You live in London, New York, Dubai or Singapore, and your French company has just closed its first financial year. The Kbis (the official company identity certificate issued by the greffe, the clerk’s office of the commercial court) is in hand, the bank account works, and the first invoices have been paid. Then the French tax calendar catches up with you: quarterly advances of corporate tax, the annual results return, value added tax (VAT) returns, the local business tax bill, and the approval and filing of the annual accounts. Each of these steps has its own deadline, its own online procedure, and its own penalty for delay, and distance does not excuse anything. This guide explains, for a foreign founder or foreign group running a French company from abroad, how French corporate income tax (impôt sur les sociétés, universally called IS) is paid and declared during the first years, and how the annual legal calendar of a French company works in practice: accounts, VAT, cotisation foncière des entreprises (CFE, the local business tax based on the rental value of the premises), and the penalties that punish every missed date. Every decisive statement below refers to the exact statutory text and to court decisions read in full for this file, with the practical online steps that allow you to act from abroad. For the very first steps of the adventure, our pillar guide on setting up a company in France as a foreign founder covers the bank account, the Kbis, VAT registration and the first hire.
I. How do you pay French corporate tax on time when you run the company from abroad?
A. Your French company pays IS at 25 percent through quarterly advances: how the advances and the balance work
As soon as your French vehicle takes the form of a société par actions simplifiée (SAS, the flexible joint-stock company most foreign founders choose), a société à responsabilité limitée (SARL, the limited liability company with stricter statutory rules), or in most cases a French subsidiary (filiale) of your foreign group, it falls within the scope of French corporate tax by the very fact of its legal form. The statute is blunt: “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” (article 206, 1 of the Code général des impôts). Whatever your company’s business, whatever the nationality and residence of its shareholders, the SAS and in principle the SARL are IS taxpayers from the day of their registration at the Registre national des entreprises (RNE, the single national business register operated through the INPI single window). The profits of the French company are therefore taxed in France at the company level, before any dividend can be sent home, and that taxation follows a payment rhythm that surprises many foreign owners used to a single year-end payment.
The rate itself is simple: “Le taux normal de l’impôt est fixé à 25 %” (article 219, I of the Code général des impôts). A reduced 15 percent rate exists for small and medium companies on the first 42,500 euros of profit, but the standard reference for a foreign-owned operating company is 25 percent of the taxable profit as adjusted under French tax rules, which routinely differs from the accounting profit. What surprises newcomers is not the rate but the collection method: France does not wait for the year-end return to collect IS. The tax “donne lieu au versement, au comptable public compétent, d’acomptes trimestriels déterminés à partir des résultats du dernier exercice clos” (article 1668, 1 of the Code général des impôts). In plain terms, once your company has closed one financial year, it must pay the next year’s IS in four quarterly instalments computed from the last closed results, each instalment due around the 15th of March, June, September and December, and then pay or recover the difference when the final return is filed. The official tax commentary confirms the rhythm, noting for example that a reference year feeds a run of instalments from the March payment to the December payment, with the balance due no later than the middle of the fourth month after the financial year closes (BOI-IS-DECLA-20-10-10 on IS advances and payment obligations). From abroad, the practical consequence is immediate: your French company’s professional account on impots.gouv.fr, whose business tax calendar lists every due date, must be activated and monitored, because the advances are debited or paid online whether or not anyone reminded you by post in your home country.
The first financial year enjoys a special regime that foreign founders often misunderstand in both directions. Companies created during the year, or newly subject to IS during the year, are excused from paying advances for that first year and settle the whole tax with the balance (article 1668, 1 of the Code général des impôts). That is a cash-flow relief, not an exemption: the full IS for year one is due with the first return, and founders who spent everything on growth discover the bill at once, typically in the spring following closure. From the second year on, the machinery of advances starts automatically on the basis of year one’s profit, including when year one was exceptionally profitable because of a launch contract or an intra-group deal. A company whose profit collapses in year two can ask to modulate or suspend its advances, but the modulation follows a formal procedure with its own conditions, and an unjustified underpayment carries its own surcharge. The safe reflex for a foreign owner is therefore to have the French accountant (expert-comptable) compute, before each 15 March, 15 June, 15 September and 15 December deadline, the advances actually due, to check whether a modulation request is justified, and to leave a SEPA direct debit mandate on the French professional account so that a missed connection from abroad never turns into a missed payment. Interest for late payment runs automatically, currently at the statutory monthly rate, on top of any penalty, which is why the calendar below treats every date as a payment date and not as a reminder.
Two traps specific to foreign ownership deserve attention at this stage. First, the taxable result is not the dividend capacity: current-account advances from the shareholder, intra-group re-invoicing, and transfer pricing adjustments can all move the French taxable base, and the advances computed on the last closed year do not self-correct when the current year turns worse. Second, the IS advances and the VAT position are separate circuits with separate logins and separate deadlines on the same professional account; paying one does not pay the other, and a founder who centralises everything on one foreign treasury contact often discovers that the person who paid the VAT forgot the IS advance. Appoint one responsible person per tax, give the accountant a payment mandate, and reconcile both circuits every quarter. The cost of this discipline is a few hours of accounting; the cost of neglecting it is interest plus penalties on each missed instalment, with no indulgence for the fact that the owner lives six time zones away.
B. Your French company files one annual IS return: the results declaration, its deadline and what late filing really costs
Paying advances is only half of the IS system; the other half is the annual results return (liasse fiscale), the bundle of forms through which the company declares its taxable profit and computes the final tax. The obligation is yearly and general: apart from micro-regimes, taxpayers “sont tenus de souscrire chaque année, dans les conditions et délais prévus aux articles 172 et 175 , une déclaration permettant de déterminer et de contrôler le résultat imposable de l’année ou de l’exercice précédent” (article 53 A of the Code général des impôts). In practice, a company closing on 31 December files the return electronically in the following spring, around the second working day after 1 May, together with the balance payment form (relevé de solde), and a company with an off-calendar year-end files within three months of closure. Everything is filed online through the professional account; there is no paper return for IS, and a foreign director without French electronic credentials must organise access in advance, typically by delegating to the accountant with a formal mandate, because the deadline will not wait for a password reset sent to an address abroad.
The price of missing that return is set by two short provisions that every foreign owner should read once. First, money costs money every month: “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, I of the Code général des impôts). Late-payment interest accrues month by month on any tax paid late, including the IS balance and any additional tax after reassessment, and it applies even when the delay was a pure oversight from abroad. Second, filing late triggers a penalty on the tax itself: “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” (article 1728, 1 of the Code général des impôts), and the scale that follows is “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”. Beyond thirty days after a formal notice, the rate climbs to 40 percent, and wilful failure or fraudulent manoeuvres carry 40 to 80 percent. A foreign owner who discovers in July that the May return was never filed should therefore file within days rather than weeks: spontaneous filing within the first thirty days keeps the penalty at 10 percent instead of 40, and every month of delay adds interest on top. If a formal notice (mise en demeure) arrives at the French registered office while the owner is abroad, the thirty-day clock is already running, which is why the company’s French address must be monitored, ideally by the accountant or by a domiciliation agent instructed to forward tax mail immediately.
Acting from abroad changes the procedure, not the substance. The IS return is prepared from French statutory accounts, which means the bookkeeping for the year must be closed, justified and reconciled before the tax deadline; a foreign group that closes its consolidation in June cannot push the French return to June. Intra-group flows must be documented before filing: management fees, royalties, interest on shareholder loans and transfer prices must match written agreements and arm’s-length evidence, because the return crystallises positions the administration can audit for three years. If an error is found after filing, a corrective return can still be filed spontaneously, and spontaneous correction before any audit notice generally limits penalties to interest plus the reduced surcharge, whereas the same error found by the administration costs the full scale. Keep the filed return, the balance computation, the proof of payment and the mandates in one yearly tax file, stored in France or accessible online, so that a reassessment proposal three years later can be answered with documents rather than memories. Foreign owners who treat the French return as a mere translation of the home-country accounts are the ones who pay reassessments; owners who treat it as the French tax photograph of the year, closed on French rules and on time, sleep better.
II. How do you survive the legal calendar of a French company from abroad?
A. Your company approves its accounts within six months and files them at the greffe: the annual corporate ritual no foreign owner can skip
French company law imposes on every commercial company a yearly accounting ritual with three beats: keep proper books, approve the accounts, and file them publicly. The foundation is bookkeeping: “Toute personne physique ou morale ayant la qualité de commerçant doit procéder à l’enregistrement comptable des mouvements affectant le patrimoine de son entreprise” and “Elle doit établir des comptes annuels à la clôture de l’exercice au vu des enregistrements comptables et de l’inventaire” (article L. 123-12 of the Code de commerce). The annual accounts (comptes annuels: balance sheet, profit and loss account and notes forming an inseparable whole) are drawn up at each year-end by the managers: “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” (article L. 232-1, I of the Code de commerce). For a foreign owner, this means the French company must have real French bookkeeping, kept chronologically and supported by an annual inventory, even when the group’s reporting runs on different software and different standards in the home country. Bank statements, supplier invoices, payroll records and intra-group agreements must all be available in France at closing; a shoebox of PDFs sent to the accountant in June is not bookkeeping.
The second beat is approval by the shareholders within a strict time limit. In a SARL, the management report, the inventory and the annual accounts drawn up by the managers “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” (article L. 223-26 of the Code de commerce). For a company closing on 31 December, the ordinary general meeting must therefore be held before 30 June, and the same six-month logic applies in substance to the SAS through decisions of the shareholders under its articles. A sole foreign shareholder can approve alone by written decision, and shareholders abroad can meet by videoconference or written consultation if the articles allow it, but the meeting must actually be held, minuted and signed: backdating minutes two years later during a dispute or an audit is a forgery risk, not a shortcut. If the deadline cannot be met, the president of the commercial court can extend it on request before expiry; after expiry, any interested person or the public prosecutor can have the managers ordered to convene under penalty. Foreign owners who discover in September that no meeting was held in June should convene immediately, document the delay honestly, and request an extension rather than fabricate a June date.
The third beat is public filing at the greffe, and it is the one most often missed from abroad because nothing happens until someone checks. The rule for the SARL is representative: “Toute société à responsabilité limitée 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 ordinaire des associés ou par l’associé unique ou dans les deux mois suivant cette approbation lorsque ce dépôt est effectué par voie électronique” (article L. 232-22, I of the Code de commerce). The filed package includes the accounts, the proposed allocation of the result, and where applicable the auditors’ reports, and filing is now done electronically. Missing this step is not a theoretical breach. On 21 May 2026, the Aix-en-Provence court of appeal confirmed, under case number RG 25/04414, an order in which the president of the Manosque commercial court had ordered a company representative to file the 2023 annual accounts within one month of service under a daily penalty of 100 euros per day of delay, then settled the accrued penalty at 5,200 euros for the period from 21 January to 13 March 2025, during which the failure continued. A few months of inertia thus turned into several thousand euros of personal penalty against the representative, ordered by the court at anyone’s request, and the same injunction procedure is available against the manager of a foreign-owned company whose accounts never reach the greffe. Filing late also freezes practical life: banks, landlords, suppliers and buyers check the latest published accounts, and a company with no accounts filed for two years looks dormant or distressed, whatever its real activity.
The foreign-owner routine that prevents all of this fits on one page. In January, the accountant closes the books and prepares the draft accounts; before 30 June for a December year-end, the shareholders approve them by meeting, videoconference or written decision, allocate the result, and record any dividend; within one month of approval, and two at most for electronic filing, the accounts are filed at the greffe and the filing receipt is kept. Dividends voted in June can only be paid from distributable sums after the accounts show them, and the dividend payment itself triggers its own withholding analysis for a foreign shareholder, which belongs to the distribution file, not to the approval rush. Small companies can request confidentiality for the profit and loss account when filing, but the filing itself remains mandatory; confidentiality hides figures from the public, it does not excuse absence. Put these four dates in the shared calendar of the owner and the accountant every January, and the corporate ritual becomes a non-event instead of an annual emergency.
B. Your company files VAT returns and pays the CFE every year: the two recurring taxes that trap companies run from abroad
Alongside corporate tax, two recurring taxes shape the yearly life of a French company, and both punish inattention from abroad with remarkable efficiency. The first is VAT (taxe sur la valeur ajoutée), which in France is not an annual tax but a permanent reporting obligation. Every VAT-registered business “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” (article 287, 1 of the Code général des impôts). Under the standard real regime, that declaration is monthly: it states the total transactions, details the taxable ones, and the VAT due is paid each month, with quarterly filing available for smaller turnovers and an annual summary return for the simplified regime. For a foreign-owned company, three VAT points cause most of the damage. First, the VAT number (the FR-prefixed intra-Community number) must appear on every invoice with the mandatory mentions, and a company that invoices without it or with the wrong rate collects disputes with customers and adjustments from the administration at the same time. Second, VAT credits accumulate fast in launch years when the company invests and buys more than it sells; the refund claim follows its own procedure and its own delays, and a founder who ignores the credit line for eighteen months discovers a cash pile sleeping at the Treasury. Third, intra-Community supplies and acquisitions, reverse-charge services from foreign providers, and imports each obey specific declaration lines, and the French VAT return must reconcile with the European sales statements. A monthly discipline, run by the accountant with access to the invoicing tool, costs little; a VAT return reconstructed from abroad a year later, under the threat of a 10 percent penalty plus interest drawn from the same articles 1727 and 1728 that punish IS delays, costs far more. Companies that already struggled with VAT registration will find the unblocking method in our guide to the French VAT number, invoicing and refunds from abroad.
The second recurring tax is the CFE, the local business tax that surprises almost every foreign founder because it arrives without any return to file and without any profit to tax. The principle is sweeping: “La cotisation foncière des entreprises est due chaque année par les personnes physiques ou morales, les entités non dotées de la personnalité morale ou les fiduciaires pour leur activité exercée en vertu d’un contrat de fiducie qui exercent à titre habituel une activité professionnelle non salariée” (article 1447, I of the Code général des impôts). Any company that habitually carries on a professional activity in France owes it, computed on the rental value of the premises used plus a minimum base set by the municipality, and the bill typically arrives in the autumn for payment by mid-December, even when the company made no profit or had almost no activity. A company created during the year is spared the CFE for its creation year, but the detail that hurts is the reference date: “La cotisation foncière des entreprises est due pour l’année entière par le redevable qui exerce l’activité le 1er janvier” (article 1478, I of the Code général des impôts). A company registered in November with a small office therefore pays nothing for year one but owes the full year-two CFE because it existed on 1 January, including the municipal minimum, which in Paris and the inner suburbs reaches several hundred euros for premises of modest size. Domiciliation at a business centre does not remove the tax; it simply moves its base to the domiciliation tariff. Foreign owners should calendarise the CFE notice every autumn, verify the base and the establishment address on the notice, and pay by the December deadline, because the same late interest and penalties apply, and because an unpaid CFE blocks the issuance of a tax compliance certificate that banks and public buyers increasingly demand.
The seriousness of the CFE is not an administrative slogan; the Court of Cassation treats it as a core operating obligation. In a much-commented ruling on companies in insolvency proceedings, the commercial chamber held, for a CFE assessed during the observation period, that “les créances nées régulièrement après le jugement d’ouverture pour les besoins du déroulement de la procédure ou de la période d’observation sont payées à leur échéance”, and that “La cotisation foncière des entreprises, calculée à partir de la valeur locative des biens immobiliers soumis à la taxe foncière que les entreprises utilisent pour leur activité professionnelle, constitue, pour les entreprises qui y sont assujetties, une obligation légale et est inhérente à l’activité poursuivie après le jugement d’ouverture et entre, en conséquence, dans les prévisions du texte susvisé” (Cass. com., 24 March 2021, appeal no. Y 20-13.832). The lesson for a healthy foreign-owned company is straightforward: if the CFE survives as a priority charge even inside insolvency proceedings because it is inherent to continued business, no healthy company can treat it as optional or secondary. The same priority logic applies to the other calendar taxes: the administration that sends the notice expects payment at maturity, and distance never suspends maturity. Contest the base when it is wrong, by online claim with the notice, the lease and the floor plans attached, but pay first when the deadline falls during the dispute unless a formal suspension has been granted, because the dispute does not stop interest from running.
When something has already gone wrong, the repair order is always the same: file, pay, then argue. File the missing return or the missing accounts first, because spontaneous filing stops the clock and keeps the penalty at its lowest rung; pay the principal and the interest shown on the notice, because unpaid principal keeps producing interest; then challenge what can be challenged, by online claim for tax and by court application for an abusive injunction, with documents rather than explanations. Keep every proof of filing and payment with its date, because the difference between the 10 percent and the 40 percent penalty, or between a suspended and a liquidated daily penalty, is proven by dates and receipts. And never let tax mail pile up at the French registered office: a domiciliation contract that forwards mail weekly, an accountant with a payment mandate, and a shared calendar with the four IS dates, the monthly VAT rhythm, the June approval deadline and the December CFE payment are the entire secret of running a French company from abroad without penalties. The French system is demanding but predictable; it punishes absence, never organisation.
Conclusion
A French company run from abroad pays its corporate tax at 25 percent through quarterly advances computed on the last closed year, settles the balance with an annual electronic return, and lives the rest of the year to the rhythm of monthly VAT returns, the autumn CFE bill and the spring ritual of approving and filing its accounts within six months of year-end and one month after approval. Each step carries its own verified text, its own deadline and its own sanction, from monthly interest to the 10 and 40 percent penalties and the court-ordered daily fine for missing accounts, and none of them pauses because the owner lives abroad. The founders who thrive are not those with the cleverest structure but those with the dullest discipline: an activated professional tax account, an accountant with mandates, a monitored French address, and a calendar that treats the 15 March, 15 June, 15 September and 15 December advances, the spring IS return, the June meeting, the monthly VAT and the December CFE as fixed appointments. Put that organisation in place during the first year, when advances are excused and the return still feels distant, and the French company becomes what it should be for a foreign owner: a quiet machine that pays what it owes, files what it must, and leaves its owner free to grow the business instead of fighting penalties.
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