You live in London, New York, Dubai or Singapore, and France is your next market. A distributor waits for your signature, a first client asks for a French invoice with a French VAT number, or your group needs a European base with credibility toward banks and suppliers. The Paris lawyer you call will ask one question before anything else: SAS or SARL? The SAS, the société par actions simplifiée, the simplified joint-stock company, and the SARL, the société à responsabilité limitée, the limited liability company, are the two vehicles nine foreign founders out of ten end up choosing, and the choice shapes everything that follows: who runs the company, how that person is taxed and covered for social security, how easily shares change hands, how a director is removed, and how much paperwork a distant owner must handle. This article answers the four questions every foreign founder asks, in order: which vehicle fits your project, how to register it from abroad without the file bouncing back from the greffe, the registry office of the commercial court, how to pay yourself lawfully once the company exists, and what to do when the company turns against you. Every French acronym is explained on first use, every decisive rule is quoted from the statute or ruling in force verified on 26 September 2026, and the strategy is built for an owner who will not be in France every week. Our companion hub on setting up a company in France as a foreign founder covers the bank account, the Kbis, the official company identity card, VAT and the first hire in one place; this article goes deeper on the single most consequential decision, the choice of vehicle and everything it triggers.
I. How Do You Choose Between a SAS and a SARL When You Live Abroad?
A. What really separates a SAS from a SARL for a foreign founder?
The starting point reassures: in both vehicles, your personal exposure as shareholder is capped by your contribution. The Commercial Code states for the SAS: « 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). It states for the SARL, in nearly identical terms: « 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). Creditors of the company cannot seize your apartment in London because the French subsidiary failed, provided you paid up your contributions and did not personally guarantee the debts. Both forms accept a single shareholder: the one-person SAS is called the SASU, the société par actions simplifiée unipersonnelle, and the one-person SARL is called the EURL, the entreprise unipersonnelle à responsabilité limitée. A foreign founder starting alone therefore never needs a nominee shareholder, a prête-nom, under French law, and anyone proposing one should be asked why.
The real difference lies in governance, and it matters more from a distance than founders expect. The SAS is a contractual company: the statuts, the articles of association, organise management almost freely, with only a few mandatory rules borrowed from the law on public limited companies. The SARL is a statutory company: the Commercial Code writes most of the operating manual, and the statuts can only adjust the margins. For a founder living abroad, SAS freedom is a double-edged sword. It lets you design exactly the company you need: a president with full powers who can sign everything without calling a meeting, tailored voting thresholds, entry and exit clauses for investors, differentiated shares. But every freedom must be written, and what is not written defaults to whoever holds the pen. A SARL bought off a template, by contrast, runs on rails: the gérant, the manager, and the shareholder meeting have powers the Code defines, which protects a distant owner who cannot monitor daily life, at the price of rigidity when the business evolves.
Management power toward third parties illustrates the gap. In a SAS: « La société est représentée à l’égard des tiers par un président désigné dans les conditions prévues par les statuts. 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 » (Commercial Code, Article L227-6). The president of a SAS binds the company even beyond its corporate purpose unless the third party knew of the excess, a rule that gives banks, landlords and suppliers confidence to deal with a company whose owner they never meet. In a SARL, the gérant holds similarly broad powers by statute, but removing or constraining him follows the Code, not your contract, as Section II explains. Practical consequence for the distant founder: if you want to run everything yourself from abroad, a SASU with yourself as president and statuts giving you every power is the simplest machine. If you want a French partner or manager to run the shop while you keep control, a SARL with carefully drafted statuts, or a SAS with a general meeting that actually supervises, protects you better than a SAS whose president holds unchecked powers and whose statuts you signed without reading.
Capital rules are founder-friendly in both forms, with one trap for the unwary. There is no statutory minimum: one euro suffices. In a SARL, the Code sets the pay-up schedule precisely: « Les parts représentant des apports en numéraire doivent être libérées d’au moins un cinquième de leur montant. La libération du surplus intervient en une ou plusieurs fois sur décision du gérant, dans un délai qui ne peut excéder cinq ans à compter de l’immatriculation de la société au registre du commerce et des sociétés » (Commercial Code, Article L223-7). Cash contributions in kind, an apport en nature such as equipment or a patent, must be fully paid up at once. Contributions of industry, an apport en industrie consisting of work or know-how, are possible in a SAS, which « peut émettre des actions inaliénables résultant d’apports en industrie tels que définis à l’article 1843-2 du code civil » (Commercial Code, Article L227-1), but they do not form the share capital and cannot be transferred. The trap is the bank, not the statute: the capital must be deposited with a bank, a notary or the Caisse des dépôts before registration, and the deposit certificate must match the statuts to the euro. Foreign founders regularly see files rejected because the transferred amount, net of international fees, differs by a few euros from the subscribed capital, or because the bank labels the transfer inconsistently with the draft statuts. Ask the bank for the exact wording of the certificate before wiring, wire the exact subscribed amount with fees on top, and keep the SWIFT confirmation for the file.
Two forward-looking criteria often decide the choice. First, the sale or transfer of your stake. Selling SAS shares, des actions, costs 0.1% registration duty: the Tax Code taxes at « 0,1 % » the transfers of shares of non-listed joint-stock companies (General Tax Code, Article 726). Selling SARL parts sociales, the non-negotiable units of a SARL, costs « 3 % », with « un abattement égal au rapport entre la somme de 23 000 € et le nombre total de parts sociales de la société » applied to each share (General Tax Code, Article 726). A founder who plans to bring in investors, sell to a partner or flip the company within a few years pays meaningfully less friction in a SAS. Second, investor instruments: only the SAS can issue preference shares, convertible bonds and the whole toolbox of venture financing without converting form. A SARL that suddenly needs venture money must convert to SAS first, which costs a full extraordinary procedure. Family business with two partners and no fundraising plans points to SARL; startup with foreign investors or an exit horizon points to SAS.
Taxation at creation does not separate the two: both are subject to corporation tax, called the IS, the impôt sur les sociétés, by default, since « sont passibles de l’impôt sur les sociétés, quel que soit leur objet », among others, limited liability companies that have not opted for the partnerships regime (General Tax Code, Article 206). Small companies can elect income-tax transparency for five financial years under conditions, a useful bridge when early losses could offset the founder’s other French income, but the election is time-limited and must be filed on time. The corporate-tax mechanics, instalments, and how to challenge an assessment from abroad are covered in our guide on paying and challenging French corporate tax from abroad.
B. How do you register your company from abroad without the file bouncing back?
Registration runs through a single doorway. Since the reform of business formalities, one body receives every creation file: « L’organisme unique mentionné à l’article L. 123-33 permet aux entreprises de réaliser l’ensemble des formalités et procédures nécessaires à l’accès et à l’exercice de leur activité » (Commercial Code, Article R123-1). In practice this is the guichet unique, the single online window operated by the INPI, the Institut national de la propriété industrielle, the French intellectual-property and business-registration office, which forwards the dossier to the greffe, the tax office, URSSAF, the social-security collection agency, and the statistical registry. Paper filings at the greffe counter belong to the past; a file mailed from abroad to the commercial court will simply be redirected. The founder creates an account on the single window, uploads signed statuts, the capital-deposit certificate, proof of the registered office, called the siège social, identity documents, a criminal-record declaration, and the beneficial-owner declaration, and tracks requests for corrections online. Responses arrive in days, and each correction request restarts only the defective part, so answering within 48 hours keeps the timeline tight.
Three documents cause most rejections of foreign files, and each has a fix. First, the registered office. A French company must have a French address, and a foreign home address is not one. Solutions are a commercial lease, a domiciliation contract with an approved provider, called a domiciliataire, or the home of a French-based director where the lease allows it. Domiciliation contracts must show the provider’s approval number; missing numbers are the single most common ground for refusal. Second, the identity and capacity papers of a non-resident founder. A passport copy works, but names must match across every document to the letter, including accents and married names, because the register cross-checks mechanically. Powers of attorney signed abroad should carry an apostille, the Hague Convention authentication stamp, where the issuing country applies it, and sworn translations into French, by a traducteur assermenté, are required for any document the greffe cannot read. Third, the beneficial-owner declaration, the registre des bénéficiaires effectifs, universally called the RBE. Every company must declare « au registre du commerce et des sociétés » the information on its beneficial owners, covering « les éléments d’identification et le domicile personnel de ces bénéficiaires ainsi que sur les modalités du contrôle que ces derniers exercent sur la société ou l’entité » (Monetary and Financial Code, Article L561-46). The beneficial owner, the bénéficiaire effectif, is the flesh-and-blood person who ultimately owns more than 25% or controls the company, typically you. File it with the creation dossier through the single window, not weeks later: banks opening the operating account check it, and an unfiled RBE freezes onboarding.
The company’s legal birth happens at one precise instant: « Les sociétés commerciales jouissent de la personnalité morale à dater de leur immatriculation au registre du commerce et des sociétés » (Commercial Code, Article L210-6). Before that second, the company does not exist, and anyone who signs in its name answers personally: « Les personnes qui ont agi au nom d’une société en formation avant qu’elle ait acquis la jouissance de la personnalité morale sont tenues solidairement et indéfiniment responsables des actes ainsi accomplis, à moins que la société, après avoir été régulièrement constituée et immatriculée, ne reprenne les engagements souscrits » (Commercial Code, Article L210-6). Leases signed early, equipment ordered before the Kbis arrives, the Kbis being the official identity card of the company issued by the greffe, all sit on the founder’s personal shoulders until the company takes them over. The takeover is not automatic for every signature. On 29 November 2023 the Commercial Chamber of the Cour de cassation, the court at the top of the French judicial system, restated that only commitments expressly made in the name of the company in formation can be taken over, holding that « ne sont susceptibles d’être repris par la société après son immatriculation que les engagements expressément souscrits « au nom » of the company in formation (Cass., Commercial Chamber, 29 November 2023, No. 22-18.295). The operational lesson is blunt: every pre-registration contract must state it is signed in the name of the named company in formation, the statuts must list the commitments taken over with the takeover clause, and the shareholders must vote the takeover after registration. A lease signed by you personally, without the magic words, stays your lease.
Once registered, the company receives its SIREN number, the unique nine-digit business identifier issued by INSEE, the national statistics office, its SIRET number for the establishment, and the Kbis extract that proves existence. Verify the Kbis line by line on arrival: corporate name, legal form, capital, registered office, president or gérant, duration, business purpose, called the objet social. Errors on the Kbis propagate to the bank, the VAT service and every contract, and correcting them later costs a full corrective filing. If the file bounces, the single window states the ground precisely; the serious grounds are an irregular registered office, a missing or mismatched capital certificate, an absent beneficial-owner declaration, or statuts that contradict mandatory law, for instance a SARL whose statuts ignore the statutory meeting rules. Fix exactly what is asked, re-upload, and keep every filing receipt, because the date of a complete filing can matter for the opposability of your rights. Founders who instead need only a local presence without creating a French company should read our guide on branch versus subsidiary in France before spending on a full incorporation.
II. How Does Your French Company Pay, Tax and Protect You Once It Exists?
A. How are you paid and taxed as president of a SAS or gérant of a SARL?
Your social-security status is decided by your title and your shareholding, not by your residence, and the three cases work very differently. The president of a SAS, whether paid or not, whether resident or not, belongs to the general salaried scheme as an assimilated employee, called an assimilé salarié: the Social Security Code lists « Les présidents et dirigeants des sociétés par actions simplifiées » among the persons covered (Social Security Code, Article L311-3, 23°). Concretely, a paid SAS president pays roughly full-rate employee and employer contributions on salary, which buys real coverage, health, retirement points and, with contributions, unemployment-equivalent protection through voluntary schemes, but costs far more than dividends. An unpaid president pays nothing and earns nothing, which suits a foreign owner who draws no French salary. The gérant of a SARL who is a minority or equal shareholder joins the same assimilated-employee scheme: the Code covers « Les gérants de sociétés à responsabilité limitée et de sociétés d’exercice libéral à responsabilité limitée à condition que lesdits gérants ne possèdent pas ensemble plus de la moitié du capital social » (Social Security Code, Article L311-3, 11°), counting family holdings with his own. The majority gérant, the gérant majoritaire holding over half the capital alone or with family, falls into the self-employed scheme, the travailleur non salarié universally called the TNS, whose contributions « sont assises sur l’assiette définie à l’article L. 136-3 » (Social Security Code, Article L131-6), essentially professional income, at lower rates but with thinner coverage, no unemployment insurance and daily allowances that must be topped up privately.
For the foreign founder, the comparison usually settles as follows. A SAS with yourself as president and no salary costs nothing in social charges while you develop the business, and you take dividends later, taxed at the flat 30% prélèvement forfaitaire unique, the PFU, or on election at the progressive scale. A SARL where you are majority gérant triggers TNS contributions from the first euro of profit even without salary, through minimum flat contributions, called cotisations minimales, in the early years, which surprises founders who expected to sleep cheaply while the company ramps up. Conversely, a minority gérant drawing a real salary gets full employee coverage at full cost. Non-residence adds a coordination layer: European regulations and bilateral conventions decide which country’s scheme covers a director who works across borders, and a founder already compulsorily covered elsewhere, for instance a UK director paying National Insurance or a US founder on a foreign payroll, must clarify the applicable legislation before the first pay run, because double contributions are expensive to unwind and exemptions are never retroactive. Our analyses of how a foreign director combines salary and dividends and which social scheme covers a non-resident director work through the numbers, and our guide on surviving a URSSAF audit from abroad explains what happens when the agency requalifies your setup.
Money movements between you and the company follow strict rails. Any agreement between the company and its director or shareholder, a loan, a lease of your own premises to the company, a service contract with your foreign holding, falls into the regulated-agreements procedure, the conventions réglementées: « Le gérant ou, s’il en existe un, le commissaire aux comptes, présente à l’assemblée ou joint aux documents communiqués aux associés en cas de consultation écrite, un rapport sur les conventions intervenues directement ou par personnes interposées entre la société et l’un de ses gérants ou associés », and the interested party does not vote (Commercial Code, Article L223-19). In a SAS, the statuts organise the equivalent control, and auditors flag omissions. Advances you leave in the company sit in your compte courant d’associé, the shareholder current account, which can be reclaimed but under conditions the company can actually meet; our guide on recovering your shareholder advance from abroad details the traps. Yearly discipline is non-negotiable: accounts must be approved and filed through the single window, and in a single-shareholder SARL « L’associé unique approuve les comptes, le cas échéant après rapport des commissaires aux comptes, dans le délai de six mois à compter de la clôture de l’exercice » (Commercial Code, Article L223-31). Miss the six-month approval meeting and the one-to-two-month filing that follows, and the greffe flags the company, banks downgrade it, and penalty interest starts running; our annual legal calendar for companies run from abroad lists every deadline in order.
B. What do you do when the company turns against you: removal, blocked dividends or a forced exit?
The SAS promise of contractual freedom shows its teeth at removal time, and two 2020s rulings set the frame every founder should know. First, what the statuts do not say, the law does not add: the Cour de cassation holds that « les conditions dans lesquelles les dirigeants d’une société par actions simplifiée peuvent être révoqués de leurs fonctions sont, dans le silence de la loi, librement fixées par les statuts, qu’il s’agisse des causes de la révocation ou de ses modalités », so a general manager whose statuts allow removal at any time can be removed without any serious reason being shown (Cass., Commercial Chamber, 9 March 2022, No. 19-25.795). Second, and symmetrically, the statuts beat everything else: on 9 July 2025 the same chamber held that « 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). In that case, a general manager dismissed by the president invoked a unanimous shareholder vote that had limited dismissal to three defined cases; the Court discarded the vote and applied the statuts’ at-will rule, while keeping 30,000 euros of damages for the brutal and vexatious manner of the dismissal. The message for the distant founder runs both ways: draft the removal clause you can live with on your worst day, because no later handshake overrides it, and if you are the one being removed, attack the manner, suddenness, humiliation, concurrent measures, rather than a statuts clause that authorises the removal itself.
The SARL plays by statute, which protects the manager more. « Le gérant peut être révoqué par décision des associés », and « Si la révocation est décidée sans juste motif, elle peut donner lieu à des dommages et intérêts », with removal also available through the courts for legitimate cause at any shareholder’s request (Commercial Code, Article L223-25). A majority shareholder who fires his minority-partner manager without serious grounds pays damages, and the manager can also ask the court to remove a blocking co-manager. Mirror image: a minority founder managed by a majority gérant who never distributes dividends and raises his own pay should document everything early, meeting minutes, profit history, reserve levels, the gérant’s remuneration votes, because the answer runs through the regulated-agreements vote, the liability action and, in the hardest cases, court-appointed expertise or removal. Liability follows the title. In a SARL, « Les gérants sont responsables, individuellement ou solidairement, selon le cas, envers la société ou envers les tiers, soit des infractions aux dispositions législatives ou réglementaires applicables aux sociétés à responsabilité limitée, soit des violations des statuts, soit des fautes commises dans leur gestion » (Commercial Code, Article L223-22). In a SAS, « Les règles fixant la responsabilité des membres du conseil d’administration et du directoire des sociétés anonymes sont applicables au président et aux dirigeants de la société par actions simplifiée » (Commercial Code, Article L227-8). Shareholders can bring the company action, the action sociale, against the manager, and creditors pursue the manager personally once the company cannot pay, a risk our guide on director personal liability for company shortfalls maps step by step.
When the conflict becomes structural, French law offers exits in a fixed order of pain. The negotiated exit is a share purchase with a price formula written in the statuts or a shareholders’ pact, the pacte d’associés, ideally signed at creation when everyone still likes each other; in a SAS the statuts can even organise forced-transfer clauses, while in a SARL transfers to third parties need the approval procedure, the agrément, which gives the remaining partners control but slows sales. The judicial exits are removal for legitimate cause, dissolution for deadlock, called mésentente paralysing the company, and the liability action as leverage. The terminal exit is closing the company and starting clean, described in our guide on dissolving and liquidating from abroad, and a brutal rupture by a business partner is answered with the notice-and-damages machinery explained in our guide on a partner cutting you off without notice. Whatever the route, the distant founder’s first reflex is the same: secure the evidence while access lasts, Kbis, statuts, minutes, bank statements, contracts, because every French procedure rewards the party whose file is complete, and distance is no excuse the courts accept.
Conclusion
Choose the SAS if you want contractual freedom, cheap share transfers, investor instruments and an unpaid presidency that costs nothing while the business grows, and accept the price: everything protective must be written into the statuts, because later votes cannot contradict them. Choose the SARL if you want statutory rails, a manager whose removal requires serious grounds, and a familiar partnership frame, and accept its rigidities on transfers and fundraising. Register through the single window with a file whose names, amounts and addresses match to the letter, declare the beneficial owner at once, sign every pre-registration contract expressly in the name of the company in formation, and read the Kbis as carefully as a contract. Then run the company like a local: pay the director through the right scheme, vote the regulated agreements, approve the accounts within six months, and file on time. The founder who does this from abroad is not disadvantaged; the founder who improvises discovers that French company law, courteous in form, never forgives informality.
Need a quick opinion on your case
Choosing between a SAS and a SARL from abroad turns on your investor plans, your director’s social scheme, your capital deposit, your beneficial-owner filing and the removal clauses you can live with. Our firm offers a telephone consultation within 48 hours with a lawyer of the firm, telephone consultation: 80 EUR TTC, to review your draft statuts or existing company and set the strategy before the next signature or filing. Call +33 6 46 60 58 22 or write through our contact page with your Kbis, draft statuts and capital-deposit papers attached.