You run your business from London, New York, Dubai or Singapore, and France is your next market. You incorporate a SAS (societe par actions simplifiee, the flexible French company form), you open a business bank account, you receive your Kbis (the official company identity certificate issued by the greffe, the court registry clerk office), and then your first French customer asks for an invoice with French VAT, or your accountant warns you that you should have registered for VAT months ago. This moment surprises almost every foreign founder, because French value added tax reaches far beyond French residents: a company directed from abroad, with no office in Paris and no employee in France, can still owe French VAT, still need a French VAT number, and still face penalties for filing late. This guide explains the full path in plain business English, from abroad and without travelling: when you need a French VAT number, how to obtain it through the online one-stop shop, how to charge VAT or apply reverse charge correctly, how to file your CA3 returns (the standard French VAT return form), how to deduct and recover input VAT, and how to challenge a refusal or a reassessment when the tax office disagrees. Every acronym is explained, every key rule is tied to the official text, and every step can be handled remotely with the right documents.
I. Get your French VAT number and charge French VAT correctly from abroad
A. Find out whether you need a French VAT number and obtain it without flying to France
French VAT applies to supplies of goods and services made for consideration by a taxable person acting as such. That sentence is the entry gate of the whole system, and the Tax Code states it word for word: Sont soumises à la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée les livraisons de biens et les prestations de services effectuées à titre onéreux par un assujetti agissant en tant que tel. Read it from the founder perspective: if your French company sells goods or services for payment, it is in principle inside the VAT system, even when its shareholder and its president live abroad. The same logic extends to intra-Community acquisitions, because Sont également soumises à la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée les acquisitions intracommunautaires de biens meubles corporels effectuées à titre onéreux par un assujetti agissant en tant que tel when the seller is a taxable person in another Member State. In practice, three common situations push a foreign-directed company into French VAT registration: it sells goods located in France or ships goods to French customers, it provides services deemed supplied in France under the place-of-supply rules, or it buys goods in another EU country that arrive in France. Our pillar guide on setting up a French company from abroad describes the incorporation sequence in which VAT registration belongs, and this article takes over exactly where that sequence leaves the VAT question open: Setting Up a Company in France as a Foreign Founder: Bank Account, Kbis, VAT and Your First Hire.
The registration itself runs through an individual identification number. The Tax Code provides that Est identifié par un numéro individuel : 1° Tout assujetti qui effectue des livraisons de biens ou des prestations de services lui ouvrant droit à déduction, and the same article covers persons making taxable intra-Community acquisitions or imports. That individual number, starting with FR in France, is your French intra-Community VAT number, and your customers and suppliers will check it on the European VIES database before applying exemptions or reverse charge. The practical route depends on whether your company already exists. If you are incorporating now, the VAT number is requested through the Guichet unique (the single online company registration portal operated by the INPI, the French industrial property institute), at the same time as the entry in the Registre national des entreprises and the registration with the greffe that produces the Kbis. If the company already exists and discovers its VAT obligation late, the request goes to the tax office for non-resident businesses or to the local Service des impots des entreprises (the corporate tax office) of the registered office, with the Kbis, the articles of association, proof of the registered address, identification of the legal representative, and a description of the taxable activity in France. Companies established outside the European Union must in many cases appoint a fiscal representative in France (representant fiscal), a taxable person established in France who answers for the VAT obligations, while EU-established companies can register directly and correspond by secure messaging and post. Expect questions from the administration: bank statements showing real activity, contracts or purchase orders proving that supplies take place in France, warehouse or logistics agreements, and evidence that the registered office is genuine rather than a mail drop. Answer precisely and quickly, because an incomplete file stalls the number, and without the number you cannot issue compliant invoices or reclaim input VAT.
Two thresholds frequently confuse foreign founders and deserve a clear explanation. The first is the distance-selling threshold: since July 2021, sales of goods shipped from one EU Member State to private individuals in another are taxable in the country of arrival once the seller exceeds 10,000 euros of annual cross-border distance sales across the Union, and the seller can declare that VAT through the One-Stop Shop (OSS) return in its home country instead of registering everywhere. The second is the French small-business exemption (franchise en base): businesses below certain turnover ceilings, around 37,500 euros for most services and 85,000 euros for sales of goods, can opt out of charging VAT, but they cannot deduct input VAT either, and the scheme is unavailable or unsuitable for companies that need to look credible to business customers or recover VAT on heavy start-up costs. A foreign founder who plans real turnover in France should generally register for VAT from day one rather than gamble on thresholds, because the cost of a late registration, backdated assessments plus surcharges and interest, always exceeds the cost of filing correct returns from the start. Keep also in mind the related registrations that travel with VAT: the BODACC (Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales, the gazette where company creations and insolvencies are published) records your existence, URSSAF (the social security collection agency) handles your payroll contributions separately, and the VAT number lives with the tax administration, so creating the company does not automatically activate the VAT number unless the tax data was correctly transmitted and completed.
B. Charge the right French VAT, apply reverse charge, or invoice an exempt intra-Community supply
Once registered, every sale must carry the correct VAT treatment, and the place-of-supply rules decide where the sale is taxed. For services supplied to a business customer, the basic rule is that Le lieu des prestations de services est situé en France : 1° Lorsque le preneur est un assujetti agissant en tant que tel et qu’il a en France : a) Le siège de son activité économique, which means a service provided to a French business customer is generally taxable in France. For goods, the place is normally where the goods are located at the time of supply or where transport ends. Standard French VAT rates are 20 percent on most goods and services, 10 percent on restaurants, transport and certain works, 5.5 percent on food and energy-efficient renovation, and 2.1 percent on press and certain medicines, and applying the wrong rate is itself a ground for reassessment, so check the rate for your exact product against the official tables on impots.gouv.fr (the French tax administration portal) and the guidance pages on service-public.fr (the official public service information site) before issuing your first invoice batch.
The reverse charge (autoliquidation) is the mechanism that most often saves, or traps, foreign businesses. When a supply covered by the place-of-supply extensions is made by a supplier not established in France, the customer accounts for the VAT instead of the supplier. The statute says it directly: est effectuée par un assujetti établi hors de France, la taxe est acquittée par l’acquéreur, le destinataire ou le preneur qui agit en tant qu’assujetti et qui dispose d’un numéro d’identification à la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée en France. In practice, your foreign parent company invoices its French subsidiary, or a non-French contractor bills your French company, without French VAT, noting reverse charge and both VAT numbers, and the French customer declares the VAT due and deducts it on the same return, which is cash-neutral when the customer has a full deduction right. The trap works in both directions: a foreign founder who adds French VAT to an invoice that should have been reverse-charged collects tax that is not due and exposes the customer to a deduction challenge, while a founder who forgets reverse charge on a service received from abroad understates collected VAT and pays surcharges. Train whoever issues invoices, inside or outside France, on this single question for every cross-border line: who accounts for the VAT, the supplier or the customer, and where is that written on the invoice.
Sales of goods shipped from France to a business customer in another EU Member State can be exempt as intra-Community supplies, but the exemption is earned by proof, not by assumption. The law grants exemption where Sont exonérés de la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée : 1° Les livraisons de biens expédiés ou transportés sur le territoire d’un autre Etat membre de l’Union européenne à destination d’un autre assujetti identified for VAT in another Member State who has given his VAT number to the supplier. Three conditions must all hold: the customer is a taxable person identified in another Member State, the goods physically leave France for that State, and the supplier files the European sales statement (etat recapitulatif) with the correct customer number and amount. The statute warns that the exemption fails when the supplier has not filed that statement or the statement lacks the required data, unless the failure is duly justified to the administration. Keep transport evidence for every shipment, meaning CMR consignment notes signed by the carrier and the consignee, forwarder attestations, delivery confirmations, and payment records matching the invoice, because during an audit the burden of proving that the goods left France sits with the supplier. Invalid customer VAT numbers checked too late, goods collected by the customer without traceable transport, and triangular transactions reported under the wrong heading are the three classic fact patterns that turn an expected zero rate into a 20 percent assessment with interest.
Invoicing discipline ties all of this together. Every taxable person must ensure that an invoice is issued for supplies to another taxable person, since 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, and the invoice must show the supplier and customer identities and VAT numbers, the date, a sequential number, the quantity and nature of the goods or the extent of the services, the taxable base per rate, the VAT amount in euros, and where relevant the reverse-charge wording or the intra-Community exemption reference. France is also moving to mandatory electronic invoicing (facturation electronique) between taxable persons, with structured formats and transmission through accredited platforms, so a foreign founder should choose accounting software that already produces compliant French e-invoices and archives them for the full retention period rather than relying on PDF attachments alone. Store invoices, contracts, transport documents and VAT numbers verifications together, in a single file per quarter, because the file you build today is the defence bundle you will send to the auditor tomorrow.
II. File, deduct, recover and challenge the reassessment from abroad
A. File your CA3 returns on time and deduct input VAT before the deadline removes your credit
The CA3 return (declaration de chiffre d’affaires) is the monthly heartbeat of French VAT. The rule is short and strict: Tout redevable de la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée identifié conformément aux dispositions combinées des articles 286 ter et 286 ter A est tenu de remettre au service des impôts dont il dépend et dans le délai fixé par arrêté une déclaration, and businesses under the standard regime file every month, reporting total turnover, taxable transactions, VAT collected, VAT deductible and the net due, with payment attached. When annual VAT due stays below 4,000 euros, quarterly filing is allowed, while smaller businesses under the simplified regime file one annual return with two advance payments in July and December. Nil returns must still be filed when there is no activity, because a missing return counts as a late return and triggers the same surcharges as a missing payment. Filing and payment are fully electronic through the professional account on impots.gouv.fr, and a founder living abroad should give the French accountant a proper mandate and keep access to the account, so that a missed email never becomes a missed deadline.
Deduction is where foreign founders recover the VAT paid on French start-up costs: office fit-out, equipment, professional fees, imports and intra-Community acquisitions. The principle is generous, as La taxe sur la valeur ajoutée qui a grevé les éléments du prix d’une opération imposable est déductible de la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée applicable à cette opération. Three conditions apply in every case: the expense relates to taxed transactions that carry a deduction right, a valid invoice or customs document supports the claim, and the deduction is taken on the return for the month in which the right arose. Excluded expenses stay excluded even with a perfect invoice, notably most passenger vehicle costs, fuel for private cars, hotel and restaurant entertaining beyond staff meals, and goods supplied at no consideration. Imports deserve special attention since Brexit and the transfer of import VAT to the domestic return: import VAT is now declared and deducted on the same CA3 rather than paid at the border, which helps cash flow but requires the customs delivery data to be correctly imported into the return. Keep a deduction schedule that ties each material input amount to its invoice number and its return line, because that single table answers ninety percent of auditor questions.
The deduction deadline is the point that destroys more credits than any other rule, and the Court of Cassation stated it in terms every founder should memorise. In its judgment of 1 October 2025, Commercial Chamber, appeal number 24-14.456, concerning a claim for refund of a VAT credit on old invoices, the Court held that le client d’un assujetti, lorsque cet assujetti a opté pour le paiement de la TVA d’après les débits, doit déclarer la TVA déductible figurant sur les factures dans le mois de leur réception et au plus tard le 31 décembre de la deuxième année suivante. Miss that window and the credit can no longer be set off or refunded, as the Court confirmed by quashing the appeal judgment that had treated the deadline too loosely. The predecessor ruling in the same dispute, Court of Cassation, Commercial Chamber, 23 November 2022, appeal number 21-13.613, had already sent the case back on these limitation mechanics, which shows how seriously French courts police VAT time limits. For a founder abroad, the operational lesson is concrete: send every supplier invoice to the accountant immediately, never accumulate a drawer of unprocessed invoices across year-end, and diary the 31 December of the second year after each invoice as an absolute backstop. Late filing itself is punished separately, because Le défaut de production dans les délais prescrits d’une déclaration ou d’un acte comportant l’indication d’éléments à retenir pour l’assiette ou la liquidation de l’impôt entraîne l’application, sur le montant des droits mis à la charge du contribuable ou résultant de la déclaration ou de l’acte déposé tardivement, d’une majoration de : a. 10 % en l’absence de mise en demeure, rising to 40 percent after an unheeded formal notice and 80 percent where hidden activity is found, with late interest added month by month. A one-month delay on a 50,000 euro VAT balance can therefore cost 5,000 euros of surcharge plus interest before any discussion of the merits even begins.
B. Recover VAT refunds and fight a refusal or a reassessment without boarding a plane
When deductible VAT exceeds collected VAT, the balance is a credit, and that credit is real money: it can be carried forward to the next return or refunded on request, which matters enormously to exporters, intra-Community suppliers invoicing without VAT, young companies investing before selling, and seasonal businesses. Refund claims follow the return calendar, with monthly claims available under the standard regime once the credit reaches the minimum threshold set by regulation, currently 760 euros, and the administration must process the claim within its own deadlines or face late-payment interest in the taxpayer favour. Attach the invoices behind the claim, reconcile the claim amount to the return lines, and make sure the bank details (RIB, releve d’identite bancaire) on the professional account belong to the company and accept SEPA transfers to a foreign bank if needed. Businesses established in another EU Member State with no French registration can recover French VAT through the EU cross-border refund portal in their home country, while non-EU businesses use the direct thirteenth-directive procedure with a French fiscal representative, so choose the channel that matches the company position before sending documents to the wrong office.
Export and tourist-refund mechanics show how strictly France treats zero-rated export flows, and a September 2026 Paris ruling illustrates the standard of proof from the other side of the counter. The Paris Court of Appeal, Pole 5 Chamber 10, 3 September 2026, general register number 22/07692, examined the tourist-refund operator Detaxe International Financial Services and the customs audit of tens of thousands of export sales slips (bordereaux de vente a l’exportation) issued between 2015 and 2018: where the operator had not paid the refund to the traveller or had used the backup procedure without justification, the court upheld recovery of 97,093 euros and confirmed that procedural challenges could not save slips that failed the substantive refund conditions, while setting aside the broader customs penalties for the slips that were properly documented and duly refunded. Full details appear on the official record at Paris Court of Appeal, 3 September 2026, RG 22/07692, Detaxe International Financial Services v customs investigation directorate. The business lesson for a foreign founder is symmetrical: whenever goods or refunds cross a border with exemption, keep the document that proves the border was really crossed and the beneficiary really paid, because the administration audits exempt flows first and asks questions later. For ordinary companies, that means stamped customs export evidence, transport documents, and proof of payment of the refund to the real customer, filed slip by slip and kept for the audit.
When the administration says no, through a refused registration, a rejected refund, or a reassessment proposal (proposition de rectification) after an audit, the procedure is written, deadline-driven, and fully available from abroad. First, answer the auditor or the claims office in writing within the stated period, usually thirty days for a reassessment proposal, with documents rather than arguments alone: corrected transport proofs, valid customer VAT numbers with VIES screenshots, missing invoices, bank statements, and a reconciliation table that the inspector can follow line by line. Second, if the assessment is maintained, file a formal claim (reclamation contentieuse) to the tax office, which suspends enforced collection when paired with a guarantee request where required, and the office must reply within six months, failing which an implied rejection opens the court route. Third, bring the dispute before the administrative court (tribunal administratif) of the place of taxation within two months of the express or implied rejection, where the judge reviews both the facts and the legal qualification, and appeals go to the administrative court of appeal and then, on points of law, to the Conseil d’Etat. Throughout, the founder abroad acts through the French lawyer and accountant under powers of attorney, with every deadline diarised twice, because French tax litigation forgives almost any substantive error except a missed time limit. Interest for late payment runs during the dispute, but a well-documented file combined with a serious guarantee application often secures a payment plan or a stay while the case is examined.
Conclusion
A French VAT number is not an administrative trophy, it is the operating licence of a foreign-directed company that sells, buys or moves goods and services through France. Registration through the Guichet unique or the non-resident tax office puts the company on the map, correct charging or reverse charge on every invoice keeps each transaction clean, monthly CA3 filing keeps the account current, timely deduction preserves the credit, and a documented refund or appeal file turns a refusal into a winnable dispute. The founders who suffer are never those who asked one question too many before invoicing, they are those who invoiced first and verified later, who let invoices sleep past the deduction deadline recalled by the Court of Cassation on 1 October 2025, or who claimed an intra-Community exemption without the transport proof and the sales statement that the statute demands. Build the paper trail before the turnover grows: mandate a French accountant from the first month, validate every customer VAT number, archive transport evidence with the invoice, and file every return even when nothing was sold. France rewards foreign businesses that respect its VAT grammar with fast refunds and predictable audits, and the steps above let the founder secure both while staying where the rest of the business needs them.