You live in London, New York, Dubai or Singapore, and your French company is up and running. The bank account is open, the Kbis — the official identity certificate of the company issued by the greffe, the registry of the commercial court — has arrived, and the first invoices are about to go out. One question now dominates every decision: how do you, as a director who does not live in France, lawfully take money out of that company, and what will it cost in social charges and French tax? Salary or dividends, French social security or none at all, withholding at source or treaty relief — the wrong choice can double the bill, and the right one depends on the company form you chose on day one. This guide walks through the whole path in plain English: appointing yourself from abroad and staying properly registered, then paying yourself by salary or by dividend as a non-resident, with the exact statutes, the case law that gives them teeth, and the remedies when the URSSAF — the agency that collects social contributions — or the tax office sends a reassessment to an address outside France.
I. Can I run my French SAS or SARL while living abroad and how do I appoint myself director?
French law does not in principle require the president of a SAS — société par actions simplifiée, the flexible joint-stock company most foreign founders choose — or the gérant, the manager, of a SARL — société à responsabilité limitée, the limited liability company with a more rigid statutory frame — to live in France. Nationality and residence are separate questions from capacity: what matters is that the appointment follows the articles, that the company discloses its director to the register, and that regulated activities, banking rules and immigration law do not impose a local presence. A founder who lives abroad can therefore preside over a SAS or manage a SARL from another country, sign contracts electronically, hold meetings by video link where the articles allow it, and delegate day-to-day authority to a local representative. The traps are administrative rather than theoretical: a file rejected by the single filing portal, a bank that freezes onboarding until the director appears in person, or a residence document missing for a non-European director who needs to enter France regularly. Getting the appointment right at the start saves months of corrections later, and it determines the social security regime and the tax treatment described in the second part of this article.
A. SAS president or SARL manager: who can live abroad and what to file on the Guichet unique
The SAS is built around contractual freedom. The statute says that “La société est représentée à l’égard des tiers par un président désigné dans les conditions prévues par les statuts.” In practice this means the articles decide everything: who appoints the president, for how long, whether a foreign resident can hold the office, whether decisions can be taken in writing or by video link, and whether deputy executives — directeurs généraux — can be added. Nothing in the SAS chapter of the Commercial Code imposes French residence on the president, and a non-resident, even a non-European, can preside over a SAS provided any visa or residence-permit question for physical presence in France is handled separately. Most foreign founders who want maximum freedom therefore pick the SAS or its one-person variant, the SASU, and write remote-management clauses into the articles from day one. For a general overview of the creation sequence — bank account, Kbis, VAT number and first hire — readers often start with the complete setup guide for foreign founders opening a company in France, which this article completes on the specific point of the director’s pay.
The SARL works differently. The statute provides that “La société à responsabilité limitée est gérée par une ou plusieurs personnes physiques.” Only a natural person can manage a SARL, and the manager is appointed by the members in the articles or by a later members’ decision. Like the SAS president, the SARL manager can live abroad — no residence condition appears in the statute — but the SARL is less flexible: the manager’s powers, removal and remuneration follow stricter statutory rules, and the social security regime turns on the size of the manager’s shareholding, as explained below. Founders who plan to manage alone from abroad and to adapt the governance as the business grows usually prefer the SAS; founders who want the protective statutory frame of the SARL, or who convert an existing small business, accept the manager regime with its majority test.
Whatever the form, the appointment must be disclosed through the Guichet unique, the single online filing portal operated by the INPI (the French intellectual-property and companies institute), which feeds the RNE — the Registre national des entreprises, the single national companies register that replaced the former separate registers. The Commercial Code states the principle in these terms: filings are made “par le dépôt d’un seul dossier comportant les déclarations qu’elle est tenue d’effectuer”, one single file containing all the declarations the business must make. In concrete terms the founder — or the lawyer or accountant acting under a power of attorney — uploads the articles, the appointment decision, proof of identity, a statement of non-conviction, proof of the registered office, and, for a non-European director who will be active in France, the relevant residence or visa document. The greffe verifies the file, the company and its director appear in the RNE, and publication follows in the BODACC — the Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales, the official gazette where company creations, director changes and insolvency openings are published. A change of director later follows the same single-file route: members’ minutes, updated beneficial-owner information where required, and a fresh filing. Foreign founders should keep a certified English translation of the articles for the bank, but only the French text filed has legal value, and any discrepancy between the translation and the filed French version is resolved in favour of the French.
Two practical warnings complete the picture. First, the articles can restrict the president’s internal powers — spending caps, co-signature requirements, matters reserved to the members — but those internal limits are unenforceable against third parties, so a contract signed by the president binds the company even beyond an internal cap, with only an internal claim against the president afterwards. Second, a director who is also an employee needs a real employment contract on top of the corporate office: separate technical duties, a relationship of subordination, and separate pay. The Cour de cassation recalled this firmly in a 15 May 2025 decision about a SAS president, holding that “ce dirigeant était assujetti par assimilation au régime général en sa qualité de président d’une société par actions simplifiée”, and that “même si la rémunération du président d’une société par actions simplifiée, au titre de son mandat social, est assujettie au régime général de la sécurité sociale, il n’en résulte pas pour autant que le président soit salarié”. Assimilation to the employee scheme for social security does not make the president an employee in labour law, and claiming retirement indemnities or dismissal protection reserved to employees fails without a genuine separate contract. Founders living abroad should therefore decide early whether they want a pure corporate office — flexible, revocable, without employment protection — or a genuine dual status, which the courts examine strictly.
B. Kbis, BODACC, bank checks and residence: the paperwork that blocks non-resident directors
The Kbis is the document everyone will ask for: banks, suppliers, landlords, the VAT office, and clients checking that the company exists. It shows the company name, form, capital, registered office, activity, registration number (SIREN), and the identity of the director. After the greffe validates the Guichet unique file, the Kbis can be downloaded, and the creation notice appears in the BODACC. Foreign directors should check the Kbis line by line on arrival: a misspelled name, a wrong birth date or a missing appointment renders every subsequent step — bank, VAT, payroll — inconsistent, and corrections require a new filing with supporting documents. Keeping a recent Kbis (less than three months old) is standard practice in France, and counterparties are entitled to ask for one before signing.
Banks are the most frequent bottleneck. A French company whose director lives abroad, holds a foreign passport, and injects capital from a foreign account triggers every anti-money-laundering control at once: proof of the origin of funds, proof of address abroad, certified passport copy, company documents, and sometimes a video call or a physical appearance. Some banks still require the director to appear in person to release the frozen capital and open the operating account; others accept fully remote onboarding through specialised non-resident desks. Founders should prepare a coherent file — source of funds, foreign tax number, criminal-record statement, company plan — and allow several weeks. Where a bank refuses outright, French law offers a remedy: the right to an account (droit au compte) procedure through the Banque de France, which designates a bank obliged to open a basic account. The companion guide on what to do when the French bank refuses the company account from abroad details the capital-deposit certificate, the Kbis sequence and the forced-opening procedure step by step.
Residence and immigration form the third layer. A European Union citizen can live anywhere in the Union and direct a French company without any permit. A founder from outside the Union who stays abroad and manages remotely generally needs no French residence permit, but each entry into France follows ordinary short-stay visa rules, and any plan to settle in France to run the company requires the appropriate long-stay visa and residence permit for company directors, with minimum investment and activity conditions. The registered office itself needs no physical shop: domiciliation with an authorised domiciliation company is lawful, provided the company keeps its records available and declares the address consistently to the RNE, the tax office and the bank. Inconsistency between the Kbis address, the lease or domiciliation contract, and the VAT registration is one of the most common causes of frozen files, so the founder should align all three before trading starts. Once the company is properly registered, visible in the BODACC, banked, and VAT-registered where needed, the question shifts from existence to income: how the non-resident director is paid, which is the subject of the second part.
II. How do I pay myself from France when I live abroad: salary, dividends, charges and withholding?
Once the company trades, the founder faces a choice with major financial consequences: take a salary for the director’s office, take dividends as a shareholder, combine both, or take nothing for a while. Each route carries a different social-security regime, a different tax, and a different procedure when the administration disagrees. Salary exposes the director to French social contributions but builds French cover and is deductible for the company; dividends escape social contributions in most cases but bear flat-rate tax and withholding for non-residents, and require distributable profits voted by the members. A director who lives abroad adds a second dimension: France may levy withholding at source on French-source pay, while the country of residence may also tax the same income, with the applicable tax treaty deciding who taxes what and how double taxation is relieved. The sections below compare the two routes precisely, so that the founder can choose with full knowledge of the cost and keep the documents that make a challenge possible if a reassessment arrives.
A. Salary of a non-resident director: social charges, URSSAF control and withholding under article 182 A
The social security regime follows the office, not the passport. The Social Security Code lists the offices affiliated to the general scheme — the scheme of employees — even without an employment contract. For the SAS it provides, in item 23 of article L. 311-3, “Les présidents et dirigeants des sociétés par actions simplifiées et des sociétés d’exercice libéral par actions simplifiées”. A paid SAS president is therefore an assimilé salarié — a person treated as an employee for social security only — whatever the shareholding: the sole shareholder-president of a SASU pays into the general scheme exactly like a minority president. The counterpart rule for the SARL turns on a majority test: item 11 of the same article 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”. A minority or equal-share SARL manager belongs to the general scheme; a majority manager belongs to the self-employed scheme — the TNS, travailleur non salarié — with contributions set by a different statute, since “Les cotisations de sécurité sociale dues par les travailleurs indépendants non agricoles ne relevant pas du dispositif prévu à l’article L. 613-7 sont assises sur l’assiette définie à l’article L. 136-3.” The majority test counts family holdings — shares of the spouse, PACS partner and minor children count as the manager’s own — and aggregates co-managers, so an apparently minority founder can fall into the self-employed scheme through a spouse’s shares or a joint management.
Three consequences matter for a director living abroad. First, no pay means no general-scheme affiliation: an unpaid SAS president or unpaid minority SARL manager owes no employee-scheme contributions, but accrues no French health, maternity or retirement cover either, while an unpaid majority SARL manager still owes the minimum self-employed contributions. Second, paid assimilated directors contribute roughly like employees — health, family, retirement, workplace accidents, supplementary pension — but never unemployment insurance, and the company files them through the DSN — the déclaration sociale nominative, the monthly electronic payroll return — exactly like staff. Third, European coordination can change everything: a director already insured in another EU or EEA state, or posted under an A1 certificate, may remain under the home state’s legislation for a time, while a director in a non-treaty third country generally falls fully into the French regime for French-office pay. Founders should obtain a written position from the URSSAF on their exact situation before the first payslip, keep every appointment decision fixing the remuneration, and never confuse a current-account advance (compte courant d’associé) with salary: advances are loans, not pay, and reclassifying them as hidden salary is a classic reassessment.
The tax side of salary for a non-resident is governed by withholding. The Tax Code provides that “les traitements, salaires, pensions et rentes viagères, de source française, servis à des personnes qui ne sont pas fiscalement domiciliées en France donnent lieu à l’application d’une retenue à la source”. In practice the French company withholds at source on the director’s French-source salary according to the statutory scale, and the director declares the income in the country of residence, crediting the French withholding under the applicable treaty. Treaties on dependent employment usually give the primary right to the state where the work is physically done, with management work performed remotely from abroad sometimes taxable there — the precise treaty article and the director’s travel diary decide. Founders should therefore keep boarding passes, meeting records and a calendar of days worked in France, because the tax office asks for them in every cross-border salary audit. Salary remains deductible for the company when it reflects real work and a market-consistent amount: the company pays corporation tax — whose standard rate is set by the rule that “Le taux normal de l’impôt est fixé à 25 %.” — on profit after genuine salary, so excessive pay to a related director risks partial non-deduction and reclassification.
When the URSSAF audits, it notifies findings in an observation letter, the company responds within the deadline, and any assessment can be challenged first before the amicable-appeals commission and then before the judicial social-security court, from abroad through a representative. The guide on facing a URSSAF audit while living abroad explains the timetable, the documents to produce, and the way to contest from another country without missing the short limitation periods. The annual rhythm of accounts, meetings and filings that frames all of this — approving accounts within six months, filing with the greffe, paying corporation tax instalments — is set out in the legal calendar of a French company managed from abroad, which every non-resident director should keep beside the payroll schedule.
B. Dividends to a non-resident director: withholding under article 119 bis, treaty relief and how to challenge the bill
Dividends follow a different logic: they reward the shareholder, not the office. The Tax Code treats as distributed income, among other items, “Les dividendes, intérêts, arrérages et tous autres produits des actions de toute nature et des parts de fondateur des sociétés”. For a shareholder who lives in France, the mechanism is familiar: a flat-rate levy of 12.8 percent applies at payment, since “Les personnes physiques fiscalement domiciliées en France au sens de l’article 4 B qui bénéficient de revenus distribués mentionnés aux articles 108 à 117 bis et 120 à 123 bis sont assujetties à un prélèvement au taux de 12,8 %.” — the first layer of the single flat-rate levy (PFU, prélèvement forfaitaire unique), with social levies on investment income on top — followed by final settlement on the annual return, with an option for the progressive scale in some cases. For a shareholder who does not live in France, France instead levies withholding at source: the Code states that the relevant investment income items “donnent lieu à l’application d’une retenue à la source dont le taux est fixé par le 1 de l’article 187” where they benefit persons without French tax domicile. The standard statutory rate on dividends paid to non-residents is 25 percent, reduced by most bilateral treaties — commonly to 15 percent, sometimes lower for substantial corporate shareholders — provided the shareholder proves residence, discloses the beneficial owner, and files the treaty reclaim forms through the paying company. The distinction between a parent company receiving subsidiary profits and an individual director receiving dividends on a personal holding matters here: the parent-subsidiary channel and its own withholding disputes are analysed in the guide to subsidiary profits and dividend withholding for foreign parents, while this section concerns the individual founder-shareholder living abroad.
Dividends have three strict preconditions that salary does not. First, they require profits: only distributable sums — current profit plus reserves and retained earnings, minus losses and legal allocations — can be distributed, and the members must vote the distribution on the basis of accounts duly approved. Second, they require a vote: the ordinary general meeting approves the accounts and allocates the result, fixes the dividend per share and the payment date, and the company withholds and remits the levy or withholding. Third, they are not deductible: unlike salary, dividends are paid out of after-tax profit, so the company has already paid corporation tax on the same euro. The comparison for a non-resident founder is therefore corporation tax plus withholding plus residence-country tax with treaty credit, against salary charges plus French withholding plus residence-country tax with treaty credit — and the answer changes with the amounts, the treaty rate, and whether the founder needs French social cover. Low, regular salary up to a sensible level combined with a voted dividend out of genuine profit is the most common balanced pattern, but it must be documented as such: appointment decision and pay slips for the salary, approved accounts and minutes for the dividend, never a mere transfer labelled afterwards.
The courts police the boundary harshly. Distributing sums without genuine distributable profit — fictitious dividends — can lead to civil recovery and, where false documents support the distribution, criminal liability: the criminal chamber of the Cour de cassation ruled on 12 June 2025, appeal no. 24-81.263, in a case joining prosecutions for forgery with distribution of fictitious dividends, upholding the penal logic while limiting cassation to the civil provisions concerning one defendant, a reminder that dividend paperwork is examined document by document. On the civil side, the commercial chamber ruled on 12 February 2025, appeal no. 23-11.410, in litigation between family shareholders of two SAS companies over dividends voted at a 2017 meeting and the social levies paid to the Treasury afterwards, partially cassating the appeal judgment on the dividend-payment claim and the related levies — proof that even a voted distribution can be reopened years later on the accounts, the vote and the levies. A decision worth citing in full on the social-security side is the 15 March 2018 ruling of the second civil chamber, appeal no. 17-15.192, concerning an unpaid SAS president: the Court recalled that “le régime de protection sociale des salariés des professions agricoles est applicable aux présidents et dirigeants des sociétés par actions simplifiées qui exercent une activité agricole au sens de l’article L. 722-1, 1° à 4°, du même code”, and deduced from the mere quality of SAS president that “ce dont il résultait que l’intéressé ne pouvait être assujetti au régime de protection sociale des exploitants”, rejecting the contribution claim against him personally. The lesson generalises: the office determines the scheme, and only the precise statutory text — read as written — decides which fund can bill whom.
When the tax office reassesses dividends — denial of treaty relief, challenge to beneficial ownership, late-payment penalties — the procedure runs through a formal proposal of reassessment, a response period, and then administrative and judicial appeal, with strict deadlines that run even if the notice is sent abroad. The founder should react in writing within the stated period, attach the residence certificate, the treaty forms, the approved accounts and the minutes proving distributable profit, and request suspension of collection where available. Parallel company-level disputes on distributions to a foreign parent follow their own channel, described in the subsidiary-profits guide linked above. In every case the winning file is the boring one: complete accounts, consistent Kbis and RNE data, dated minutes, payslips through the DSN, dividend vouchers, withholding returns, and a travel diary separating days worked in France from days worked abroad. Judges forgive a debatable interpretation supported by documents; they rarely forgive missing ones.
Conclusion
A non-resident can lawfully direct a French SAS or SARL, be registered through the single file of the Guichet unique, appear on the Kbis, pass the bank’s controls and be published in the BODACC — provided each step is filed consistently and in French. Once trading, the founder chooses between salary, taxed at source under article 182 A of the Tax Code and charged with social contributions as an assimilé salarié in the SAS or under the majority test in the SARL, and dividends, withheld at source under article 119 bis at the statutory or treaty rate out of voted distributable profit. The case law leaves no room for improvisation: assimilation is not employment, unpaid office does not open employee cover, and fictitious dividends lead to recovery and prosecution. With clean appointments, approved accounts, voted distributions, filed returns and a diary of presence, a founder living abroad can take money out of a French company at a known, controlled cost — and answer any URSSAF or tax reassessment with a file that holds together from London, New York, Dubai or Singapore as solidly as from Paris.