article fixes a lighter flat rate: “12,8 % pour les bénéficiaires personnes physiques.” And for dividends paid into a non-cooperative state or territory (ETNC, État ou territoire non coopératif, the French blacklist for tax havens), the rate jumps to a punitive level: “Le taux de la retenue à la source prévue au 2 de l’article 119 bis est fixé à 75 % pour les produits mentionnés aux articles 108 à 117 bis ou 119 bis A et payés hors de France, dans un Etat ou territoire non coopératif au sens de l’article 238-0 A”, subject only to a narrow escape where the payer proves the routing through that state has no tax-fraud purpose or effect. Check where your holding sits before anything else, because a 75 % levy changes the entire economics of the distribution. Official rates: Article 187 du Code général des impôts sur Légifrance. The French tax administration confirms the individual treatment in plain English on its official portal: dividends received by non-residents bear a flat levy or withholding of 12.80 %, without prejudice to more favourable provisions that may be stipulated in international tax treaties, dividends above 250,000 euros for a single person (500,000 for a jointly taxed household) must still be reported when they are your only French-source income, and investment income of non-residents escapes French social charges (prélèvements sociaux, the extra social levies that normally top up French investment income). That page is the first bookmark for any foreign individual shareholder.

Your own residence status frames all of this. Article 4 A of the CGI draws the line in one breath: “Les personnes qui ont en France leur domicile fiscal sont passibles de l’impôt sur le revenu en raison de l’ensemble de leurs revenus. Celles dont le domicile fiscal est situé hors de France sont passibles de cet impôt en raison de leurs seuls revenus de source française.” Live outside France for tax purposes and France taxes only your French-source income, which is exactly why the withholding exists: it collects the French tax on your French dividend at the moment it leaves the country, with no need to chase you abroad. Text: Article 4 A du Code général des impôts sur Légifrance. One important special regime then softens the corporate-shareholder case inside Europe. Articles 145 and 216 of the CGI organise the French parent-subsidiary regime (régime des sociétés mères): qualifying dividends received by a French or EU parent can be stripped out of its taxable profit, leaving only a small taxable add-back for costs. Article 216 sets that add-back precisely: “La quote-part de frais et charges prévue au premier alinéa du présent I est fixée à 5 % du produit total des participations, crédit d’impôt compris”, reduced to 1 % inside an integrated tax group or for qualifying EU holdings. Article 145 opens the regime to “sociétés et autres organismes soumis à l’impôt sur les sociétés au taux normal qui détiennent des participations” meeting strict conditions on the form and holding of the shares. If your structure runs French profits up through a French or EU holding company before they reach you, this regime, not the raw 25 % withholding, usually decides the bill, but its conditions on share registration and holding length are unforgiving and must be verified line by line before the dividend is voted. Texts: Article 216 du Code général des impôts sur Légifrance and Article 145 du Code général des impôts sur Légifrance. A final warning for groups: management fees, royalties and interest that a foreign parent charges its French subsidiary on top of dividends attract their own withholding and transfer-pricing scrutiny, so keep dividends, which reward share ownership, strictly separate from service payments, which must be priced as if between strangers.

B. How do you actually recover the treaty rate from abroad when France withheld too much?

The decisive question for most readers is practical: France withheld 25 % (or 12.8 %) from your dividend, but the tax treaty between France and your country caps the French tax at a lower rate, often 15 %, 10 % or even 5 % for substantial corporate holdings. How do you get the difference back without moving to France? Two routes exist, and choosing the right one saves a year of correspondence. The fast route is relief at source: before the dividend is paid, you give the French paying agent (your company’s bank or financial intermediary) a certificate proving you live for tax purposes in the treaty country and beneficially own the shares, so it applies the treaty rate immediately and withholds less. The slow route is the refund after the event: the full domestic rate is withheld, then you file a reclaim with the French tax office handling non-residents, attaching proof of your foreign tax residence, proof that you are the beneficial owner of the dividends, the dividend slips showing the tax withheld, and your bank details for the repayment. Both routes demand the same two proofs, residence and beneficial ownership, and files fail overwhelmingly on the second: a holding company that merely forwards dividends to someone else, with no staff, no premises and no economic activity of its own, is treated as a conduit, not a beneficial owner, and treaty relief is refused. Build the file around economic reality, board minutes showing real decisions where the shareholder sits, an office that exists, accounts that show the dividends staying with the claimant, and only then add the certificates.

That this refund path genuinely works, all the way to the highest court if needed, is proven by a Conseil d’État (France’s supreme administrative court) decision that mirrors hundreds of foreign-owner files. A man living in Shanghai received French dividends in 2013 and 2014 that bore the full 30 % domestic withholding then in force. He claimed a partial refund down to the 10 % treaty cap, arguing he was the beneficial owner covered by the France-China treaty. The Court framed the case exactly as your adviser will frame yours: “M. A…, qui réside à Shanghai, a perçu en 2013 et 2014 des dividendes de sociétés françaises, qui ont, conformément aux dispositions du code général des impôts citées ci-dessus, été soumis à la retenue à la source qu’elles prévoient, au taux de 30 %. M. A… se pourvoit en cassation contre l’arrêt du 29 mai 2019 par lequel la cour administrative d’appel de Versailles a rejeté son appel contre un jugement du tribunal administratif de Montreuil du 19 septembre 2017 rejetant sa demande tendant à la restitution partielle de ces retenues par application du taux de 10 % prévues par les stipulations conventionnelles citées ci-dessus.” The treaty clause he relied on is worth quoting because every French treaty contains a sibling of it: “Les dividendes payés par une société qui est un résident d’un Etat contractant à un résident de l’autre Etat contractant sont imposables dans cet autre Etat. / Toutefois, ces dividendes sont aussi imposables dans l’Etat contractant dont la société qui paie les dividendes est un résident, et selon la législation de cet Etat, mais si la personne qui reçoit les dividendes en est le bénéficiaire effectif, l’impôt ainsi établi ne peut excéder 10 p. 100 du montant brut dans tous les cas. (…) ” Your treaty will show its own percentage, 15 % under many treaties with the United States or the United Kingdom, 10 % or 5 % elsewhere, but the mechanism is identical: domestic law withholds first, the treaty caps second, and the beneficial owner reclaims the gap. The decision, Conseil d’État, 9 June 2020, n° 434972, is published here: CE, 9 juin 2020, n° 434972 sur Légifrance.

Run the reclaim as a disciplined project with a calendar, because refund claims die on procedure more often than on substance. First, identify your treaty and its exact dividend article before the dividend is voted, and confirm the cap rate for your profile: portfolio individual, substantial individual holding, or corporate parent with a qualifying percentage held for the required time. Second, obtain the residence certificate from your home tax authority early; some administrations take weeks, and the French file cannot move without it. Third, assemble beneficial-ownership evidence contemporaneously, not two years later when the administration asks: shareholder register entries in your name, dividend resolutions naming you, bank statements showing the money landing and staying in your account, and for companies, payroll, premises and decision records. Fourth, file the reclaim promptly after the withholding: French tax refund claims are subject to short statutory time limits that run from the payment, so treat the first quarter after the dividend as your filing window and never let the file sleep. Fifth, track the administration’s reply and be ready to challenge a refusal through the proper ladder, administrative appeal first, then the administrative court (tribunal administratif), exactly the path the Shanghai shareholder walked from Montreuil to Versailles to the Conseil d’État. Keep every document in French or with a certified French translation, because the non-resident tax office works in French and an English-only file invites delays. And keep the corporate paperwork consistent: the Kbis proving the company, the greffe-stamped accounts proving the profit, and the meeting minutes proving the vote must tell the same story as the tax reclaim, since any contradiction between the company file and the tax file hands the administration its refusal.

Two traps close this section because they strike precisely the foreign owners this guide serves. The first is the shareholder current account confusion. Many founders leave voted dividends sitting in their compte courant d’associé for months, treating it as a flexible drawer, then discover the nine-month payment rule breached, the treaty residence position blurred for the year of actual receipt, and the refund claim pointing at a different year than the vote. Have the dividend wired to your foreign account within the legal deadline and claim for the year of payment. The second is the silent change of treaty position: moving your own tax residence between the vote and the payment, interposing a new holding company mid-year, or redomiciling the immediate shareholder can shift which treaty applies and whether you still count as the beneficial owner on the payment date. Freeze the structure from the vote to the cash landing, or take advice before each change. Dividends reward patience and paperwork in that order; the owners who collect the treaty rate are the ones whose company file and tax file were built together, before the money moved.

Conclusion

Taking profits out of your French company as a foreign owner is a two-gate journey, and each gate has one question that decides everything. At the company-law gate: was this dividend voted by the annual accounts meeting out of genuine distributable profits that survive the equity test, and was it paid within nine months? The 2025 Midi plage ruling shows courts enforce the timing rule to the letter, so vote once, vote properly, and pay on time. At the tax gate: did France withhold more than your treaty allows, and did you prove residence and beneficial ownership to recover the difference? The Conseil d’État’s 2020 Shanghai decision shows the refund ladder works when the file proves the claimant really owns the income. Run both gates in order, keep the company minutes and the tax certificates telling a single consistent story, and the profit your French business earned can reach your foreign account with every euro the law allows you to keep.

Need a quick opinion on your case.

Our firm advises foreign founders and overseas companies on French dividends, withholding and treaty refunds every week. You receive a telephone consultation within 48 hours with a lawyer of the firm, with a clear answer on your distributable profits, your withholding rate and your refund chances. Call +33 6 46 60 58 22 or write through our contact page, and keep your meeting minutes, dividend slips and residence certificate at hand for the call.