You created your French company from London, New York or Dubai, received the Kbis (the official company identity certificate issued by the greffe, the court registry that keeps the trade and companies register), opened the bank account and started invoicing. Then the calendar takes over, and it never stops. Annual accounts to approve, filings to make with the greffe, corporate income tax instalments, VAT returns, payroll declarations for your first hires: every obligation has its own deadline, its own portal and its own penalty, and distance makes each of them harder to meet. A missed shareholders’ meeting, a late filing at the registry or an unpaid tax instalment can trigger penalty interest, a court injunction under daily fine, or a personal summons addressed to you as the foreign director. This guide maps the full year of a French company run from abroad, with the exact legal deadlines, the official texts behind them, and the repair routes when a deadline has already slipped. It assumes the standard case: a SAS (société par actions simplifiée, the flexible company form most foreign founders choose) or a SARL (société à responsabilité limitée, the limited liability company with stricter statutory rules) closing its financial year on 31 December, which covers the large majority of foreign-owned French companies.
I. The corporate year of your French company: approve the accounts and file them with the greffe on time
The corporate year is the backbone of the calendar. Whatever your tax and payroll position, the company must close its accounts, have them approved by the shareholders and file them publicly every single year. Foreign owners most often discover this machinery when the first 30 June passes, or when a registered letter from the president of the commercial court lands on the desk of their Paris domiciliation agent. The two steps below must be taken in order, and each has its own hard deadline.
A. How to approve your French company accounts from abroad before the six-month deadline
Closing the year is the directors’ job, not the shareholders’. At the end of each financial year, management must draw up the inventory, prepare the annual accounts and write the management report. Article L. 232-1 of the Commercial Code states it in these terms: “A la clôture de chaque exercice le conseil d’administration, le directoire ou les gérants dressent l’inventaire, les comptes annuels conformément aux dispositions de la section 2 du chapitre III du titre II du livre Ier et établissent un rapport de gestion écrit.” In practice, your French expert-comptable (chartered accountant) prepares the balance sheet, the profit and loss account and the notes, and you sign off as president of the SAS or gérant (manager) of the SARL. If your company has a commissaire aux comptes (statutory auditor), the auditor certifies the accounts first. Start this work in January or February for a 31 December year-end: a foreign president who waits for the Paris accountant to chase documents across time zones routinely runs out of road in June.
Approval itself belongs to the shareholders and must happen within six months of the year-end, so by 30 June for a calendar-year company. For the SA (société anonyme, the public-company form) and by extension the logic applied across company forms, Article L. 225-100 of the Commercial Code provides: “L’assemblée générale ordinaire est réunie au moins une fois par an, dans les six mois de la clôture de l’exercice, sous réserve de prolongation de ce délai par décision de justice.” For the SARL, Article L. 223-26 is equally strict: “Le rapport de gestion, l’inventaire et les comptes annuels établis par les gérants, sont soumis à l’approbation des associés réunis en assemblée, dans le délai de six mois à compter de la clôture de l’exercice sous réserve de prolongation de ce délai par décision de justice.” Both texts add the same safety valve, an extension granted by court decision, which means a foreign shareholder who sees the deadline slipping must petition the president of the commercial court for extra time before 30 June rather than silently filing late. The request is made by simple petition, it routinely succeeds when filed early with a serious reason such as a change of accountant or a group audit running late, and it costs far less than the penalties that follow a missed deadline. Our companion guide on how a foreign owner repairs a missed 30 June accounts deadline walks through that rescue procedure step by step.
The SAS, the vehicle most foreign founders actually use, works differently and this is where distance becomes an advantage if the articles are well drafted. In a SAS, the articles of association decide which decisions the shareholders take collectively and how. Article L. 227-9 of the Commercial Code nonetheless reserves a hard core of decisions to the shareholders: “les attributions dévolues aux assemblées générales extraordinaires et ordinaires des sociétés anonymes, en matière d’augmentation, d’amortissement ou de réduction de capital, de fusion, de scission, de dissolution, de transformation en une société d’une autre forme, de nomination de commissaires aux comptes, de comptes annuels et de bénéfices sont, dans les conditions prévues par les statuts, exercées collectivement par les associés”. Annual accounts and the allocation of profits therefore always require a collective shareholder decision, even in a SAS. But collective does not mean a physical meeting in Paris: well-drafted SAS articles allow written consultation, electronic vote or videoconference, so a sole shareholder in New York or a parent company board in London can approve the accounts without boarding a plane. Check your articles now, before the year-end rush, because if they impose a physical meeting and you cannot travel, you will need to amend them first. In the single-shareholder SASU (société par actions simplifiée unipersonnelle) and the single-member EURL, the sole shareholder simply records the approval in a written decision, but the six-month deadline and the filing duty described below apply exactly the same way.
The approval decision does more than sign off the past year: it allocates the result. The shareholders resolve what happens to the profit, dividends, reserves or retained earnings, and that resolution is the legal basis for any dividend paid up to the foreign parent. If the company has lost money, the same meeting must confront the question, and where losses have halved the equity, a separate recapitalisation procedure applies, as explained in our analysis of how a foreign parent recapitalises a French subsidiary that has lost half its capital. Keep signed minutes, attendance sheets or written-consultation records for every decision: the greffe, the auditor and a future buyer will all ask for them, and a foreign owner who cannot produce minutes looks like a company that never met.
B. How to file your accounts with the greffe and what happens if you miss the deadline
Approval is only half the job. The accounts must then be made public by filing them with the greffe of the commercial court for attachment to the RCS (registre du commerce et des sociétés, the trade and companies register where your company is identified by its SIREN number). Article L. 232-23 of the Commercial Code sets the clock: “Toute société par actions est tenue de déposer au greffe du tribunal, pour être annexés au registre du commerce et des sociétés, dans le mois suivant l’approbation des comptes annuels par l’assemblée générale des actionnaires ou dans les deux mois suivant cette approbation lorsque ce dépôt est effectué par voie électronique”. Since filings are now made electronically through the Guichet unique (the single online portal run with the INPI, the national industrial property institute, through which all French company formalities pass), the two-month period is the one that counts in practice: accounts approved on 30 June must be filed by 31 August. The filing comprises the annual accounts, the management report where required, the auditor’s report where one exists, and the text of the allocation resolution. Small companies can opt for confidentiality of the profit and loss account by filing a confidentiality declaration at the same time, but the balance sheet still goes public, and banks, suppliers and the BODACC (Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales, the official gazette publishing company registrations and filings) will reflect the filing. The step-by-step mechanics of the portal, and what to do when it blocks a foreign file, are covered in our full setup guide from bank account and Kbis to VAT and first hire.
Missing the filing deadline is not a quiet administrative delay; it exposes the directors personally to a court injunction backed by a daily fine. Article L. 611-2, II of the Commercial Code provides: “Lorsque les dirigeants d’une société commerciale ne procèdent pas au dépôt des comptes annuels dans les délais prévus par les textes applicables, le président du tribunal peut, le cas échéant sur demande du président d’un des observatoires mentionnés à l’article L. 910-1 A, leur adresser une injonction de le faire à bref délai sous astreinte.” The astreinte is a daily financial penalty that runs until you comply, and the presidency of the court acts fast, often on the basis of an automatic report from the greffe. The implementing rule, Article R. 611-13, fixes the procedure: “Pour l’application du II de l’article L. 611-2 , le président du tribunal rend une ordonnance faisant injonction au représentant légal de la personne morale de déposer les comptes annuels ou à l’entrepreneur individuel à responsabilité limitée de déposer les documents mentionnés au premier alinéa de l’article L. 526-14 dans un délai d’un mois à compter de la notification ou de la signification de l’ordonnance, sous peine d’astreinte.” Concretely, the foreign president or manager receives an order giving one month from service to file, under a daily fine whose rate the order sets, commonly 100 euros a day, and the fine, once liquidated, is paid to the Treasury, not to any private party.
A recent court decision shows exactly how this machinery bites, and how a foreign director can still escape the fine by regularising quickly and keeping proof. By order of 16 December 2024, the president of the Manosque commercial court ordered the legal representative of a French company to file the accounts for the year ended 31 December 2023: the court “a enjoint M. [Y] [N], représentant légal de la société R & Cie de procéder au dépôt des comptes annuels au 31 décembre 2023 prévus, selon le type de société, aux articles L.232-21 à L.232-26 du code de commerce, dans un délai d’un mois à compter de la notification de cette injonction, sous peine d’une astreinte de 100 € par jour de retard.” When the filing did not arrive in time, a second order of 13 March 2025 “a liquidé l’astreinte prononcée à l’encontre de Monsieur [Y] [N] et l’a condamné à payer la somme de 5200 euros au Trésor public.” On appeal, the Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal, Third Civil Chamber, 7 May 2026, RG No. 25/05283 (Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal, 7 May 2026, No. 25/05283), first confirmed that the injunction procedure was regular, noting that “la première ordonnance du président du tribunal de commerce a été dûment notifiée par lettre recommandée avec accusé de réception signé le 20 décembre 2024”, so contesting service is a dead end when the registered letter was duly signed for. But the court then overturned the 5,200 euro fine entirely, holding that “Compte tenu de ce qui précède, la condamnation au paiement d’une astreinte n’apparaît pas justifiée”, and in its operative part “Dit n’y avoir lieu à liquidation d’astreinte”, because the director proved he had filed a second time after the greffe had asked for additional information. Three lessons for a foreign owner: never ignore the registered letter, even if it arrives at a domiciliation address you rarely check; file immediately even after the one-month period has expired, because late compliance remains the strongest argument against liquidation of the fine; and keep every receipt, greffe invoice and filing confirmation, since the court decided on the basis of that paper trail. The official service-public guide to filing company annual accounts lists the documents and the current filing route, and it should sit next to this article in your compliance file.
II. The tax and payroll calendar of your French company: IS, VAT, e-invoicing and DSN
Once the corporate year is secured, the recurring money deadlines take over. French corporate taxation and payroll run on monthly, quarterly and annual cycles that do not wait for group instructions from abroad, and most of them are paid and filed online by the company itself or its accountant, with surcharges that accrue automatically. The sections below follow the money in the order a foreign finance director meets it: profits tax first, VAT second, payroll third.
A. How to pay French corporate tax and file VAT on time: IS instalments, VAT returns and e-invoicing
French corporate tax, the IS (impôt sur les sociétés, levied at the standard 25 percent rate on profits), is not paid once a year but in five steps: four advance instalments during the year plus the balance after closing. Article 1668 of the General Tax Code states the principle: “L’impôt sur les sociétés donne lieu au versement, au comptable public compétent, d’acomptes trimestriels déterminés à partir des résultats du dernier exercice clos.” Each instalment is computed from the previous closed year’s result, and newly created companies are exempt from instalments for their very first year of activity, which gives a new French subsidiary a welcome cash-flow breathing space. The payment dates are fixed and public, falling on 15 March, 15 June, 15 September and 15 December, with the exact mapping depending on the year-end date, as set out on the official English-language service-public guide to French corporate tax rates, returns and payment. The balance, equal to the tax on the year’s actual profit minus instalments already paid and available tax credits, is paid with return No. 2572 no later than the 15th day of the fourth month after year-end, which means 15 May for a 31 December year-end, and any overpayment is automatically refunded within 30 days. Miss an instalment and late-payment interest of 0.20 percent per month plus a 5 percent surcharge apply as a matter of course, so diary the four dates the day the company is created and give your accountant a standing direct-debit mandate on the impots.gouv.fr professional account. The wider picture, branch versus subsidiary, rates and payment mechanics, is developed in our French corporate tax guide for foreign owners.
VAT runs on a faster loop and punishes late filers immediately. Any company identified for VAT must file a return with its tax office within the period fixed by regulation, as Article 287 of the General Tax Code requires: “Tout redevable de la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée identifié conformément aux dispositions combinées des articles 286 ter et 286 ter A est tenu de remettre au service des impôts dont il dépend et dans le délai fixé par arrêté une déclaration conforme au modèle prescrit par l’administration.” Under the standard real-tax regime, the return is monthly, filed between the 15th and the 24th of the following month, the exact day depending on the company’s department, and the return states total sales and services for the month with the detail of taxable transactions, with the VAT due paid at the same time. Companies with modest VAT can be authorised to file quarterly, but the default for an active foreign-owned subsidiary is monthly, and the return is filed and paid online through the professional tax account. A late or missing CA3 (the chiffre d’affaires VAT return form) blocks VAT refunds, triggers automatic surcharges and, in a control, invites the auditor to reconstruct turnover from bank statements, always to your disadvantage. If the administration has already opened a reassessment, the reply discipline is strict and separate, as our guide to answering a French VAT reassessment explains.
Layered over VAT comes electronic invoicing, which changes the compliance calendar from 2026 onwards. Article 289 bis of the General Tax Code provides that “l’émission, la transmission et la réception des factures relatives aux opérations mentionnées aux a et d du 1 du I dudit article 289 ainsi qu’aux acomptes s’y rapportant s’opèrent sous une forme électronique, selon des normes de facturation électronique définies par arrêté du ministre chargé du budget, lorsque l’émetteur de la facture et son destinataire sont des assujettis qui sont établis ou ont leur domicile ou leur résidence habituelle en France”. In plain terms, domestic business-to-business invoices must pass through an approved platform or the public portal in structured electronic format, and the administration will therefore be able to cross-check declared turnover against issued invoices automatically. A foreign group whose French subsidiary still invoices from the parent’s foreign ERP without a compliant French e-invoicing channel must fix that interface now, because discrepancies the software flags will generate controls later. The timetable and the reporting duties for foreign sellers are detailed in our French e-invoicing guide for foreign companies.
B. How to handle French payroll filings from abroad: DSN deadlines, corrections and the URSSAF risk
The moment your French company hires its first employee in France, a monthly payroll calendar starts that no foreign HR team can improvise. Every employer declares wages and social charges through the DSN (déclaration sociale nominative, the single monthly electronic payroll return that feeds all social-protection bodies from one payroll file). Article R. 133-13 of the Social Security Code defines the mechanism: “L’employeur effectue la déclaration sociale nominative prévue à l’article L. 133-5-3 à partir des données utilisées pour l’établissement de la paie de l’ensemble de ses salariés. La déclaration est transmise mensuellement par établissement et pour chacun des salariés”. The return is filed per establishment and per employee from the payroll software via net-entreprises, and it carries both establishment-level and employee-level data on contributions, exemptions and rights. The deadline depends on headcount: the DSN for the current month’s payroll must be transmitted on the 5th of the following month for employers of 50 or more employees paid during the month worked, and no later than the 15th of the following calendar month for employers below 50 employees or paying the following month, with postponement to the next working day when the deadline falls on a holiday, as the official URSSAF guide to DSN filing confirms with worked examples. URSSAF (the network of agencies collecting social-security contributions) runs automatic checks every month on the DSN data and reports anomalies within hours through the payroll software, to be corrected before the filing deadline by a cancel-and-replace DSN, or after the deadline through a regularisation block in the next DSN. A foreign owner should therefore insist that the French payroll provider sends the anomaly reports every month and corrects them in the following DSN, because uncorrected anomalies accumulate into the annual reminder and then into reassessment.
Late or wrong payroll filings cost money twice: surcharges on the contributions themselves, and exposure in the next URSSAF audit. Contributions follow the DSN rhythm and are paid to URSSAF monthly or quarterly depending on headcount, with the same automatic late-payment machinery as tax. More strategically, every DSN your company files becomes evidence the controller will read during a contrôle URSSAF (the on-site or documentary audit of social charges): headcount declared, exemptions claimed, executive status, and, critically, payments to freelancers and contractors who might be reclassified as employees. A foreign company that engages French consultants while postponing real hires is the classic target, and our analysis of how a foreign company contests a URSSAF reclassification of freelancers shows how those audits start and how to answer them. Keep the payroll calendar tight from the first hire: mandate a French payroll provider before the first payslip, diary the 5th and 15th of each month according to your headcount, reconcile DSN receipts against bank debits every quarter, and treat every anomaly report as a deadline rather than an information notice. A clean DSN history is also what a buyer, a bank or an auditor asks for first, and it is far cheaper to build month by month than to reconstruct under audit pressure.
Conclusion
Running a French company from abroad means living with four interlocking calendars at once. The corporate year demands accounts approved within six months and filed with the greffe within one or two months of approval, under threat of a court injunction with daily fine that the Aix-en-Provence decision of May 2026 shows is very real, but also defeasible when you regularise fast and prove it. Corporate tax spreads across four fixed instalments and a May balance, VAT beats monthly between the 15th and the 24th with e-invoicing now letting the administration verify every line, and payroll files monthly through the DSN on the 5th or the 15th with automatic anomaly tracking. None of these deadlines waits for group approval cycles in another time zone, and each has its own repair route: court extension before 30 June, immediate late filing with proof of receipt, instalment catch-up with interest rather than concealment, DSN cancellation-and-replacement before the due date and regularisation block after it. Put the four calendars on one page, give your expert-comptable and payroll provider standing mandates, check the domiciliation mail weekly, and call counsel at the first registered letter rather than the second. Handled that way from the start, the French compliance year is a predictable routine; discovered letter by letter, it becomes a cascade of fines that a well-organised foreign owner never has to pay.
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