You live in London, New York, Dubai or Singapore and you own a company in France — a SAS (société par actions simplifiée, the flexible joint-stock company most foreign founders choose), a SARL (société à responsabilité limitée, the limited liability company with shares called parts sociales), or a branch of your foreign group. The company trades, invoices, pays salaries, and everything seems under control. Then a letter arrives from the greffe (the registry office of the commercial court, which keeps the RCS, the Registre du commerce et des sociétés, the French company register): your annual accounts were never filed. Or your accountant warns you that the six-month deadline to approve the accounts expired weeks ago. Or your bank blocks a transfer because the Kbis (the official identity card of a French company, an extract of the RCS) shows an outdated director. French company law runs on a strict annual calendar, and distance is no excuse: the same deadlines apply whether you sit in Paris or on another continent, and the penalties strike the director personally. This guide gives you the complete legal calendar of a French company owned from abroad — approval of the accounts, filing at the registry, corporate tax, VAT (value added tax), social declarations, and the register of beneficial owners — with every decisive rule quoted from the statute or the Court of Cassation. Choosing the vehicle is covered in our guide to SAS, SARL, subsidiary or branch, opening the bank account in our bank account guide, and corporate income tax in detail in our corporate tax guide.

I. How do you approve and file your French company’s accounts on time from abroad?

A. When must you approve your French company’s annual accounts, and how do you hold the meeting from abroad?

Every trader in France must keep accounts. Article L123-12 of the Commercial Code states: « Toute personne physique ou morale ayant la qualité de commerçant doit procéder à l’enregistrement comptable des mouvements affectant le patrimoine de son entreprise. » (Every natural or legal person with the status of trader must record in accounts the movements affecting the assets of the business.) The same article continues: « Elle doit établir des comptes annuels à la clôture de l’exercice au vu des enregistrements comptables et de l’inventaire. » (It must draw up annual accounts at the close of the financial year on the basis of the accounting records and the inventory.) And it defines the package: « Ces comptes annuels comprennent le bilan, le compte de résultat et une annexe, qui forment un tout indissociable. » (These annual accounts comprise the balance sheet, the profit and loss account and notes, which form an inseparable whole.) The bilan shows what the company owns and owes, the compte de résultat shows profit or loss for the year, and the annexe explains the figures. Your accountant prepares them, but the law makes their approval a shareholder decision with a hard deadline.

At the close of each financial year, management must draw up the inventory and the accounts and write a management report. Article L232-1 of the Commercial Code provides: « 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. » (At the close of each financial year the board of directors, the management board or the managers draw up the inventory, the annual accounts in accordance with the provisions of section 2 of chapter III of title II of book I, and establish a written management report.) In a SARL, the gérant (the manager) performs this task; in a SAS, the président (the president, the legal representative) or the governing body designated by the articles performs it. Small companies benefit from simplifications — the smallest ones may not have to write a full rapport de gestion — but the inventory and the three-part accounts remain compulsory for every commercial company, including the one-person EURL (entreprise unipersonnelle à responsabilité limitée) and SASU (société par actions simplifiée unipersonnelle) that many foreign founders use as their French vehicle.

The central deadline is six months from the close of the financial year. If your company closes its accounts on 31 December, as most French companies do, the shareholders must approve the accounts before 30 June. For a SARL, Article L223-26 of the Commercial Code states: « 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. » (The management report, the inventory and the annual accounts drawn up by the managers are submitted for the approval of the shareholders meeting in general meeting, within six months of the close of the financial year, subject to extension of this period by court decision.) For a company with a board structure, Article L225-100 of the Commercial Code states: « 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. » (The ordinary general meeting is held at least once a year, within six months of the close of the financial year, subject to extension of this period by court decision.) SAS companies follow the rules their own articles set for shareholder decisions, but the six-month horizon governs them in practice, and every company whose year ends on 31 December faces the same 30 June wall.

Living abroad changes nothing about the deadline, but it changes how you organise the meeting. The law anticipates shareholders who cannot or will not meet: if the meeting has not been convened within six months, the public prosecutor or any interested person — in a SARL — or the prosecutor or any shareholder — in a larger company — can ask the president of the competent court, ruling in summary proceedings, to order the managers to convene the meeting, if necessary under a daily penalty, or to appoint an agent to do so. Both Article L223-26 and Article L225-100 contain this mechanism, which means a minority shareholder, a creditor or even the prosecutor can force your company into a court-ordered meeting if you let the deadline slide. The practical lesson for a founder abroad is simple: diary the six-month date the day the financial year closes, instruct your accountant in March at the latest, and hold the meeting — by videoconference if your articles allow it, or by written consultation where the form of company permits — before the end of June. If the accounts are not ready, the only lawful escape is to petition the president of the commercial court for an extension before the deadline expires; courts grant such extensions routinely when asked in time, and never when asked afterwards.

The meeting itself must be documented as carefully as the figures. Shareholders must receive the accounts, the proposed resolutions and, where one exists, the auditor’s report within the periods set by regulation before the meeting; any decision taken in breach of these communication duties can be annulled. The meeting votes on the accounts, on the allocation of the result — dividends, reserves, or carried-forward losses — and on the discharge of management where applicable. The minutes, the attendance sheet and the voted resolution allocating the profit or loss are the documents the registry will ask for at the next stage, and the tax authorities will ask for the same allocation when they check the dividend withholding tax on distributions to a foreign parent, a point developed in our dividends guide. A founder who signs everything alone as sole shareholder of an EURL or SASU must still draw up dated minutes and a written allocation decision: a sole shareholder who approves nothing on paper has approved nothing in law.

B. How do you file the approved accounts at the registry, and what does the public see?

Approving the accounts is only half the duty; the other half is filing them so that creditors, suppliers, banks and the tax authorities can see them. Every SARL must file at the greffe. Article L232-22 of the Commercial Code states: « 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 » (Every limited liability company must file with the registry of the court, to be appended to the trade and companies register, within one month of the approval of the annual accounts by the ordinary meeting of shareholders or by the sole shareholder, or within two months of such approval where filing is made electronically). Every joint-stock company — which includes the SAS, the vehicle of choice for foreign groups — bears the mirror duty. Article L232-23 of the Commercial Code states: « 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 » (Every joint-stock company must file with the registry of the court, to be appended to the trade and companies register, within one month of the approval of the annual accounts by the general meeting of shareholders, or within two months of such approval where filing is made electronically). The implementing rule confirms the arithmetic. Article R123-111 of the Commercial Code states: « Les sociétés commerciales sont tenues de déposer, dans le délai d’un mois à compter de leur approbation par l’assemblée ordinaire, les documents comptables prévus aux articles L. 232-21 à L. 232-23 » (Commercial companies must file, within one month of their approval by the ordinary meeting, the accounting documents provided for in articles L.232-21 to L.232-23.) It adds for electronic filing: « Dans ce cas, le délai prévu au premier alinéa est porté à deux mois. » (In that case, the period provided for in the first paragraph is extended to two months.) The official service-public guidance summarises the same rule for each form of company — one month on paper at the greffe, two months through the online single-window system, the guichet des formalités des entreprises run with the INPI (Institut national de la propriété industrielle, the French industrial property office that now operates the company formalities portal): see Dépôt des comptes annuels d’une société.

Concretely, for a 31 December year-end with accounts approved on 20 June, paper filing is due by 20 July and electronic filing by 20 August. The file contains the approved balance sheet, profit and loss account and notes, the proposed and voted profit allocation, and, where the company has one, the statutory auditor’s report; small companies may file abbreviated accounts and medium-sized companies simplified ones, and the smallest companies can ask that their accounts not be made public, but the filing itself remains compulsory. Filing is done online through the INPI single window, which forwards the documents to the competent greffe for appending to the RCS; the filing is then announced in the BODACC (Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales, the official gazette publishing company filings and insolvency notices), which is how your bank, your suppliers and the courts check that your company is alive and transparent. A company whose accounts never appear in the BODACC looks dormant or careless, and banks in particular draw consequences: an up-to-date Kbis plus published accounts is the standard file a bank demands before releasing funds, renewing an overdraft or accepting a capital increase from a foreign parent. Our Kbis troubleshooting guide explains what to do when the registry blocks or delays your extract.

Missing the filing deadline triggers a graduated response that ends, if you persist, before a judge. Any interested person — a creditor, a supplier, a shareholder — and the public prosecutor can ask the president of the commercial court to order the company to file. Article R611-13 of the Commercial Code states that « le président du tribunal rend une ordonnance faisant injonction au représentant légal de la personne morale de déposer les comptes annuels » (the president of the court issues an order enjoining the legal representative of the legal person to file the annual accounts) « dans un délai d’un mois à compter de la notification ou de la signification de l’ordonnance, sous peine d’astreinte » (within one month of notification or service of the order, under penalty of a periodic penalty payment). The order is not open to appeal, it sets the daily rate of the astreinte (the running financial penalty that accrues each day of delay), and it summons the case back for examination — so a founder who ignores the mailbox of the French registered office can accumulate thousands of euros in penalties before learning of the order. In practice, courts of appeal regularly hear disputes about the liquidation of such penalty payments, which shows how mechanically the system operates: file late, get ordered to file under penalty, then argue about the bill. The only reliable defence is the calendar — approve within six months, file within one month on paper or two months online, and keep the filing receipts with the meeting minutes in the company’s records.

Three practical habits keep a foreign-owned company safe at this stage. First, align the whole chain on one timetable: accountant delivers draft accounts by April, auditor — if the company has a commissaire aux comptes, the statutory auditor compulsory above size thresholds or on group request — reports in May, shareholders approve in June, filing goes out in July. Second, designate one person in France to receive registry correspondence: the gérant or président if resident, otherwise a domiciliation agent or counsel whose address is the company’s formal point of contact, with an instruction to forward every greffe letter within 48 hours. Third, check publication: a few weeks after filing, search the BODACC notice and order a fresh Kbis to confirm the accounts are recorded. These habits cost little and prevent the two most common foreign-founder failures — the June meeting forgotten because nobody in the group owned the date, and the July filing missed because the signed minutes stayed in an inbox abroad while the registry counted down the month.

II. What else must your French company never miss during the year, and what happens if you do?

A. Which tax, social and beneficial-owner filings punctuate the life of your French company?

Accounts approval and filing are the spine of the calendar, but a French company lives under three parallel clocks — tax, social, and transparency — and each of them ticks whether the owner is in Paris or abroad. The corporate income tax clock starts with the principle that the tax is assessed as a single amount in the name of the company for all its taxable activities in France: Article 218 of the General Tax Code states: « l’impôt sur les sociétés est établi sous une cote unique au nom de la personne morale ou association pour l’ensemble de ses activités imposables en France » (corporate income tax is assessed under a single assessment in the name of the legal person or association for all of its taxable activities in France). From that principle flows the annual return — the liasse fiscale, the full tax pack filed electronically within three months of the year-end, normally early May for a December year-end — plus four quarterly instalments during the year and the balance when the return is filed. A foreign parent that extracts the profit as dividends then faces the withholding-tax machinery: the shareholders’ vote on the allocation, documented at the June meeting, determines the distributable amount, and the treaty between France and the parent’s country determines the rate. Rates, instalments, returns and payment from a foreign bank account are detailed in our corporate income tax guide and the dividend mechanics in our dividends guide; the calendar point is that the tax return and the accounts approval draw on the same figures, so a delay in the accounts poisons the tax return too.

The VAT clock runs faster and punishes delay automatically. Once registered — and every operating French company needs its French VAT number, the numéro de TVA intracommunautaire used for invoices and intra-Community trade — the company files periodic returns: monthly CA3 returns for most active companies, quarterly for smaller ones, with payment of the VAT due and, separately, the Intrastat and ECS declarations for goods and services traded within the European Union. The new electronic-invoicing reform adds a structural deadline to this clock: from 1 September 2026, large and medium companies must receive electronic invoices through an approved platform, and all VAT-registered businesses must be able to receive them, with e-reporting duties for transactions outside the invoicing mandate. Registration steps, first returns and penalties are covered in our VAT guide and the reform timetable in our e-invoicing guide. For the calendar, the message is that VAT is a monthly discipline, not an annual one: a founder who discovers French VAT at year-end discovers twelve late returns, automatic surcharges and interest, and a corrective workload that dwarfs the cost of monthly bookkeeping.

The social clock starts the day the company hires its first person in France and never stops. Hiring means a DPAE (déclaration préalable à l’embauche, the pre-hiring declaration filed with URSSAF before any employee starts), a written French-law contract, registration of the company with URSSAF (Union de recouvrement des cotisations de sécurité sociale et d’allocations familiales, the agency collecting employers’ and employees’ social contributions), monthly payroll with bulletins de paie (payslips), monthly or quarterly DSN (déclaration sociale nominative, the single monthly electronic payroll declaration), and payment of contributions at source. Each step has its own deadline measured in days, not months — the DPAE no earlier than eight days and no later than the moment hiring begins, the DSN by the 5th or 15th of the following month depending on headcount — and URSSAF audits the chain with powers to reassess several years of contributions. The full hiring sequence is explained in our first-employee guide and the audit defence in our URSSAF audit guide. A founder abroad must understand that payroll cannot be improvised from the head office: it requires a French payroll provider, a French bank account for direct debits, and a named person who checks every monthly declaration, because missed DSN filings generate penalties per employee per month and trigger the audits nobody wants.

The transparency clock is the easiest to forget and the quickest to sanction. Every company must declare its beneficial owners — the bénéficiaires effectifs, the natural persons who ultimately own or control more than 25% of the capital or voting rights, or who exercise control by other means — to the RCS through the single window, and must update the declaration within thirty days of any change: sale of shares, arrival of a new investor, change of control at the level of the foreign parent. Article L561-46 of the Monetary and Financial Code states that the companies concerned « déclarent au registre du commerce et des sociétés, par l’intermédiaire de l’organisme mentionné au deuxième alinéa de l’article L. 123-33 du code de commerce, les informations relatives aux bénéficiaires effectifs » (declare to the trade and companies register, through the body mentioned in the second paragraph of article L.123-33 of the Commercial Code, information relating to beneficial owners). The declaration covers identity, personal domicile and the terms of control, and the criminal penalty for missing or false declarations reaches six months’ imprisonment and 7,500 euros in fines for the director. Every change at shareholder level — including a group restructuring abroad that the French subsidiary learns about months later — restarts the thirty-day clock, which is why groups with foreign holding chains miss it so often. Practical details are set out in our beneficial-owner guide. Added to these clocks are the event-driven filings — change of director, change of registered office, capital increase, share transfer — each of which must reach the registry within one month with a publication in a legal gazette and an updated Kbis; our director-change guide walks through the most frequent one.

B. What do missed deadlines cost you: fines, court orders and personal liability for the director?

The calendar is backed by criminal fines aimed directly at the director. In a SARL, Article L241-5 of the Commercial Code states: « Est puni de 9 000 € d’amende le fait, pour les gérants, de ne pas soumettre à l’approbation de l’assemblée des associés ou de l’associé unique l’inventaire, les comptes annuels et le rapport de gestion établis pour chaque exercice. » (Managers face a 9,000 euro fine for failing to submit the inventory, the annual accounts and the management report drawn up for each financial year for the approval of the meeting of shareholders or of the sole shareholder.) In a joint-stock company, Article L242-8 of the Commercial Code states: « Est puni d’une amende de 9000 euros le fait, pour le président, les administrateurs ou les directeurs généraux d’une société anonyme, de ne pas, pour chaque exercice, dresser l’inventaire et établir des comptes annuels et un rapport de gestion. » (The chairman, directors or chief executives of a public limited company face a 9,000 euro fine for failing, for each financial year, to draw up the inventory and establish annual accounts and a management report.) These are criminal penalties pronounced by a criminal court, entered on the director’s record, and available for every financial year missed — two forgotten years mean two fines. Prosecutions are not daily practice, but the provisions give the prosecutor a weapon that is used in fraud and bankruptcy cases, and they set the tone: approving and drawing up the accounts is a personal duty of the director, not an administrative chore that can be delegated away and forgotten.

Beyond fines, sloppy accounts destroy the director’s position if the company later collapses. When a court opens liquidation proceedings and the assets cannot pay the creditors, the liquidator can sue the directors to bear all or part of the shortfall. Article L651-2 of the Commercial Code states: « Lorsque la liquidation judiciaire d’une personne morale fait apparaître une insuffisance d’actif, le tribunal peut, en cas de faute de gestion ayant contribué à cette insuffisance d’actif, décider que le montant de cette insuffisance d’actif sera supporté, en tout ou en partie, par tous les dirigeants de droit ou de fait, ou par certains d’entre eux, ayant contribué à la faute de gestion. » (Where the court-ordered liquidation of a legal person reveals an insufficiency of assets, the court may, in the event of a management fault having contributed to that insufficiency, decide that the amount of the insufficiency will be borne, in whole or in part, by all the de jure or de facto managers, or by some of them, who contributed to the management fault.) The statute protects honest mistakes: « Toutefois, en cas de simple négligence du dirigeant de droit ou de fait dans la gestion de la personne morale, sa responsabilité au titre de l’insuffisance d’actif ne peut être engagée. » (However, in the event of mere negligence by the de jure or de facto manager in the management of the legal person, liability for insufficiency of assets cannot be imposed.) And the liquidator must act fast: « L’action se prescrit par trois ans à compter du jugement qui prononce la liquidation judiciaire. » (The action is time-barred three years after the judgment ordering court-ordered liquidation.) The line between mere negligence and management fault runs through the accounts: failing to keep proper books, hiding a probable liability, or running the company without ever holding a meeting crosses it.

The Court of Cassation drew that line sharply in a September 2026 ruling that every foreign director should read. After a company went into liquidation, the liquidator sued the manager for the shortfall, arguing among other faults that the accounts had omitted a provision for a litigation risk the manager knew about. The Court upheld the court of appeal, holding that « l’absence de constitution d’une telle provision a eu pour effet la présentation d’une comptabilité inexacte donnant une image faussée de la situation de la société, caractérisant une faute de gestion ayant contribué à l’insuffisance d’actif. » (the failure to record such a provision had the effect of presenting inaccurate accounts giving a distorted picture of the company’s position, constituting a management fault having contributed to the insufficiency of assets.) The manager knew the risk — his own counsel had warned him that sums received provisionally under a judgment under appeal might have to be repaid — yet the accounts showed no provision, so partners and creditors saw a healthy company that did not exist. See Court of Cassation, Commercial Chamber, 9 September 2026, appeal no. 24-22.135, decision no. 441 F-B. The lesson for a founder abroad is direct: telling your accountant about a dispute, a tax reassessment or a doubtful receivable is not paperwork, it is self-protection, because an omitted provision in approved accounts becomes, years later, the exhibit that makes you pay the company’s debts from your own pocket.

Courts of appeal apply the same logic to the calendar failures themselves. In a June 2025 case, the Aix-en-Provence court confirmed a judgment that had treated a SARL manager’s failure to hand over any accounts and failure to hold any general meeting — alongside uninsured activity, late declaration of insolvency and continued loss-making trading — as management faults justifying an order to bear the entire shortfall of more than 590,000 euros (Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal, chamber 3-2, 26 June 2025, RG 24/07000, confirming the Nice commercial court judgment of 21 May 2024). The court recalled the governing test under Article L651-2: only a manager responsible for one or more management faults going beyond mere negligence, committed before the opening of the proceedings and having contributed to the shortfall, can be condemned. A missed meeting alone rarely triggers such a case; but when the company fails, the liquidator reconstructs the whole history, and blank years — no minutes, no filed accounts, no BODACC trace — turn an explicable business failure into a personal condemnation. Tax and social administrations add their own layer: late corporate-tax returns bring a 10% surcharge plus monthly interest, late VAT returns the same, undeclared beneficial owners a criminal file, and missed DSN filings per-employee penalties that accumulate silently until an audit multiplies them across three years.

Conclusion

The legal calendar of your French company fits on one page, and it does not bend for distance. Approve the accounts within six months of the year-end, file them within one month on paper or two months online, declare and pay corporate tax on the same figures, file VAT returns every month or quarter, declare every payslip through the monthly DSN, and update the beneficial-owner register within thirty days of any change at shareholder level. Each deadline has an owner — the gérant or président — a recipient — the meeting, the greffe, the tax office, URSSAF, the RCS — and a sanction that strikes the director personally: a 9,000 euro criminal fine per forgotten year, a court order under a daily penalty, and, if the company collapses, a personal bill for the shortfall where inaccurate or missing accounts misled creditors. The September 2026 Court of Cassation ruling should settle any temptation to treat the accounts as a formality: accounts that hide a known risk are a management fault, and the fault follows the director into the liquidation. Run the calendar the other way round — accountant engaged by March, meeting held in June from wherever you are, filing receipts checked against the BODACC in July, payroll and VAT delegated to a French provider with monthly controls — and the French company becomes what it should be for a foreign group: a transparent vehicle whose Kbis, published accounts and clean filings make banks lend, suppliers trust and buyers pay a full price. Put the four dates of your company’s year on the group’s calendar today, name the person who owns each one, and keep the minutes and receipts where your successor can find them.

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