You live abroad, you own a company in France, and you have just realised that a French corporate-tax instalment was never paid. No reminder arrived, no one called, and the online account shows a missed deadline. This situation is common among foreign owners of French companies, because the French system works in the opposite way to the one most founders know: the company must pay its corporate tax spontaneously, in four instalments, without receiving any tax bill first. When one of those instalments is missed, late interest starts running automatically and a 5 percent increase applies, even if the company will in the end pay the full tax. The good news is that a missed instalment is a fixable problem when you react quickly and in the right order: pay the missing amount through the proper channel, keep the proof, check whether the tax return and the year-end balance are still correct, then put a calendar in place so it never happens again. This guide explains, for a foreign founder or foreign parent company, how French corporate-tax instalments work, what a missed payment costs exactly, and how to regularise everything from abroad.

I. What missing a French corporate-tax instalment actually triggers

A. How French corporate-tax instalments work when a foreigner owns the French company

French corporate tax is called impôt sur les sociétés, usually shortened to IS. The companies foreign founders use most often fall inside this tax. Article 206 of the French General Tax Code provides that, whatever their corporate purpose, the following are liable for corporate tax: “sont passibles de l’impôt sur les sociétés, quel que soit leur objet, les sociétés anonymes, les sociétés en commandite par actions, les sociétés à responsabilité limitée n’ayant pas opté pour le régime fiscal des sociétés de personnes dans les conditions prévues au IV de l’article 3 du décret n° 55-594 du 20 mai 1955 modifié, les sociétés coopératives et leurs unions ainsi que” certain public bodies and any other legal person carrying on a profit-making business (Article 206, Code général des impôts). In practice, a SARL (société à responsabilité limitée, the French limited-liability company with intuitu personae shares) and an SA (société anonyme, the public-limited-company form) are expressly named, and an SAS (société par actions simplifiée, the flexible joint-stock company most foreign founders choose) pays its corporate tax through the same circuit, with the same instalments, the same returns and the same online payment channels described below. Only profits made by businesses operated in France are taken into account: Article 209 of the same Code determines taxable profits “en tenant compte uniquement des bénéfices réalisés dans les entreprises exploitées en France, de ceux mentionnés aux a, e, e bis et e ter du I de l’article 164 B ainsi que de ceux dont l’imposition est attribuée à la France par une convention internationale relative aux doubles impositions” (Article 209, Code général des impôts). A foreign parent therefore pays French corporate tax on the French company’s French profits, subject to the applicable double-tax treaty.

The standard rate is simple. Article 219 of the General Tax Code states: “Le taux normal de l’impôt est fixé à 25 %.” (Article 219, Code général des impôts). A reduced rate exists for small companies: “pour les redevables ayant réalisé un chiffre d’affaires n’excédant pas 10 millions d’euros au cours de l’exercice ou de la période d’imposition, ramené s’il y a lieu à douze mois, le taux de l’impôt applicable au bénéfice imposable est fixé, dans la limite de 42 500 € de bénéfice imposable par période de douze mois, à 25 % pour les exercices ouverts en 2001 et à 15 % pour les exercices ouverts à compter du 1er janvier 2002”. The same article adds a capital-ownership condition: “Le capital de la société, entièrement libéré, est détenu de manière continue, pour 75 % au moins par des personnes physiques ou par une société répondant aux conditions visées au 1° dont le capital est détenu, pour 75 % au moins, par des personnes physiques.” Foreign founders should read that condition carefully: a French subsidiary wholly owned by a foreign company does not meet the 75 percent individual-ownership test, so the 15 percent rate is in practice reserved for companies held by individuals. Check this point with your accountant before budgeting tax at 15 percent.

The instalment machinery itself is set by Article 1668 of the General Tax Code: “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.” (Article 1668, Code général des impôts). An acompte is a quarterly advance payment of corporate tax, computed from the last closed financial year, and the comptable public is the public accountant, meaning the tax office’s cashier that collects the money. Each instalment equals roughly one quarter of the corporate tax due on the previous year’s profit, and the deadlines are fixed by law: “Les paiements doivent être effectués au plus tard les 15 mars, 15 juin, 15 septembre et 15 décembre de chaque année.” There is no tax bill, no prior notice and no reminder. The Cour de cassation, the highest French civil court, described this logic in a published ruling on corporate-tax payment: the corporate tax for a given financial year “sont réglés spontanément par le contribuable sous forme d’acomptes trimestriels et sans émission d’un avis d’imposition” (Cass. com., 16 December 2008, No. 08-12.142, published in the Bulletin). Spontaneously means the company must come forward and pay on its own initiative. The payment dates quoted in that 2008 decision differ from today’s, because the law has since moved the deadlines to the 15th of the month, but the principle is unchanged: nobody sends you anything, and the deadline still binds you. Foreign owners who wait for a letter from the French administration, as they might at home, miss the payment without ever being warned.

After the year ends, the company settles the exact amount. Article 1668 then provides for a final settlement of the tax due on the results for the period covered by the Article 223 return. Then: “S’il résulte de cette liquidation un complément d’impôt, il est acquitté lors du dépôt du relevé de solde au plus tard le 15 du quatrième mois qui suit la clôture de l’exercice.” And for the standard calendar year: “Si l’exercice est clos au 31 décembre ou si aucun exercice n’est clos en cours d’année, le relevé de solde est à déposer au plus tard le 15 mai de l’année suivante.” Those three settlement rules all come from Article 1668, Code général des impôts. The relevé de solde is the balance-settlement form, numbered 2572, on which the company pays whatever remains after deducting the four instalments, while the relevé d’acompte, form 2571, is the slip used for each quarterly payment. If the instalments exceed the final tax, the excess is refunded within thirty days of filing, after offsetting other direct taxes the company may owe. The annual profit itself is declared separately: “la déclaration du bénéfice ou du déficit est faite dans les trois mois de la clôture de l’exercice. Si l’exercice est clos le 31 décembre ou si aucun exercice n’est clos au cours d’une année, la déclaration est à déposer au plus tard le deuxième jour ouvré suivant le 1er mai.” (Article 223, Code général des impôts). That declaration is the liasse fiscale, the tax-return bundle built around form 2065, filed electronically. One relief exists for brand-new companies: “Les sociétés nouvellement créées ou nouvellement soumises, de plein droit ou sur option, à l’impôt sur les sociétés sont dispensées du versement d’acomptes au cours de leur premier exercice d’activité ou de leur première période d’imposition arrêtée conformément au deuxième alinéa du I de l’article 209”. A company in its very first year of activity therefore pays no instalments and settles everything with the first year-end balance, which is why many foreign founders discover the instalment system only in year two, when the first 15 March deadline arrives unannounced. That first-year dispensation is also stated in Article 1668, Code général des impôts.

Everything is paid online to the SIE (service des impôts des entreprises, the local corporate-tax office that handles the file of your company). In practice the company’s expert-comptable (chartered accountant) or the founder with access to the professional account on impots.gouv.fr, the tax administration’s portal, files form 2571 and pays by electronic transfer each quarter. The Kbis, the official company identity extract issued by the greffe (the commercial-court registry), the RCS (registre du commerce et des sociétés, the trade-and-companies register) and the BODACC (bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales, the gazette publishing company registrations) play no role in this circuit: the tax office does not check your Kbis before applying penalties, and being properly registered changes nothing to the payment duty. If your company was recently formed and you want the full formation sequence, from bank account to Kbis to first hire, read our formation guide for foreign founders (Setting Up a Company in France as a Foreign Founder: Bank Account, Kbis, VAT and Your First Hire), and for the broader corporate-tax picture, rate, branch-versus-subsidiary comparison and payment discipline, see our corporate-tax overview (French Corporate Tax for Foreign Owners: IS at 25 Percent, Branch versus Subsidiary, and Paying on Time).

B. What the tax office adds when you miss: late interest, the 5 percent increase and declaration penalties

French tax law separates the tax itself from the price of paying late, and the price runs automatically. First, late-payment interest, called intérêt de retard, applies to any tax claim not paid on time: “Toute créance de nature fiscale, dont l’établissement ou le recouvrement incombe aux administrations fiscales, qui n’a pas été acquittée dans le délai légal donne lieu au versement d’un intérêt de retard.” (Article 1727, Code général des impôts). The rate is monthly: “Le taux de l’intérêt de retard est de 0,20 % par mois. Il s’applique sur le montant des créances de nature fiscale mises à la charge du contribuable ou dont le versement a été différé.” The computation rule is mechanical: “L’intérêt de retard est calculé à compter du premier jour du mois suivant celui au cours duquel l’impôt devait être acquitté jusqu’au dernier jour du mois du paiement.” Take a concrete example. Your French SAS owed 40,000 euros of corporate tax for last year, so each quarterly instalment is about 10,000 euros. You miss the 15 September instalment and pay it at the end of January. Interest runs from 1 October to 31 January, four months, at 0.20 percent per month, which is 0.80 percent of 10,000 euros, or 80 euros. The interest looks small, and that is exactly why some founders ignore it, but it is only the first layer, it cannot be negotiated away by explaining that you live abroad, and it keeps running until the payment month inclusive.

The second layer is the increase for late payment, called majoration. Article 1731 of the General Tax Code provides: “Donne lieu à l’application d’une majoration de 5 % tout retard dans le paiement des sommes qui doivent être versées aux comptables de l’administration fiscale au titre des impositions autres que celles mentionnées à l’article 1730.” (Article 1731, Code général des impôts). Corporate-tax instalments fall in that residual category, so a missed instalment draws a 5 percent increase on the late amount, on top of the monthly interest. In the example above, the 10,000-euro instalment paid late costs 500 euros of increase plus 80 euros of interest, before any further consequence. The administrative courts apply this combination routinely. In a corporate-tax dispute, the Administrative Court of Appeal of Nantes recorded that “Les cotisations supplémentaires à l’impôt sur les sociétés ont été majorées de la pénalité de 5 % pour paiement tardif prévue par l’article 1731 du code général des impôts et des intérêts de retard prévus par l’article 1727 du même code.” and it rejected the company’s challenge to those penalties (CAA Nantes, 1st chamber, 9 September 2021, No. 20NT00997). The lesson for a foreign owner is direct: once the deadline passes, the 5 percent and the interest are the normal outcome, not an accident, and hoping for automatic leniency is not a strategy.

A third layer threatens when the delay also affects paperwork. Missing the instalment payment is one thing; filing the annual declaration or the balance-settlement form late is another, and it is punished separately. Article 1728 of the General Tax Code provides: “Le défaut de production dans les délais prescrits d’une déclaration ou d’un acte comportant l’indication d’éléments à retenir pour l’assiette ou la liquidation de l’impôt entraîne l’application, sur le montant des droits mis à la charge du contribuable ou résultant de la déclaration ou de l’acte déposé tardivement, d’une majoration de : a. 10 % en l’absence de mise en demeure ou en cas de dépôt de la déclaration ou de l’acte dans les trente jours suivant la réception d’une mise en demeure d’avoir à le produire dans ce délai ; b. 40 % lorsque la déclaration ou l’acte n’a pas été déposé dans les trente jours suivant la réception d’une mise en demeure d’avoir à le produire dans ce délai” (Article 1728, Code général des impôts). A mise en demeure is a formal demand letter ordering you to file within thirty days. Concretely, if your missed September instalment is followed by a late relevé de solde or a late liasse fiscale, the company can accumulate the 5 percent payment increase, the monthly interest, and a 10 percent, then 40 percent, declaration increase on the tax shown in the late document. That stacking is the real financial danger of letting one missed deadline slide into a missed year-end. Note the asymmetry that surprises foreign founders: the payment increase applies even when the declaration was perfectly correct and even when the company ends up paying the full annual tax, because the instalment obligation exists independently of the final result. Paying everything in May with the balance does not erase the missed September instalment; the 5 percent and the interest for the late quarter survive.

Two misunderstandings should be cleared at this stage. First, the absence of any bill or reminder is not a defence. Because payment is spontaneous, the administration does not need to prove it warned you; the published case law above confirms the mechanism. Second, the fact that the founders live abroad changes nothing to the rates or the computation. There is no foreign-owner discount on the 25 percent rate, no grace period for non-residents, and no separate calendar. The company’s SIE applies the same articles to a SAS owned from London, New York or Dubai as to one owned from Lyon. What being abroad does change is purely practical: access to the online account, who holds the payment mandate, who watches the four dates, and how fast you react when a deadline is missed. That practical side is the subject of the second part.

II. How a foreign owner fixes a missed instalment from abroad without making it worse

A. Paying and regularising now: the right order, the right form and the proof

Start by measuring exactly what is late. Open the company’s professional account on impots.gouv.fr and list the four instalment dates of the current year against the payments actually made. Identify each missing acompte, its amount and its due date, then check whether the most recent liasse fiscale and the last relevé de solde were filed on time, because a late balance form triggers the separate declaration penalties described above. If you cannot access the online account from abroad, ask your expert-comptable to extract the payment history and the filing receipts immediately; do not wait for your next trip to France. The diagnostic should answer three questions: which instalments are missing, whether any declaration is also late, and whether an avis de mise en recouvrement, the formal recovery notice the tax office issues when an amount remains unpaid, has already been sent. Each answer drives the next step.

Pay the missing instalment at once through the normal channel, using the relevé d’acompte, form 2571, not the year-end balance form. A frequent error is to wait and fold the missing quarter into the May balance; as explained, the balance does not cure the missed instalment, and every month of waiting adds another 0.20 percent of interest. Pay the exact missing amount, then verify that the payment is allocated to the right instalment and the right financial year in the account. Keep every receipt the portal generates, with timestamps, because those receipts are your proof of the payment month, and the payment month fixes the end of the interest computation. If an avis de mise en recouvrement has already arrived, pay first and argue later: recovery runs its own course, and contesting the amount does not suspend the running of interest. Once the payment is made, file or correct anything else that is late without delay. If the relevé de solde is still within reach of its deadline, file it correctly with the instalments now paid; if the liasse fiscale itself is late, file it immediately, because each day counts toward the thirty-day window of a mise en demeure and the jump from the 10 percent to the 40 percent declaration increase. Never manufacture a justification after the fact, never backdate a document, and never ask your accountant to present the situation in a way the filings do not support: French tax procedure rewards quick, clean regularisation, not creative paperwork.

If the company is based in Paris or elsewhere in the Paris region, the practical circuit is identical but the file sits with a Paris SIE determined by the siège social, the registered office. Jurisdiction follows the registered office, so a SAS registered in Paris pays and corresponds through its Paris corporate-tax office, while a company in Boulogne-Billancourt or Saint-Denis answers to the office of that area. In all cases the payment itself travels online, so being abroad is no obstacle once access and mandates are sorted. Concretely, prepare four things before contacting anyone: the SIREN number (the nine-digit company identifier issued at registration, part of the longer SIRET used per establishment), the financial year concerned, the list of instalments paid with dates and references, and a scan of any notice received. With that file, your accountant or lawyer can call or write to the SIE, confirm the remaining balance of interest and increase, and secure written confirmation that the instalment is now settled. If a recovery notice is already in the circuit, the same file supports a réclamation, the formal tax claim disputing all or part of an assessment, filed within the time limit printed on the notice. File the claim in parallel with payment, not instead of it, and keep copies of everything, because a foreign owner who can show a dated payment, a filed return and a coherent paper trail is in a far stronger position than one who only explains.

One caution about cash flow: do not deliberately skip the next instalment to compensate for the one you just paid late. Each quarter stands alone, with its own deadline, its own 5 percent exposure and its own interest clock. Doubling up late is worse than catching up once. If the company’s profit is collapsing and the coming instalments, computed on last year’s much higher profit, look oversized, tell your accountant before the next deadline rather than silently underpaying: the Code provides mechanisms to adjust the last instalment for very large companies and, above all, the year-end liquidation corrects overpayments by refund, while silent underpayment of a standard instalment simply creates a fresh penalty. The discipline is simple and absolute: every 15 March, 15 June, 15 September and 15 December, the money moves, whether you are in France or not.

B. Stopping it happening again: calendar, mandates and the reduced-rate check

The cheapest protection is a calendar that does not depend on anyone’s memory. Enter five recurring dates for every financial year closed on 31 December: 15 March, first instalment; 15 June, second instalment; 15 September, third instalment; 15 December, fourth instalment; and the second working day after 1 May for the liasse fiscale, with the relevé de solde and any balance payable by 15 May. Assign each date a named owner: either your expert-comptable with a written payment mandate, or a specific person in your team with access to the impots.gouv.fr professional account and authority to move funds. A mandate that exists only orally, or access credentials held by a former director who left, is how instalments get missed a second time. Review the setup once a year, when approving the accounts, and test before March that the payment channel still works: an expired electronic mandate or a closed bank reference discovered on 14 March is a missed instalment in the making. Companies with an off-calendar year end shift the pattern accordingly, with the balance due on the 15th of the fourth month after closing, but the quarterly rhythm and the spontaneous-payment logic stay the same.

Second, use the first-year relief correctly and do not stretch it. As seen, companies in their first year of activity are dispensed from instalments and settle the first year’s tax with the first balance. That relief covers the first financial year only. From the second year on, the four instalments apply in full, computed on the first year’s profit. Foreign founders who incorporated in, say, October and closed a first short year often assume the dispensation lasts until the first full calendar year; it does not, and the first 15 March after the first closing is the classic trap. Diary the end of the dispensation the day the company is created. Symmetrically, if the company genuinely has no profit in year two, the instalments computed on a profitable year one still fall due on their dates; the overpayment is refunded at liquidation, but the deadlines cannot be ignored on the ground that the final tax will be zero.

Third, run the reduced-rate check once a year before the instalments are computed. The 15 percent rate within 42,500 euros of profit requires turnover of no more than 10 million euros and, crucially, capital continuously held at least 75 percent by individuals, as quoted above. A French SAS or SARL wholly or mainly owned by your foreign company fails that ownership test, so its instalments must be budgeted at 25 percent. A French company held directly by you as an individual, with fully paid-up capital, may qualify if the turnover condition is also met. Getting this wrong in either direction costs money: budgeting at 15 percent when the company does not qualify produces underpaid instalments and a painful balance, while budgeting at 25 percent when the company qualifies ties up cash all year. Ask your accountant to confirm the rate in writing each year and to keep the capital-ownership evidence, because the reduced rate is claimed, not granted, and the administration can test it.

Fourth, keep the human chain short and documented. From abroad, you need three things: a reachable expert-comptable with a current mandate to file and pay, online-account access for at least one person you trust, and a lawyer you can call when a notice arrives. When correspondence from the SIE lands, especially a mise en demeure or an avis de mise en recouvrement, forward it the same day; the thirty-day windows in Article 1728 and the recovery timetable do not pause for travel or time zones. And keep the corporate side clean alongside the tax side: approving the annual accounts, filing them with the greffe within the applicable deadlines, and keeping the RNE (registre national des entreprises, the national business register fed through the INPI single window, the guichet unique) details current. Tax penalties and corporate non-compliance multiply each other’s costs when a company is already under scrutiny, so treat the tax calendar and the company calendar as one diary, not two.

Conclusion

A missed corporate-tax instalment in France is not a catastrophe, but it is never free and never self-correcting. The system expects your company to pay spontaneously on 15 March, 15 June, 15 September and 15 December, and when a payment is late, monthly interest at 0.20 percent and a 5 percent increase apply as a matter of course, with separate declaration penalties if the returns follow the same path. From abroad, the winning response is speed in the right order: identify every missing instalment, pay it now on the proper acompte form through the online account, keep the dated receipts, file anything else that is late before formal demands escalate, and dispute only in parallel with payment and within the notice’s time limit. Then lock in the lesson with a five-date calendar, a written payment mandate that survives travel and staff changes, a correct first-year-diary entry, and an annual check of the 15 percent reduced-rate conditions. Foreign founders who run that discipline pay the 25 percent rate, or the 15 percent where it genuinely applies, and nothing more; those who wait for a reminder pay the tax plus the price of silence.

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