You run a company from London, New York, Dubai or Singapore and France is your next market. Incorporating a French subsidiary sounds heavy: new articles of association, a French president, a full share capital to deposit, a separate company to manage. A friend tells you to open a branch instead, a succursale, which is simply your existing foreign company acting in France under its own name. The branch has no legal personality of its own, no French share capital and no French board, yet it can sign contracts, hire staff, invoice French clients and appear on a Kbis, the official certificate issued by the greffe, the registry office of the commercial court, proving that a business is registered in France. This guide explains how a foreign company registers, runs, taxes and closes a French branch while its directors live abroad. It explains every French acronym in plain English: the RCS (the trade and companies register, registre du commerce et des sociétés), the SIREN and SIRET numbers (the national business identifiers issued by the statistics institute), the BODACC (the official bulletin publishing registrations and court notices), the URSSAF (the body collecting social contributions), the guichet unique (the single online portal operated by the INPI, the French intellectual-property and business-formalities institute, where every creation, change or closure is filed), the EUID (the European unique identifier now shown on registration certificates), and the DPAE (the mandatory pre-hiring declaration, déclaration préalable à l’embauche). It follows the Commercial Code (Code de commerce), the General Tax Code (Code général des impôts) and the Labour Code (Code du travail) as in force on 5 October 2026, with exact quotations and official links so you can verify each rule.

I. How a foreign company registers a French branch from abroad

Opening a branch is faster than incorporating a subsidiary, but it is not informal. France requires the foreign company to register the branch, to appoint a person responsible in France, to prove real premises, and to file the parent company’s documents every year. The paragraphs below give you the exact filing route and the exact dossier, then explain why a so-called liaison office is not a discount version of the same thing. If you are still hesitating between a branch, a subsidiary, an SAS (the simplified joint-stock company, société par actions simplifiée), an SARL (the limited-liability company, société à responsabilité limitée) or a liaison office, read first our comparison of how a foreign company chooses between an SAS, an SARL, a branch and a subsidiary in France, then come back here for the branch procedure itself.

A. How do you register a succursale on the Guichet unique and get your Kbis?

Since 1 January 2023, clarified by Article L. 123-33 of the Commercial Code, every creation, change or closure is filed through one electronic dossier: “Ce dossier est déposé par voie électronique auprès d’un organisme unique désigné à cet effet.” In practice that single body is the guichet unique operated by the INPI on the portal formalites.entreprises.gouv.fr. There is no longer a paper filing at the counter of the greffe; the registry examines your electronic file, and only a complete file produces the registration, the SIREN number and the Kbis extract that banks, landlords and clients will ask for. Founders who treat the portal as a simple upload form lose weeks: each missing translation or expired company extract triggers a rejection (rejet) or a request for correction (régularisation), and the clock restarts. Our companion guide on unblocking a French registration stuck at the Guichet unique describes those rejection loops in detail; the branch follows the same portal, with its own specific documents.

The legal basis for the branch filing is Article R. 123-112 of the Commercial Code, which states: “Toute société commerciale dont le siège est situé à l’étranger et qui ouvre en France un premier établissement est tenue de déposer au greffe du tribunal de commerce dans le ressort duquel est situé cet établissement, au plus tard en même temps que la demande d’immatriculation, une copie de ses statuts en vigueur au jour du dépôt ; elle dépose en outre, chaque année, les documents comptables qu’elle a établis, fait contrôler et publier dans l’Etat où elle a son siège.” Three consequences flow from that single sentence. First, the branch is registered where it physically sits: a Paris branch files with the Paris registry, a Lyon branch with Lyon, and the Kbis mentions that address. Second, your current articles of association must be filed on day one, and every later amendment to the parent company’s statutes must be filed again in France. Third, the branch is not a file-and-forget vehicle: each year you must deposit the accounting documents prepared, audited and published in the parent company’s home country, within the deadlines of that country’s law. A Delaware LLC, a British Ltd or a Dubai company that publishes little or nothing at home must still produce and file what its home law requires, translated, every year.

Translations and certifications decide whether the file passes. The same article continues: “Les pièces déposées sont le cas échéant traduites en langue française et les copies sont certifiées conformes par le représentant légal de la société ou par la personne ayant le pouvoir d’engager la société en France.” Every foreign-language document, starting with the statutes and the foreign registration extract, must be translated into French, and the copies must be certified as true by the legal representative or by the person empowered to bind the company in France. Electronic filing does not soften the rule: “Lorsqu’il est réalisé par voie électronique, le dépôt mentionné au premier alinéa est réalisé par l’intermédiaire de l’organisme unique mentionné à l’article R. 123-1 et dans les conditions prévues par l’article R. 123-7”. Plan for sworn translations (traductions assermentées) from the start, because a translation by your bilingual co-founder is routinely rejected, and each rejection costs you the two to three weeks the registry needs for a new review.

The registries publish the exact checklist, and the Paris registry and the Infogreffe portal agree on its content. For the company itself you must produce a copy of the parent company’s statutes in force on the filing day, translated into French and certified by the branch manager; a declaration of the beneficial owners (bénéficiaires effectifs), meaning the living individuals who ultimately own or control the foreign company, dated and signed in original by the legal representative; an original extract of the company’s registration in a foreign public register, less than three months old, translated where necessary; and proof of lawful occupation of the French premises by any means, meaning a lease, a domiciliation contract with an approved domiciliation company, or recent utility bills. If the activity is regulated in France, for example finance, health, transport, education or security, add the licence, diploma or authorisation from the supervising authority, because the registry will not register a branch that cannot lawfully operate. The fee for the registration formality is around sixty euros, and the publication in the BODACC follows automatically.

For the person in charge in France, called the responsable or the person having the power to bind the company in France, the file requires a copy of a valid passport or national identity card, or both sides of a valid residence permit where applicable, with the warning that the status shown on the permit must allow registration with the RCS; a signed original declaration of non-conviction (déclaration sur l’honneur de non-condamnation) showing parentage, which the supervising judge of the registry verifies against the criminal record; and a parentage certificate (names of parents) unless that information already appears in a filed document. If someone else completes the formality for the manager, add a written power of attorney (pouvoir). French civil law defines that instrument in plain terms: Article 1984 of the Civil Code provides that “Le mandat ou procuration est un acte par lequel une personne donne à une autre le pouvoir de faire quelque chose pour le mandant et en son nom.” Draft the power bilingually, name the exact formality, and attach a certified passport copy of both the giver and the holder, because registries reject vague or undated powers.

Premises deserve a separate warning because they block more files than any other item. You must prove regular occupation of the branch address, and a virtual mailbox alone does not qualify. A commercial lease (bail commercial), a contract with a licensed domiciliation company, or utility bills in the company’s name all work; a friend’s Paris flat with no paperwork does not. The Commercial Code allows a company to set its registered office at its legal representative’s home, since Article L. 123-11-1 of the Commercial Code provides that “Toute personne morale est autorisée à installer son siège au domicile de son représentant légal et y exercer une activité, sauf dispositions législatives ou stipulations contractuelles contraires.” But that tolerance has limits: where a statute or a lease clause forbids it, home domiciliation is capped at five years from registration, and the letterbox must show the company name with mail forwarding arranged. Coordination of signatures across time zones is the usual bottleneck, and founders who centralise originals, translations and powers with one correspondent in Paris, reachable for instance at +33 6 46 60 58 22 (Maître Reda Kohen), generally file weeks earlier than those circulating papers between three countries. Once the registry accepts the file, the branch receives its SIREN, its SIRET for the premises, its activity code (code APE), and its Kbis, and the registration is published in the BODACC where any counterparty can check it.

B. Why is a liaison office not a cheap branch, and when does France tax you anyway?

Many founders ask for a bureau de liaison, a liaison or representative office, believing it is a branch without registration, without tax and without staff formalities. French law sees it very differently. A liaison office may only carry on preparatory or auxiliary activities: market research, promotion, collecting information, maintaining contacts. The moment the Paris presence negotiates with clients, signs or performs contracts, manages money or delivers the company’s core service, it stops being a liaison office in the eyes of the tax administration and becomes a taxable presence, called an établissement stable, a permanent establishment. You do not need a Kbis, a lease in the company’s name or a single employee for that requalification to hit you; one person working from a serviced office or even from home, with a laptop, a phone and authority in fact, can be enough. The liaison office is therefore not a stage before the branch, it is a different creature, and using it to do real business is the single most expensive mistake a foreign founder makes in France.

The tax test is written in Article 209, I of the General Tax Code, which taxes “uniquement des bénéfices réalisés dans les entreprises exploitées en France, de ceux mentionnés aux a, e, e bis et e ter du I de l’article 164 B ainsi que de ceux dont l’imposition est attribuée à la France par une convention internationale relative aux doubles impositions.” In English: only profits earned in businesses operated in France, plus the listed categories of French-source income, plus profits whose taxation is attributed to France by a double-tax treaty. Tax treaties then define the permanent establishment, typically as a fixed place of business through which the enterprise wholly or partly carries on its activity, or as a dependent person who habitually concludes contracts in France. Registration with the RCS is nowhere in that definition. The question is factual: do you have, in France, the human and material means to run the business, and does someone in France actually run it?

The courts answered that question memorably for a British company letting holiday villas on the French Riviera. In its Section decision of 16 February 2018, n° 395371, the Conseil d’État, the highest administrative court, upheld the finding that the UK company Azur Villas Limited had a permanent establishment in France. The reporting court had found permanent premises in France with the necessary IT equipment and communication means, a local manager holding bank powers who negotiated with property owners, clients and commercial partners, and who handled the full administrative, commercial and financial management of the company. The Conseil d’État held: “En déduisant de ces constatations de fait, exemptes de dénaturation, que la société Azur Villas Limited disposait en France d’un établissement stable au sens des stipulations précitées de la convention franco-britannique du 22 mai 1968, la cour administrative d’appel n’a, contrairement à ce que soutient la requérante, entaché son arrêt ni d’erreur de droit ni d’inexacte qualification juridique des faits.” Read the full decision on Légifrance, CE, Section, 16 February 2018, n° 395371. The lesson for founders is direct: a laptop in Nice, bank mandates and full local management made a taxable French establishment out of a company that had registered nothing, and the reassessed profits were then taxed as distributed income in the hands of the majority owner under Article 109, 1° of the General Tax Code, which treats as distributed income “Tous les bénéfices ou produits qui ne sont pas mis en réserve ou incorporés au capital”, meaning all profits or proceeds neither placed in reserve nor added to capital.

Apply that lesson before you choose. If your Paris person only studies the market, attends trade fairs and sends reports to head office, which decides and signs everything abroad, a liaison office without registration may be defensible, but document that passivity with emails, decision logs and signature records. If your Paris person negotiates prices, visits clients, holds bank powers, hires, or delivers the service, register a branch or incorporate a subsidiary from the start, because the tax administration will reconstruct the establishment from bank statements, emails, travel records and client testimony, and the reassessment will cover corporate tax, VAT and penalties for failure to register. The branch is the honest vehicle for real activity: it is registered, it files, it pays, and it gives you the Kbis that serious French clients demand before signing. The liaison office kept for genuine prospecting, then converted into a registered branch once the first contract approaches, is the only sequence that survives an audit. Anything in between, a representative who sells while calling himself a liaison, combines the costs of both worlds with the protection of neither.

II. How do you run, tax and close a French branch from abroad?

A registered branch is a fully taxable, fully employing, fully filing business presence. It pays French corporate tax on its French profits, charges and recovers French VAT, pays the local business tax, declares its staff and files the parent company’s accounts every year. The paragraphs below list each obligation with its legal basis and its deadline logic, then explain how to close the branch or convert it into a French subsidiary when the business outgrows the branch form. For the numbers behind each tax, our guide to French corporate tax, instalments and the local business tax for foreign-owned companies works through the rates and the payment calendar.

A. What does the branch pay and file every year: corporate tax, VAT, business tax, payroll and parent accounts?

Corporate tax (impôt sur les sociétés, universally called IS) applies to the branch on the profits attributable to its French activity. The scope rule is the same Article 209, I of the General Tax Code quoted above: France taxes profits earned in businesses operated in France. The branch files the standard corporate return (form 2065 with its schedules) for the French establishment, pays instalments during the year and the balance after closing, exactly like a French company, and keeps full French books for the branch activity. Intra-group flows between head office and branch need particular care: services billed by head office to the branch, royalties for the brand, or interest on internal funding must be priced as if between strangers, at arm’s length, with documentation, because the administration routinely challenges management fees and interest paid by French establishments to foreign head offices. Our analysis of management fees, transfer pricing and tax audits for French subsidiaries of foreign groups applies word for word to branches, and the branch should keep the same contracts, invoices, time records and benchmark studies. The entities liable to the tax are listed in Article 206 of the General Tax Code, which provides that “sont passibles de l’impôt sur les sociétés, quel que soit leur objet”, meaning that the listed companies are liable to corporate tax whatever their purpose, and foreign companies operating in France through a branch fall within the French tax net for their French profits by the combined effect of Articles 206 and 209.

Value added tax (taxe sur la valeur ajoutée, TVA, the French VAT) starts the day the branch makes taxable supplies. Article 256 of the General Tax Code provides: “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.” In English: supplies of goods and services made for consideration by a taxable person acting as such are subject to VAT. The branch gets its own intra-Community VAT number (starting with FR), files periodic returns (CA3 declarations, monthly or quarterly depending on the VAT due), pays the VAT collected minus deductible VAT, and files the recapitulative statements for intra-EU trade. Registration for VAT purposes is fast but strict: Article 286 of the General Tax Code requires every taxable person, “Dans les quinze jours du commencement de ses opérations, souscrire au bureau désigné par un arrêté une déclaration conforme au modèle fourni par l’administration. Une déclaration est également obligatoire en cas de cessation d’entreprise”, meaning that within fifteen days of starting operations the business must file the prescribed declaration with the designated office, and that a declaration is equally required when the business ends. Miss the entry declaration and the exit declaration alike, and penalties accrue on both ends. Companies established outside the European Union that sell in France without a branch need a fiscal representative (représentant fiscal); the registered branch normally avoids that requirement for its own French supplies, which is one more reason to register before invoicing. The detailed VAT mechanics are set out in our guide to French VAT registration, fiscal representatives and returns for foreign companies.

The local business tax surprises almost every foreign founder, because it arrives as a separate bill disconnected from profits. Article 1447 of the General Tax Code provides that “La cotisation foncière des entreprises est due chaque année par les personnes physiques ou morales” and by the other persons listed, all of whom share one condition: “qui exercent à titre habituel une activité professionnelle non salariée”, meaning that the business-premises tax, called CFE (cotisation foncière des entreprises), is due each year by individuals and companies habitually carrying on a non-salaried professional activity. The branch pays it from its second year in each municipality where it has premises, based on the rental value of those premises, with a minimum contribution even for small spaces. New companies are exempt in their first calendar year, which is why the bill arriving in November of year two feels like an ambush. Declare the premises correctly, check the relief for new establishments where the municipality voted one, and diary the 15 December payment deadline, because late payment adds a surcharge to a tax that cannot be avoided by showing that the branch made no profit.

Staff hired by the branch are French employees under French law from day one, even if the employment contract is signed in English and the salary is approved in London. Before anyone starts work, the branch must complete the pre-hiring declaration: Article L. 1221-10 of the Labour Code states that “L’embauche d’un salarié ne peut intervenir qu’après déclaration nominative accomplie par l’employeur auprès des organismes de protection sociale désignés à cet effet. L’employeur accomplit cette déclaration dans tous les lieux de travail où sont employés des salariés.” In practice the DPAE is filed online with URSSAF at the latest on the working day before the start, the branch registers as an employer, runs French payroll with itemised payslips, withholds income tax at source (prélèvement à la source), files the monthly social data declaration (DSN, déclaration sociale nominative), and applies the thirty-five-hour week, paid leave and dismissal rules exactly like a French company. The branch manager’s own status needs a separate decision: a salaried manager pays full French social contributions, while a non-resident director without a French employment contract may fall under a different regime and should get written confirmation from URSSAF before the first payroll. Dismissing branch staff follows standard French procedure with real and serious cause, notice, severance and, for economic dismissals, redeployment-search duties that reach across the foreign group, so price the exit before you hire.

Finally, the branch must feed the French registry with the parent company’s life. Remember Article R. 123-112 of the Commercial Code: each year the branch deposits the accounting documents prepared, audited and published in the parent’s home country, within that country’s deadlines, translated into French. Every amendment to the parent’s statutes, every change of directors, every change of the parent’s name or registered office, and every change of the branch’s address or manager must be filed as a modifying formality (formalité modificative) on the guichet unique, with translations and fresh certifications. A branch whose parent changed its name in Delaware two years ago and never filed the change in Paris will discover the gap when the bank freezes the account for a Kbis refresh, when the landlord asks for updated registration, or when a client checks the BODACC. Keep a standing instruction with whoever holds the parent’s corporate records: every home-country filing is copied, translated and filed in France within weeks, not years.

B. How do you close the branch or convert it into a French subsidiary?

Branches close for good reasons: the test phase ends, the group restructures, or the branch has grown so much that a French subsidiary with limited liability and a local image serves better. Closing a branch is simpler than liquidating a company, because there is no company to liquidate, but it is not a shrug. The foreign parent adopts a formal decision to close the French establishment, with a closing date, settles or transfers the branch’s contracts, and files a cessation and radiation (radiation, removal from the register) on the guichet unique, which produces an updated Kbis showing the closure and a final BODACC publication. Notify the bank, the landlord, the insurers, the clients with ongoing contracts and the suppliers before the filing, because counterparties learn of the closure from the bulletin and will call within days. Keep the branch’s books, payroll records and tax returns for the full statutory retention periods after closure; radiation ends the registration, not the administration’s right to audit the years the branch operated. Our step-by-step guide to closing, dissolving and striking off a French company from abroad covers the parallel company procedure and the creditor logic that applies by analogy.

Staff are the hardest part of any closure. French dismissal law applies to branch employees in full, including the branch manager if employed under a French contract. Individual dismissals need a real and serious cause with a formal interview procedure; economic dismissals need a justification at the level of the business sector shared with the group, written redeployment offers, and, above a headcount threshold, a job-saving plan (plan de sauvegarde de l’emploi) negotiated with staff representatives. Fixed-term contracts (CDD) cannot simply be stopped early, and protected employees (pregnant employees, staff representatives, employees on work-related sick leave) carry special authorisation requirements. Start the employment analysis before announcing anything, because a closure announced on Monday with no dismissal procedure ready becomes a dispute by Friday, and the compensation is calculated on Paris salary levels, not on the parent company’s home-country scale. Where the branch has only one or two employees, a negotiated termination (rupture conventionnelle, the mutual separation agreement with statutory minimum compensation and administrative approval) often closes the file faster and cheaper than a contested dismissal, provided the consent is genuine and the approval arrives before the employment ends.

The tax exit must be filed, not assumed. The branch files its final corporate-tax return for the short period ending on the closure date, pays the balance, files its last VAT return with the closing stock and asset adjustments (equipment kept, transferred abroad or sold triggers VAT corrections), and files the cessation declaration required by Article 286 of the General Tax Code, since a declaration is equally required when the business ends. Request the tax clearance certificates (quitus fiscaux) and the social clearance from URSSAF, close the VAT number only after the last return is accepted, and keep a French correspondence address or representative for at least the audit-limitation years, because reassessment notices arrive at the last known French address. Debts of the branch remain debts of the foreign parent without limit, which is the structural difference with a subsidiary: closing the branch never caps liability for the period it operated, and creditors can pursue the parent abroad under the applicable jurisdiction rules, so settle cleanly rather than walking away.

Conversion into a subsidiary usually runs as a two-track operation rather than a legal transformation, because a branch cannot morph into a company. Track one incorporates the French subsidiary, typically an SAS, with its own capital, president and registration, following the standard founder path described in our guide to setting up a company in France as a foreign founder. Track two transfers the business: assignment of the lease or signature of a new one, transfer or novation of client and supplier contracts with each counterparty’s consent, transfer of equipment with VAT treatment checked line by line, and transfer of employees under the automatic-transfer rule when an autonomous business unit changes hands, which preserves contracts, seniority and benefits without dismissals. Time the two tracks so the subsidiary is registered and banked before the branch stops invoicing, run a short overlap where both exist, then close the branch with the procedure above. The overlap costs a few months of double administration; the gap it prevents, a period where nobody can lawfully invoice, hire or sign, costs far more.

Conclusion

A French branch gives a foreign company the fastest credible footprint in France: one registration, one manager, one address, and a Kbis that opens bank accounts, leases and client contracts, without incorporating a new company. That speed has three prices, and successful founders pay all three on time. First, a complete translated dossier on the guichet unique, with current statutes, a fresh foreign registration extract, proof of premises, beneficial-owner declaration and a manager whose papers allow registration, because the registry blocks incomplete files for weeks. Second, honest tax and employment compliance from the first invoice and the first hire: French corporate tax on French profits, French VAT with fifteen-day entry discipline, the annual business-premises tax, French payroll with pre-hiring declarations, and yearly filing of the parent’s accounts, because the alternative is reassessment as an unregistered permanent establishment on the model the Conseil d’État validated in 2018. Third, a planned exit: formal closure with staff procedures done properly, final tax returns filed, and, where the business thrives, conversion into a French subsidiary through an overlap that never interrupts invoicing. The branch is not a subsidiary, and it is not a liaison office either. Run it as what it is, a registered French establishment of your foreign company, and France treats it as a business like any other.