You live in London, New York, Dubai or Singapore, and France is your next market. A distributor waits for your signature, a client wants a French invoice with French VAT, or your group needs a local entity to hire one salesperson in Lyon. From abroad, the French menu looks confusing: SAS, SARL, SASU, EURL, branch, subsidiary, each with its own acronyms, its own registration circuit and its own tax bill. Choose the wrong vehicle and you pay for it for years, through rigid voting rules you never wanted, a director who cannot be removed without damages, social charges you never budgeted, or a foreign head office held liable for everything the French outlet does. This guide gives the distant founder a complete decision method, with statutes verified in their versions in force on 24 September 2026 and five binding rulings of the Cour de cassation, the court at the top of the French judicial system, each read in its full official text. Every French acronym is explained on first use. The four vehicles are compared side by side, then each registration, governance and tax step is mapped for a founder who signs everything from abroad. Our companion guide on setting up a company in France as a foreign founder covers the bank account, the Kbis certificate and VAT registration in detail; this article answers the earlier question, the one that shapes all the others: which legal vehicle should you pick when you run everything from abroad? Two earlier guides compared the same four vehicles (our 3 September vehicle-choice guide and our 4 September founder-choice guide); this article updates that comparison with the latest SAS case law and the full registration-to-tax chain for founders signing from abroad.
I. Should You Set Up a SAS, a SARL, a Branch or a Subsidiary When You Live Abroad?
A. SAS or SARL: which company protects a foreign founder best?
The SAS (société par actions simplifiée, the simplified joint-stock company) and the SARL (société à responsabilité limitée, the limited liability company) are the two standard French companies with their own legal personality. Both shield the shareholders behind limited liability, both receive a Kbis (the official company identity certificate issued by the greffe, the registry office of the commercial court), and both register on the RNE (Registre national des entreprises, the national business register operated through the one-stop shop run by the INPI, the Institut national de la propriété industrielle). The statute opens the SAS chapter with a deliberately wide door: « Une société par actions simplifiée peut être instituée par une ou plusieurs personnes qui ne supportent les pertes qu’à concurrence de leur apport. » (Commercial Code, Article L227-1). The SARL chapter mirrors it: « La société à responsabilité limitée est instituée par une ou plusieurs personnes qui ne supportent les pertes qu’à concurrence de leurs apports. » (Commercial Code, Article L223-1). When each vehicle has only one shareholder, it takes a special name: a one-person SAS is a SASU (société par actions simplifiée unipersonnelle), and a one-person SARL is an EURL (entreprise unipersonnelle à responsabilité limitée). A foreign founder setting up alone therefore chooses in practice between a SASU and an EURL, while two or more partners choose between a multi-shareholder SAS and a SARL.
The practical difference between the two is not liability, which is capped in both, but lawmaking power. A SARL runs on a fixed statutory track: managers, majorities and transfers are set by the Commercial Code, and the articles of association (the statuts, the contract that organises the company) can only adjust at the margins. A SAS runs on a contract track: the statuts write the rules, and the Code steps back. That contrast drives every decision below, from how votes are counted to how directors are hired and fired. For a founder living abroad, the SAS contract track is usually the safer home, because distance demands tailor-made rules on remote voting, electronic signature, casting votes and emergency management, all of which the SAS allows and the SARL restricts. The SARL keeps one advantage for small family ventures: its statutory track is predictable, cheap to run, and familiar to every French accountant, bank and greffe. A solo consultant billing from Paris twice a month may find an EURL perfectly sufficient; a start-up onboarding investors, issuing preference shares or granting convertible instruments needs a SAS.
Voting mechanics show the gap in concrete terms. In a SARL, ordinary decisions follow a locked majority rule: « Dans les assemblées ou lors des consultations écrites, les décisions sont adoptées par un ou plusieurs associés représentant plus de la moitié des parts sociales. » (Commercial Code, Article L223-29). If that first majority fails and the statuts say nothing different, a second vote can pass by a simple majority of votes cast, but any clause ignoring this architecture can be annulled at the request of any interested party. In a SAS, the equivalent rule is written by the founders themselves: « Les statuts déterminent les décisions qui doivent être prises collectivement par les associés dans les formes et conditions qu’ils prévoient. » (Commercial Code, Article L227-9). Only a short list of fundamental matters, capital changes, mergers, dissolution, approval of accounts and appointment of auditors, must stay collective; everything else, quorum, majority, remote consultation, written consent, can be shaped for a shareholder base spread across time zones. That freedom is real, but it has two hard edges set by recent case law, and both bite founders who draft quickly.
The first edge concerns statutory procedure. On 15 March 2023 the Commercial Chamber of the Cour de cassation reshaped SAS nullity law and held that the fourth paragraph of Article L227-9 « doit être lu comme visant les décisions prises en violation de clauses statutaires stipulées en application du premier alinéa et permettant, lorsque cette violation est de nature à influer sur le résultat du processus de décision, à tout intéressé d’en poursuivre l’annulation » (Cass., Commercial Chamber, 15 March 2023, No. 21-18.324). In plain terms, a SAS vote taken in breach of its own statuts can now be annulled whenever the breach could have changed the outcome, at the request of any interested party. A founder who writes elaborate consultation safeguards into the statuts and then ignores them for speed hands every unhappy minority shareholder a nullity claim. The lesson for distance management is direct: draft only the procedures you will actually follow, align the statuts with your real calendar, and keep proof of each convocation, each electronic vote and each written consent.
The second edge concerns majorities themselves. On 15 November 2024 the Full Assembly of the Cour de cassation, the most solemn formation of the court, ruled that a collective decision of SAS shareholders « ne peut être valablement adoptée que si elle réunit au moins la majorité des voix exprimées, toute clause statutaire contraire étant réputée non écrite » (Cass., Full Assembly, 15 November 2024, No. 23-16.670). No clause can validly let a resolution pass with fewer votes in favour than the majority of votes cast; such a clause is deemed unwritten. Founders tempted by minority lock-in or veto-proof drafting must respect that floor. Between those two rulings, the SAS remains highly flexible but no longer a zone without rules: procedure matters, and arithmetic matters.
Share transfers complete the comparison. SARL shares (parts sociales) transfer to third parties only with the consent of shareholders holding at least half the capital, a statutory lock that protects the closed character of the company but slows investor entry. SAS shares (actions) transfer under whatever approval clause (clause d’agrément), inalienability clause or exclusion clause the statuts provide, or with no clause at all. For a foreign founder planning a funding round within eighteen months, that single difference often settles the choice: the SAS accommodates investor-grade transfer mechanics, while the SARL forces a statutory consent round for every new entrant. Tax and social treatment of the director, examined in Part II, usually confirms it.
B. Branch or subsidiary: when does a foreign company avoid creating a French company?
A group already incorporated abroad faces a prior question before SAS versus SARL: should it create a French company at all, or simply operate through a local presence? French law offers two such presences, and confusing them is the costliest mistake in this guide. A subsidiary (filiale) is a French company, usually a SAS, owned by the foreign parent; it has its own legal personality, its own Kbis, its own assets and its own liabilities. A branch (succursale, the registered local presence of a foreign company without its own legal personality) is not a company at all; it is the foreign company acting in France under its own name, registered locally but legally inseparable from the head office. Clients see a French address in both cases. Courts do not: the subsidiary answers for its own debts up to its own assets, while the branch binds the foreign parent directly and without limit.
Registration reflects that divide. A subsidiary follows the full company formation circuit described in Part II: statuts, capital deposit, legal notice (annonce légale, the paid publication of the creation in an authorised gazette), one-stop-shop filing and Kbis. A branch files a lighter but still mandatory registration: the foreign company declares its French establishment, proves the existence and powers of the head office with translated and sometimes apostilled documents (the apostille is the international authentication stamp of the Hague Convention), justifies premises in France, and designates a local representative. Both routes require proof of premises from day one, because « Toute personne morale demandant son immatriculation au registre du commerce et des sociétés doit justifier de la jouissance du ou des locaux où elle installe, seule ou avec d’autres, le siège de l’entreprise, ou, lorsque celui-ci est situé à l’étranger, l’agence, la succursale ou la représentation établie sur le territoire français. » (Commercial Code, Article L123-11). Domiciliation with an approved provider (domiciliation, the rental of a registered address with mail handling) satisfies this for both, provided the provider is authorised and the contract is filed.
Tax is where branches surprise foreign groups. A branch does not escape French tax simply because it has no French legal personality. Where it amounts to a stable establishment, it files, accounts and pays like a French business. On 15 February 2023 the Commercial Chamber approved enforcement against a foreign company operating through such an establishment, holding that « Une société de droit étranger est tenue, lorsqu’elle exerce une activité en France par l’intermédiaire d’un établissement stable, aux obligations résultant des articles 54, 209 et 286, I, 3°, du code général des impôts, qui exigent la passation d’écritures comptables permettant de justifier des opérations imposables en France » (Cass., Commercial Chamber, 15 February 2023, No. 21-13.288). Missed filings then allow the presumption that the company knowingly omitted accounting entries, opening the door to dawn raids and reassessments. The corporate income tax base itself confirms the symmetry: « 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 » (General Tax Code, Article 206, paragraph 1), and branches of foreign companies carrying on business in France fall into the same taxable net through the establishment rules. Choosing a branch to save tax is therefore a false economy; the saving, if any, sits in set-up speed and lighter governance, never in exemption.
The decision grid for a group acting from abroad runs as follows. Pick a subsidiary, normally a SAS, when France is a durable market, when local contracts, hiring and borrowing require a French balance sheet, when the parent wants liability contained in France, or when a future sale or fundraising of the French business is plausible; the extra formation cost buys a firewall and a sellable asset. Pick a branch when the mission is short, exploratory or service-based, when contracts can be signed by the head office, when no local borrowing is needed and when the parent accepts direct liability in exchange for speed and simplicity. Never pick a branch by default because it looked quicker on a checklist: every French invoice, every payslip and every tax return still has to be right, and the parent answers for all of it. Groups that hesitate often start with a branch for a one-person representative office and convert to a SAS subsidiary once revenue stabilises; that sequence is lawful, but the conversion is a creation, not a transformation, with a fresh Kbis, fresh contracts and fresh tax elections.
One final boundary matters for individuals. A branch presupposes a foreign company as head office; a human being living abroad cannot open a branch of himself. A freelancer in London or a consultant in New York who wants to bill French clients must either form a French company, usually a SASU, or use an umbrella or secondment structure, each with its own social and tax footprint. Property purchases and personal relocation sit outside this guide: buying a flat in Paris belongs to conveyancing counsel, and moving to France belongs to immigration counsel, not to company counsel.
II. How Do You Register, Manage and Pay Tax on Your French Vehicle From Abroad?
A. How do you register with the one-stop shop, get your Kbis and open the file from abroad?
Since 1 January 2023 every French business formality runs through a single online portal, the guichet unique (the one-stop shop for business formalities, operated by the INPI). Paper filings at the greffe are gone; the founder uploads statuts, identity documents, proof of address, the legal notice certificate and the capital deposit certificate, and the portal routes the file to the greffe, tax and social bodies. The official service-public procedure lists the exact supporting documents for SAS, SASU, SARL and EURL filings (service-public.fr, company registration formalities). Registration on the national register itself is universal: « Il est tenu un registre national des entreprises, auquel s’immatriculent les entreprises exerçant sur le territoire français une activité de nature commerciale, artisanale, agricole ou indépendante. » (Commercial Code, Article L123-36). No Kbis without that registration, no bank account, no hiring and no VAT number without the Kbis.
The ordered sequence from abroad has six steps, and skipping one explains most rejected files. First, draft statuts that fit distance: remote consultation, electronic signature, powers of the president or manager (gérant, the statutory manager of a SARL), and decision calendars aligned with the founder’s travel. Second, fix the registered office (siège social, the legal address of the company): a lease, a domiciliation contract or a properly authorised home-office clause, because the greffe checks occupation before anything else. Third, deposit the share capital with a French bank, a notary (notaire) or the Caisse des dépôts and collect the deposit certificate; SAS and SARL both allow a symbolic one euro, but banks, landlords and suppliers read capital as seriousness, so founders typically deposit several thousand euros and release the balance after registration. Fourth, publish the legal notice with the exact statutory mentions; a wrong corporate purpose or a misspelled director name bounces the file. Fifth, file on the guichet unique with apostilled and sworn-translated foreign documents where a shareholder or director is a foreign company or a foreign resident; an apostille takes days in some states and weeks in others, so start it before drafting ends. Sixth, collect the Kbis, verify every line the day it arrives, and only then sign commercial contracts, because the company exists against third parties once registered, and errors in the name, capital or director block every later step.
The greffe is not a postbox; it checks substance. The Code provides that « Il est procédé à l’immatriculation de la société après vérification par le greffier du tribunal compétent de la régularité de sa constitution » (Commercial Code, Article L210-7). Any interested party, and the public prosecutor, can go to court to order regularisation under penalty if mandatory mentions are missing or a formation formality was skipped or mishandled. From abroad, the three classic rejections are a missing or expired proof of premises, an unsigned or undated shareholder list, and a foreign birth certificate or company extract without apostille or sworn translation. Each rejection restarts the clock while the distributor waits, so founders should treat the first filing as the only filing: complete, translated, signed and consistent across every document. Publication in the BODACC (Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales, the official gazette where creations are announced) follows automatically once the greffe registers the company.
Two distance traps deserve emphasis. First, identity verification: French banks and some greffes require certified passport copies, proof of address less than three months old, and sometimes a video call or a consular certification for non-resident directors; a tourist snapshot and an expired utility bill fail every time. Second, the beneficial owner declaration (registre des bénéficiaires effectifs, the RBE register of the humans who ultimately own or control more than 25 percent): it is filed together with the creation on the one-stop shop, and any later change of control must be declared within thirty days. Late or false RBE filings draw criminal-scale fines and freeze banking relationships, so the distant owner should calendar them like tax deadlines. Once the Kbis arrives, open the tax and social accounts immediately: corporate income tax with the SIE (Service des impôts des entreprises, the business tax office), VAT with the same office where applicable, and payroll with the URSSAF (Unions de recouvrement des cotisations de sécurité sociale et d’allocations familiales, the agency collecting social contributions) before the first payslip, not after.
B. Who runs the company, who pays social charges and who pays corporate tax?
Governance is where distance hurts most, because the founder cannot chair a meeting at short notice in Paris. In a SAS, the only mandatory officer is the president (président, the legal representative of the SAS): « La société est représentée à l’égard des tiers par un président désigné dans les conditions prévues par les statuts. » (Commercial Code, Article L227-6). The same article gives him the widest powers: « Le président est investi des pouvoirs les plus étendus pour agir en toute circonstance au nom de la société dans la limite de l’objet social. » The company is even bound by acts beyond the corporate purpose unless it proves the third party knew or could not have been unaware, publication of the statuts alone never sufficing as proof. The statuts may add a general manager (directeur général), a board or committees, but every extra title must state who can bind the company, because banks and counterparties read only the Kbis and the published powers. In a SARL, management belongs to one or more managers: « La société à responsabilité limitée est gérée par une ou plusieurs personnes physiques. » (Commercial Code, Article L223-18). Managers need not be shareholders, serve for the life of the company unless the statuts say otherwise, and act within powers set by the statuts or, in silence, by statute. A non-resident founder can preside over a SAS or manage a SARL, provided a reachable French address, a responsive accountant and a written delegation chain cover absences.
Removal rules decide many vehicle choices, and here the two companies diverge sharply. In a SARL, statute protects the manager: « Le gérant peut être révoqué par décision des associés dans les conditions de l’article L. 223-29 » (Commercial Code, Article L223-25), and « Si la révocation est décidée sans juste motif, elle peut donner lieu à des dommages et intérêts. » A majority SARL partner who removes a manager to install himself, or two 50-50 partners in deadlock where one removes the other, should therefore document misconduct, persistent absences or strategic failure before voting; otherwise the removed manager sues for damages and often wins. Courts can also remove a manager for lawful cause at any partner’s request, which gives a minority partner in a SARL a judicial exit from a blocked or abusive management. A foreign founder who plans to act as manager while holding a minority stake must weigh this exposure before accepting the title.
In a SAS, removal is contractual, which cuts both ways. The Cour de cassation repeats that the statuts set the management rules, including removal. On 9 March 2022 it approved a dismissal without reasons where the statuts required none, holding that « c’est à bon droit que l’arrêt décide que la révocation de M. [N] en tant que directeur général de la société Hubbard pouvait intervenir sans qu’il soit nécessaire de justifier d’un juste motif. » (Cass., Commercial Chamber, 9 March 2022, No. 19-25.795). On 12 October 2022 it added that extra-statutory acts may complete the statuts but never contradict them on removal terms. On 9 July 2025 it closed the loop: « Il résulte de ces textes que les statuts de la société par actions simplifiée fixent les conditions dans lesquelles celle-ci est dirigée, notamment les modalités de révocation de ses dirigeants. Si une décision des associés peut compléter les statuts sur ce point, elle ne peut y déroger, quand bien même aurait-elle été prise à l’unanimité. » (Cass., Commercial Chamber, 9 July 2025, No. 24-10.428). Read together, the trilogy tells distant founders exactly what to draft: state whether removal needs reasons or is at-will (ad nutum, removable at will), state notice, hearing and severance, and never let a one-off appointment resolution quietly rewrite those terms, even unanimously, because the later resolution cannot override the statuts. A SAS president removed in breach of statutory procedure can have the removal annulled and claim damages; a president removed cleanly under a well-drafted ad nutum clause leaves with what the clause provides, nothing more.
Social charges follow the title, not the passport. The president of a SAS and the minority or equal manager of a SARL fall under the general employee-linked scheme (assimilé salarié) for social protection: they pay contributions on salary through the payroll, accrue the corresponding rights, but draw no unemployment cover as officers. The majority manager of a SARL falls under the self-employed scheme (travailleur non salarié): lower headline rates on part of the income, but a different health, retirement and daily-allowance architecture, billed directly by the URSSAF outside payroll. A non-resident officer who draws no French salary pays no French social charges on the office itself, but the moment a salary, bonus or director fee (rémunération) is paid from France, declarations run through the DSN (déclaration sociale nominative, the monthly payroll return) and the URSSAF assesses on that base. Founders sometimes ask whether they can invoice France from their foreign company instead of taking salary; that reopens establishment, transfer pricing and payroll-reclassification risk, and the short-term saving rarely survives an audit. Budget the social cost before choosing the title: a SAS president with a 60,000 euro gross salary costs the company roughly 45 percent more in employer charges, while a majority SARL manager on the same drawings pays on a different calendar and base, with cash-flow consequences the accountant must model in advance.
Corporate tax completes the picture. French companies pay corporate income tax (impôt sur les sociétés) on French profits at the standard rate with a reduced SME band on the first slice where conditions are met, file annually and prepay in instalments; branches of foreign companies pay on the profits attributable to the French establishment under the same mechanics. VAT (taxe sur la valeur ajoutée) registration follows activity, not form: a French company or branch that makes taxable supplies registers, invoices with French VAT, files returns and reclaims input VAT under the same thresholds and the CA3 return cycle as any domestic business. Our companion VAT and corporate tax guides detail rates and calendars; the vehicle point is simpler. Neither the SAS nor the SARL nor the branch escapes French tax on French activity, and none converts French payroll into foreign invoices without consequences. Choose the vehicle for governance, liability and credibility, then comply identically on tax, because the tax office taxes the activity it sees, not the acronym on the Kbis.
Conclusion
A foreign founder does not choose between a good and a bad vehicle, but between a tailored suit and a uniform. The SAS, including the one-person SASU, is the tailored suit: the statuts write voting, transfers and removal for a shareholder base that lives abroad, within two judicial guardrails, procedure that can annul a sloppy vote and a majority floor no clause can waive. The SARL, including the one-person EURL, is the uniform: predictable majorities, statutory manager protection with damages for groundless removal, and consent-locked transfers that suit small stable ventures but slow investors. The branch is not a company at all: fast to open, taxed like a company where it is established, and binding the foreign parent without limit, it fits short missions and fails durable ones, where a subsidiary SAS contains risk and builds a sellable French asset. Register through the one-stop shop with premises proved, capital deposited, notice published and foreign papers apostilled and translated; staff the presidency or management for absence; budget social charges by title; and pay French tax on French activity whatever the letterhead. Drafted this way from abroad, the French company stops being an administrative gamble and becomes what it should be: a controlled, bankable and auditable platform for the French market.
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