You formed a company in France from London, New York, Dubai or Singapore, you received your Kbis (the official company identity certificate issued by the greffe, the registry of the commercial court), you opened a bank account, and business started. Then your accountant writes: from September 2026 every French company must receive electronic invoices, your large customers demand invoices in a new structured format, and the tax office talks about e-reporting of transaction and payment data. You live 6,000 kilometres away, you do not read French administrative circulars every morning, and you wonder whether this reform really applies to a small foreign-owned SAS (the simplified joint-stock company most foreign founders choose), what happens if your PDF invoices keep going out as before, and how you would even challenge a French fine from abroad. This guide answers those three questions in practical order. It is written for the foreign shareholder or director who runs a French SARL (limited liability company), SAS or SASU (single-shareholder SAS) without living in France, and it explains every French acronym on first use: VAT (TVA in French, the value-added tax), RCS (the Registre du commerce et des sociétés, the trade and companies register), URSSAF (the agency that collects social contributions), BODACC (the official gazette where company creations and insolvency openings are published), and Chorus Pro (the portal historically used for invoices to public bodies).
The urgency is real and dated. The Ministry of the Economy states on its official page that La réforme de la facturation électronique entre entreprises est entrée en vigueur le 1er septembre 2026, meaning the business-to-business e-invoicing reform entered into force on 1 September 2026. Since that date every company, whatever its size, must be able to receive electronic invoices, while the duty to issue them and to transmit reporting data is phased by company size through 2027. The impots.gouv.fr portal (the French tax administration website) confirms the operational consequence: by 1 September 2026 you had to Choisir une plateforme pour recevoir les factures de vos fournisseurs, that is, choose a platform to receive your suppliers’ invoices. A foreign owner who ignores this is not merely old-fashioned: the Tax Code now attaches a 50 euro fine per non-compliant invoice, capped at 15,000 euros per calendar year, and the Commercial Code punishes missing or defective invoices with administrative fines of up to 375,000 euros for a company. The good news is that everything can be set up and, if needed, contested remotely, provided you understand the calendar, the compliant invoice, and the remedies. Our general roadmap for foreign founders, from bank account to Kbis to VAT to first hire, is set out in our pillar guide Setting Up a Company in France as a Foreign Founder: Bank Account, Kbis, VAT and Your First Hire; this article drills into the one 2026 change that now generates the most panicked calls: electronic invoicing.
I. What the 1 September 2026 Reform Forces Your French Company to Do, Even From Abroad
A. Receive E-Invoices Now, Issue Them on Your Size Calendar and Report Payment Data
French invoicing law starts from a simple principle that surprises many common-law founders: invoicing is not optional paperwork, it is a legal duty between professionals. The Commercial Code provides that Tout achat de produits ou toute prestation de service pour une activité professionnelle fait l’objet d’une facturation, which means every purchase of goods or provision of services for a professional activity must be invoiced. The Tax Code mirrors this for VAT purposes: Tout assujetti est tenu de s’assurer qu’une facture est émise, par lui-même, ou en son nom et pour son compte, par son client ou par un tiers, meaning every taxable person must ensure an invoice is issued, by himself, or in his name and on his behalf by his customer or a third party. A Paris court recently reminded a service provider of exactly this, holding that Aux termes de l’article L. 441-9 du code de commerce, tout achat de produits ou toute prestation de service pour une activité professionnelle fait l’objet d’une facturation (Paris Court of Appeal, Pôle 1 Chambre 8, 29 March 2024, RG 23/14815, Leca Marée v. D.). In that case a seafood distributor that had paid for a billing software subscription without receiving invoices obtained a court order forcing the provider to hand over the missing invoices. The lesson for a foreign owner is blunt: your French company must issue invoices for what it sells, must claim invoices for what it buys, and must keep a copy of every invoice issued, because the administration and the courts treat the invoice as the backbone of both VAT control and commercial proof.
The September 2026 reform does not abolish these rules; it changes the authorised channel for domestic business-to-business transactions. Two new duties now sit on top of the old ones: e-invoicing, the issue and receipt of invoices in a structured electronic format through an approved platform or the public portal, and e-reporting, the electronic transmission to the tax administration of transaction data (for sales to private individuals, foreign customers or exempt operations that do not go through e-invoicing) and of payment data. Concretely, since 1 September 2026 all taxable businesses, including your one-person SASU and including companies whose shareholders and directors live abroad, must be able to receive electronic invoices from their French suppliers. That is the universal leg: no turnover threshold, no exemption for foreign ownership, no grace period for companies registered in August. The issuing leg is phased. According to the official calendar published by the Ministry of the Economy, large companies and intermediate-sized companies (ETI, entreprises de taille intermédiaire) had to issue fully electronic invoices and transmit their e-reporting data from 1 September 2026, while small and micro-enterprises have until 1 September 2027 to be able to issue electronically and transmit their e-reporting data. In practice most foreign-owned French subsidiaries and start-ups fall in the second group, which means they have one extra year to equip themselves for issuance, but they have been obliged to receive since September 2026 and their large French customers already send structured invoices that must be accepted and processed.
Three misunderstandings must be cleared immediately because they cost foreign owners money. First, a PDF attached to an email is not e-invoicing within the meaning of the reform. A PDF may remain a valid invoice for transactions outside the domestic e-invoicing mandate, for example sales to foreign customers, but for a French-to-French sale of goods or services between taxable persons it no longer counts as a compliant electronic invoice once your issuing deadline applies; the invoice must travel through a registered platform in one of the three statutory formats (Factur-X, UBL or CII) so that the administration receives its data. Second, the reform does not remove the VAT invoicing timetable. The Tax Code still requires that La facture est, en principe, émise dès la réalisation de la livraison ou de la prestation de services, meaning the invoice is in principle issued as soon as the supply or service is performed, with a backstop of the 15th of the following month for intra-EU supplies and reverse-charge services. Third, foreign ownership changes nothing about territoriality: if your company is registered at the RCS, has a SIREN number (the nine-digit company identifier) and a SIRET number (the fourteen-digit establishment identifier), and performs taxable transactions in France, it is a French taxable person subject to French invoicing and archiving rules even if its shareholder, its president and its bank signatory all live outside France. The tax office will write to the registered office (siège social) in France, deadlines will run from that letter, and your absence from French soil suspends nothing.
The sanctions are what turn an IT project into a legal risk. On the tax side, the Tax Code now provides that Le non-respect par l’assujetti de l’obligation d’émission d’une facture sous une forme électronique dans les conditions prévues à l’article 289 bis donne lieu à l’application d’une amende de 50 € par facture, sans que le total des amendes appliquées au titre d’une même année civile puisse être supérieur à 15 000 €, meaning failure to issue an invoice in electronic form triggers a 50 euro fine per invoice capped at 15,000 euros per calendar year, while an approved platform that fails to transmit data faces 50 euros per invoice capped at 45,000 euros. The same article adds a separate track for companies that refuse to use an approved platform to receive invoices: a formal notice to comply within three months, then a 500 euro fine if the breach persists, then 1,000 euros after each further unsuccessful three-month notice period. On the commercial side the penalties are heavier. The Commercial Code punishes any breach of the invoicing rules with une amende administrative dont le montant ne peut excéder 75 000 € pour une personne physique et 375 000 € pour une personne morale, an administrative fine of up to 75,000 euros for an individual and 375,000 euros for a company, doubled in case of repetition within two years. And the general tax penalties did not disappear: issuing an invoice that does not correspond to a real supply, hiding the identity of a supplier or customer, or failing to book a transaction can trigger a fine of 50 percent of the amounts at stake. A foreign director sometimes discovers these figures only when the registered-office mail is finally opened; by then interest and surcharges have been running for months.
B. Register Through the Guichet Unique, Declare Beneficial Owners and Pick Your Platform
Before you can invoice at all, your company must exist cleanly in the French registers, because every e-invoicing platform will ask for the same three identifiers: the SIREN, the intra-EU VAT number, and the identity of the person legally entitled to bind the company. Since 1 January 2023 all business formalities go through the Guichet unique (the single online portal operated by the INPI, the National Institute for Industrial Property): creation, modification of directors or registered office, and cessation are filed electronically in one dossier. The Commercial Code states that toute entreprise se conforme à l’obligation de déclarer sa création, la modification de sa situation ou la cessation de ses activités by filing a single electronic dossier with the designated single body, and that filing counts as a declaration to each recipient once the dossier is complete. For a founder living abroad this has a very practical consequence: a change of president of the SAS, a transfer of the registered office, or an amendment of the articles must be filed on the Guichet unique before your platform updates your invoicing profile, and the Kbis reflecting the change is the document your bank, your platform and, in case of dispute, the court will ask to see. Keep a certified Kbis less than three months old in your shared drive at all times; it is the French equivalent of a certificate of good standing and the fastest way to prove who can sign.
The second registration foreign owners neglect is the register of beneficial owners (RBE, registre des bénéficiaires effectifs). The Monetary and Financial Code requires that companies declare to the RCS, through the single body, les informations relatives aux bénéficiaires effectifs, that is, information on their beneficial owners, covering identification details, personal domicile and the terms of the control exercised over the company. A beneficial owner is any individual who directly or indirectly holds more than 25 percent of the capital or voting rights, or who otherwise controls the company. If you are the sole shareholder of a SASU living in London or Tel Aviv, that is you, and your home address abroad must be declared. Platforms performing their anti-money-laundering checks (KYC, know your customer) cross-check this register; a mismatch between the declared beneficial owner and the person signing the platform contract is one of the most frequent causes of frozen onboarding for foreign-owned companies. Rectify the RBE the same week any share transfer or move occurs, because an outdated RBE slows down the bank, the platform and, later, any buyer who audits your company before acquiring it.
Choosing the platform is the third step and the one the tax portal presents as urgent. The administration’s message is that each company had to select its receiving channel by September 2026: either a private approved platform (plateforme agréée, listed by the administration) or, during the transition, the public portal. The approved platform performs three jobs: it routes structured invoices between supplier and customer, it extracts the statutory data and transmits it to the tax office, and it maintains the invoice directory (annuaire) that lets every sender find every recipient’s electronic address. A foreign-run company should select its platform with four criteria in mind. First, English-language support and multi-user remote access, so the director abroad and the accountant in France work on the same dashboard. Second, automatic handling of the three formats and of mixed flows: domestic e-invoicing for French B2B sales, ordinary PDF or paper treatment for sales to non-French customers, and e-reporting feeds for business-to-consumer and cross-border sales. Third, archiving that satisfies the French ten-year retention duty with guaranteed integrity, origin authenticity and readability, because the Tax Code obliges every taxable person to keep invoices and supporting documents under the conditions of article L. 102 B of the Tax Procedures Book, and a platform that cannot produce a readable invoice six years later is a liability. Fourth, status tracking with timestamps, because the platform’s deposit, acceptance and payment statuses become your evidence if a customer claims never to have received the invoice. Sign the platform contract in the name of the company as shown on the Kbis, authorise the accountant with a documented mandate, and test the full loop, emission plus reception plus directory lookup, with a friendly supplier before your first real invoice. Companies that waited until the week of the deadline discovered that directory registration, RBE mismatches and bank-mandate updates each take days, not hours.
A short note on VAT registration completes the picture. Many foreign founders ask whether they can invoice without a French VAT number while waiting for registration. The answer is no for domestic taxable operations: the VAT number must appear on the invoice, the platform will reject structured invoices with an invalid number, and issuing “VAT to be confirmed” invoices creates rectification work and exposes you to the 15 euro fine per omission or inaccuracy that the Tax Code attaches to defective invoices. The Tax Code also reminds every new taxable person that Dans les quinze jours du commencement de ses opérations, [toute personne assujettie] souscrit au bureau désigné par un arrêté une déclaration, meaning within fifteen days of starting operations the taxable person files a declaration with the designated office. File the VAT option and the platform registration in parallel with the RCS filing, not after, so that the first invoice your company issues is already a compliant one. Our pillar guide walks through the full formation sequence in order; treat this article as its September 2026 invoicing update.
II. How to Issue a Compliant French Invoice and Survive an Audit or a Penalty From Abroad
A. Draft Every Mandatory Mention, Apply the Right Payment Deadline and Keep Proof
A compliant French invoice is a checklist, and auditors check it line by line. The invoice must identify both parties with names, addresses and, where the billing address differs, that address too; it must state the date of the sale or service, the quantity, the precise description, the unit price excluding VAT, any price reduction acquired at the time of sale and directly linked to the transaction, the VAT rate and amount per rate, the date by which payment must be made, the discount terms for early payment, the late-penalty rate payable the day after the due date, the flat-rate recovery fee for late payment, and the purchase-order number when the buyer previously issued one. The official service-public page for businesses summarises these mentions and the payment-deadline rules in English at Tout savoir sur la facturation – Service Public Entreprendre, with companion pages on Mentions obligatoires sur une facture and on Délais de paiement entre professionnels et pénalités de retard. Two mentions cause most foreign-owned companies their first penalty: the late-penalty rate and the 40 euro flat recovery fee. French law makes both compulsory on every B2B invoice even when the parties get along perfectly, and their absence is sanctioned even if no payment is ever late.
The payment deadline itself is regulated, not freely negotiable. The Commercial Code sets a default and a ceiling: le délai de règlement des sommes dues ne peut dépasser trente jours après la date de réception des marchandises ou d’exécution de la prestation demandée, meaning the payment period may not exceed thirty days after receipt of the goods or performance of the service unless the parties agree otherwise, and even by agreement it may not exceed sixty days from the invoice date, or forty-five days end of month by express contract that is not manifestly abusive to the creditor. For periodic invoices the ceiling is forty-five days from issuance. Courts apply these ceilings strictly, including against foreign suppliers’ general terms that purport to impose ninety or one-hundred-and-twenty-day terms. The Paris Court of Appeal confirmed in January 2025 that the statutory penalty clause must be quoted and applied, recalling that Les conditions de règlement mentionnées au I de l’article L. 441-1 précisent les conditions d’application et le taux d’intérêt des pénalités de retard exigibles le jour suivant la date de règlement figurant sur la facture (Paris Court of Appeal, Pôle 5 Chambre 5, 9 January 2025, RG 22/12459, Fraikin v. BMTL), and it upheld the balance of several invoices with penalties attached. A very recent judgment of the Marseille business court shows the arithmetic that awaits a defaulting customer: the supplier obtained its principal plus outre les pénalités de l’article L 441-10 II du code de commerce, soit au taux de refinancement de la Banque centrale européenne majoré de 10 points, plus 40 euros per unpaid invoice, that is 5,960 euros for 149 invoices (Marseille Business Court, 3 September 2026, RG 2025F01487, Rexel v. Sapec). For a foreign company selling in France the message cuts both ways: put the ECB-plus-ten-points clause and the 40 euro fee on your invoices so you can claim them without a reminder, because Les pénalités de retard sont exigibles sans qu’un rappel soit nécessaire, late penalties are due with no reminder needed, and refuse any customer term that pushes payment beyond the statutory ceiling.
Proof and archiving close the loop. Under French law a paid invoice accepted without protest is powerful evidence of the debt in commercial courts, while an invoice alone, without a contract, order or delivery slip, rarely wins a contested case. From abroad, organise proof as a bundle from day one: signed quote or order, delivery note or time sheet, structured invoice with platform timestamp, and the customer’s acceptance or silence documented in the platform status history. Store the bundle for ten years in a system that guarantees authenticity of origin, integrity of content and readability for the whole period, which is exactly what the Tax Code’s invoicing article demands when it requires those three qualities dès son émission et jusqu’à la fin de sa période de conservation, from issuance until the end of the retention period. If you use cash-register or invoicing software for retail sales without invoices, remember it must meet the inalterability, security, conservation and archiving conditions certified by an accredited body or by the publisher’s individual attestation. And keep the double of every invoice issued: the Tax Code requires the taxable person to retain a copy of all invoices issued, a duty auditors verify first because its breach colours everything that follows.
B. Contest a Fine, a Rectification or an Abusive Payment Term Without Flying to France
When the registered-office mail brings bad news, triage comes first: what exactly did you receive, what clock started running, and who can act for you from abroad. Three different envelopes must never be confused. An administrative fine for invoicing breaches states the Commercial Code provisions breached, the amount per bracket, and the appeal route, usually an administrative appeal to the issuing authority followed by an appeal to the administrative court within two months. A tax adjustment (rectification) follows an audit: the famous on-site verification of accounts, which the Tax Procedures Book authorises in these terms: Les agents de l’administration des impôts vérifient sur place, en suivant les règles prévues par le présent livre, la comptabilité des contribuables astreints à tenir et à présenter des documents comptables, meaning tax officers verify on the premises, under the rules of that book, the accounts of taxpayers required to keep and present accounting documents. The verification ends with a formal proposal of rectification that you may accept, correct, or challenge with observations within thirty days, extendable on request, before any assessment becomes final. A payment order or injunction from a customer dispute is a court matter with much shorter clocks: an injonction de payer (order to pay) must be served and can be opposed within one month, opening a full adversarial hearing. Each of these can be handled by a French lawyer with a simple signed retainer and powers sent by email; none requires the director to board a plane. What does require speed is the calendar: French limitation and appeal periods run against the company at its registered office whether or not the director abroad has read the letter, so organise a weekly mail scan with whoever holds your keys in France, be it your accountant, your domiciliation agent or your registered-office provider.
On substance, four defences recur in invoicing disputes and each maps to a document you should already hold. First, against the 50 euro per invoice e-invoicing fine, argue the calendar and the first-offence shield. The Tax Code expressly provides that Les amendes mentionnées au 3 du I et aux II, III et IV du présent article ne sont pas applicables en cas de première infraction commise au cours de l’année civile en cours et des trois années précédentes lorsque l’infraction a été réparée spontanément ou dans les trente jours suivant une première demande de l’administration, meaning the fines are not applied for a first offence in the current and previous three calendar years where the breach was repaired spontaneously or within thirty days of the administration’s first request. If your 2026 gap was a genuine onboarding delay repaired within the month, say so with dated platform logs. Second, against missing-mention fines, produce the corrected invoice and the platform audit trail showing the mention now appears on every template; administrations and courts reduce or drop penalties where the breach caused no VAT loss and was fixed before reassessment. Third, against a VAT rectification built on rejected invoices, attack the chain: prove the supply was real with contracts, delivery notes, bank statements and the customer’s own accounts, because a genuine transaction supported by a full bundle survives a formal defect far better than a bare invoice. Fourth, against a customer who imposes abusive payment terms or simply never pays, sue on the invoice bundle before the commercial court of your registered office, claim the ECB-plus-ten-points penalties and the 40 euro fee per invoice from the day after the due date, and request an advance (provision) in summary proceedings where the debt is not seriously contestable. The Marseille and Paris judgments cited above show judges granting exactly these add-ons when the invoices and the statutory clause are in order. In every scenario the foreign director’s winning move is the same: instruct early, in writing, with the complete bundle, so the lawyer can meet the thirty-day or two-month clock without chasing missing delivery slips across time zones.
Practical remote management deserves a paragraph of its own because it is where foreign owners win or lose. Give your French accountant a standing mandate to receive platform alerts and tax correspondence, with an agreed escalation to you within forty-eight hours for anything carrying a deadline. Keep the company’s legal file, Kbis, articles, RBE declaration, VAT certificate, platform contract and insurance, in a shared folder the lawyer can access on the day of the emergency, not after a week of searching. Never let the registered office become a black hole: if you use a domiciliation company, pay for the mail-scan option and confirm the forwarding address every quarter. And when a dispute turns adversarial, centralise communication through one person in the company and one counsel, because contradictory statements made to the auditor by the director abroad, the accountant in France and the platform hotline are routinely quoted back in the rectification proposal. Distance is no excuse in the eyes of the administration, but with a clean register, a live platform, and a complete invoice bundle, distance is no handicap either: every filing, every appeal and most hearings can be handled by counsel while you sign, pay and decide from abroad.
Conclusion
The September 2026 reform rewards foreign owners who treat invoicing as infrastructure and punishes those who treat it as stationery. Since 1 September 2026 your French company must receive structured electronic invoices whatever its size; it must issue them and report transaction and payment data from 2026 if it is large or intermediate-sized, and from September 2027 if it is small; and every invoice it issues must still carry the full French checklist of mentions, the lawful payment deadline, the ECB-plus-ten-points penalty clause and the 40 euro recovery fee. The fines are graduated but real, from 50 euros per electronic-format breach to 375,000 euros for commercial invoicing violations, with the first-offence repair shield as the honest company’s safety net. Set up the Guichet unique filings, the beneficial-owner declaration and the approved platform in that order, issue your first structured invoice through the platform before your legal deadline, archive the full contractual bundle for ten years, and calendar every administrative letter from the day it reaches the registered office. Done in this order, e-invoicing becomes what the reform promised: faster payment, fewer disputes, and a company a future buyer or auditor can understand in an afternoon. If the registered-office mail has already brought a fine, a rectification proposal or an unpaid invoice, the same bundle that protects you prospectively is what lets counsel contest the amount, negotiate the timetable, or recover the debt from abroad.
Need a quick opinion on your case.
Our firm advises foreign founders and companies doing business in France, in English, from formation to invoicing to disputes. You receive a telephone consultation within 48 hours with a lawyer of the firm, with a practical action plan for your platform, your invoices or your pending fine.
Call +33 6 46 60 58 22 (Maître Reda Kohen) or write via our contact page. We assist clients in Paris and across Île-de-France as well as fully remotely from abroad.