You live in London, New York, Dubai or Singapore. Months ago you wired 20,000, 50,000 or 150,000 euros to your French company to pay the deposit on a Paris lease, to cover payroll while waiting for a first client to pay, or to fund works before opening. The transfer label said “shareholder advance” or “apport compte courant”. Now you need the money back and the answers you get are confusing: the accountant says the balance sits in account 455 and can be repaid on request, the bank says it wants the advance frozen for three years before granting a loan, the co-founder says everyone agreed the money would stay until the business turns a profit, and the tax inspector asks at what rate you charged interest and whether the company’s deduction is capped. This article answers the only four questions that matter: is your wire a loan repayable on demand, what written lock can stop repayment, what interest you may charge, and what France taxes on each side. French law calls your advance a compte courant d’associé, literally a shareholder current account: a loan from a shareholder to the company, recorded as a company debt, distinct from share capital. The three ideas below structure everything that follows: by default the loan is repayable at any time, only a written and time-limited blocking arrangement stops you, and interest is lawful only in writing while the company’s deduction is capped by statute.

I. Your Wire Is a Loan Repayable on Demand, Not Capital Locked in the Company

A. How to get repaid from abroad when no written lock exists

Start with the legal nature of what you paid, because it decides everything. A shareholder current account is a loan, not a capital contribution. The Judicial Court of Tarascon put it in these exact terms: “Il est constant que le compte courant d’associé s’analyse en un prêt réalisé par l’associé au profit de la société.” (TJ Tarascon, 26 June 2026, No. 24/00388, Cour de cassation).

The practical consequence follows immediately: capital stays in the company until a formal capital reduction, while a loan is a company debt owed to you. The same court drew the distinction expressly, holding that the current account, unlike a capital contribution, does not enter the share capital of the business and remains a debt owed to the shareholder, who may demand repayment without changing shareholder status. Repayment does not dilute you, does not require a shareholders’ meeting vote on capital, and does not appear on the Kbis (the official company identity extract issued by the greffe, the court clerk’s office that keeps the trade and companies register). It is a claim you hold against your own company.

By default that claim is payable at any time, without conditions and without formalities. The Paris Court of Appeal stated the rule in these exact terms: “Une avance en compte courant étant un prêt consenti à la société, tout associé est en droit d’en exiger le remboursement à tout moment s’il est à durée indéterminée à moins qu’il n’en soit disposé autrement par les statuts ou la convention des parties.” (CA Paris, 14 Apr. 2026, No. 24/01215, Cour de cassation).

In that 14 April 2026 case (Court of Appeal of Paris, Pôle 5, Chamber 8, case number 24/01215, official record of the Paris decision of 14 April 2026), four shareholders had funded a consultancy company, SAS T World Investment, through current-account advances to finance a property project in Benin. After falling out with the president they asked for their money back. The company objected that repayment was not yet due. The court confirmed the first-instance judgment ordering repayment of 6,700 euros, 6,700 euros, 7,140 euros and 3,660 euros respectively, because no agreement and no clause in the articles set a term: an open-ended advance is repayable on first demand. The Tarascon court reached the same outcome on 26 June 2026 (Judicial Court of Tarascon, case number 24/00388, official record of the Tarascon judgment of 26 June 2026), ordering an SCI to repay 58,660 euros of shareholder current account plus interest at the statutory rate from the date of the writ, with capitalisation of interest.

Three objections companies routinely raise do not work on their own. First, the company’s financial situation does not suspend your right: that the business is loss-making, short of cash, or investing does not convert your loan into capital. Second, an informal understanding that “the money stays until profits return” is not a blocking agreement, as the Tarascon analysis of the alleged oral understanding shows (more on this below). Third, your absence from France changes nothing about the claim itself, though it changes how you prove and pursue it: keep the SWIFT confirmations of each wire, the bank statements showing the credit to the company account, the general-ledger extract of account 455 in your name, and the annual-meeting documents mentioning the balance. From abroad, send a written demand for repayment by registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt to the registered office (siège social), setting a clear deadline of fifteen to thirty days and stating the exact balance claimed. If payment does not arrive, a writ before the judicial court (tribunal judiciaire) or the commercial court (tribunal de commerce) for commercial companies remains the standard route, and courts grant interest at the statutory rate (taux de l’intérêt légal) from the writ, with capitalisation of a full year’s accrued interest available where the contract provided for it or the judgment so orders, since:

“Les intérêts échus, dus au moins pour une année entière, produisent intérêt si le contrat l’a prévu ou si une décision de justice le précise.” (Article 1343-2, Code civil, Légifrance). Ask for capitalisation expressly in your writ whenever the dispute may last more than a year, as the Tarascon claimant did successfully.

Where your company is a one-person SAS (SASU) or a one-person SARL (EURL) that you fully own, the analysis is even simpler: you are both lender and decision-maker, so document a board or sole-shareholder decision recording the repayment, keep the company solvent after payment, and wire the funds with the reference “repayment of shareholder current account”. The risk in owner-managed companies is not refusal but later reclassification, which is why the paperwork described in Part II matters even when nobody opposes you today. Where co-shareholders oppose repayment, do not accept a verbal refusal: require them to produce the written blocking agreement or the article of the bylaws that supposedly freezes your account, with its duration. If they produce nothing in writing, the Paris and Tarascon case law above is directly on point. Readers choosing or reviewing their French vehicle should first read our pillar guide on choosing between a SAS, a SARL, a branch and a subsidiary when investing in France from abroad, because the vehicle determines who approves your advance and who signs the repayment.

B. The only locks that can lawfully stop your repayment

Repayment on demand is the default, not an absolute. French law recognises restrictions, but only within a narrow frame the courts police strictly. The Tarascon judgment defines the permitted lock in these exact terms: “Le remboursement d’un compte courant d’associé peut faire l’objet de restriction dans le cadre d’une convention de blocage venant encadrer factuellement et temporairement le remboursement du compte courant d’associé.” (TJ Tarascon, 26 June 2026, No. 24/00388, Cour de cassation).

Two adjectives carry the whole test: the restriction must be agreed (convention) and it must be temporary (temporairement). In practice four kinds of locks exist, and only the first two should ever concern a foreign founder who lent in good faith.

The first lock is a written blocking agreement (convention de blocage) signed between you and the company, or a blocking clause in the articles (statuts), setting a fixed period during which you undertake not to claim repayment. Banks routinely require this before lending to the company: your frozen advance counts as quasi-equity (quasi-fonds propres) and reassures the lender. In the Paris T World Investment case the company invoked article 8 of its articles, entitled “COMPTES COURANTS”, and the court examined that clause word by word before rejecting the defence, because nothing in the clause set a genuine agreed term for the advances at issue. The lesson for founders is concrete: never sign a blocking agreement without a calendar end date, a precise amount, an interest rate for the frozen period, and the events that release the freeze early (for example full repayment of the bank loan the freeze was meant to secure). A freeze until the company is profitable has no fixed term and invites litigation; a freeze running until 31 December 2028, covering advances up to 80,000 euros, bearing interest at 3 percent and released early once the bank loan is repaid, is enforceable and bankable. Note the accounting consequence: an advance frozen for more than one year moves from short-term debt to the long-term debt lines of the balance sheet, which is exactly what lenders want to see.

The second lock is a collective decision of the shareholders, taken unanimously, to freeze current accounts for a defined period. This happens in family companies and in joint ventures where all shareholders freeze together to fund an investment. Because it requires your own vote, nobody can impose it on you afterwards by a majority vote: a majority cannot freeze a minority shareholder’s repayable claim without that shareholder’s consent, and a resolution purporting to do so exposes the company to a court order to pay.

The third and fourth locks are imposed on you rather than agreed with you: insolvency proceedings and seizure by your own creditors. Once safeguard, administration or liquidation proceedings open, individual repayment claims are frozen by operation of law and you must declare your current-account balance as a liability within the statutory deadline to the creditors’ representative. Likewise, if your personal creditor seizes your current-account claim in the company’s hands, the company pays the seizing creditor, not you. Neither situation reflects a defect in your claim; both reflect that the claim is an asset with a value third parties can pursue.

What does not count as a lock matters as much. In Tarascon the company argued that the siblings had agreed the sister would be repaid from the sale of another jointly owned property, and pointed to her own earlier statement that she had hoped the company could repay her once that property sold. The court refused to treat a hope about future cash availability as a blocking agreement and rejected the company’s request for a two-year payment delay, noting the claim had already been outstanding for more than two years since the March 2024 demand. An expression of patience is not a waiver, and a unilateral statement by the company that it “needs time” is not an agreement. From abroad, the practical test is therefore simple: ask the company to send you the signed blocking agreement or the article of the bylaws with its duration. If the document exists and the term has not expired, respect it and diary the release date, because suing during a valid freeze wastes costs. If no document exists, or the stated term has expired, proceed with the written demand described above. And where the company genuinely cannot pay at once, you may agree a written instalment schedule rather than litigate: a rescheduling agreement signed by both sides, with instalments, interest and an acceleration clause if one instalment is missed, protects you better than an informal promise. The official Service-Public business portal describes the same default-and-exception logic for partner current accounts in its English-language guide to partner current accounts: operation and taxation, which confirms that blocking means the company is temporarily released from the repayment obligation only for a defined period.

II. Interest, Deduction and Taxation: the Price of Your Advance

A. What interest you may charge and what the company may deduct

Interest on a shareholder advance is lawful, common and often expected by auditors, but it obeys three cumulative conditions: writing, a market-consistent rate, and full payment of the share capital. Miss one and either you lose the interest or the company loses the deduction.

First, the rate must be written. The Civil Code provides: “L’intérêt est légal ou conventionnel. L’intérêt légal est fixé par la loi. L’intérêt conventionnel peut excéder celui de la loi, toutes les fois que la loi ne le prohibe pas. Le taux de l’intérêt conventionnel doit être fixé par écrit.” (Article 1907, Code civil, Légifrance). An oral promise of “5 percent” is unenforceable as conventional interest; without a written rate, only the low statutory rate applies from the date of formal demand, not the bargained rate from the date of the advance. For a founder wiring money from abroad, the fix costs nothing: state the rate in the loan letter or current-account agreement before or when you wire, for example, interest at 4 percent per annum, calculated pro rata temporis and payable with principal on demand. Keep the signed document with the wire confirmations. If the advance was historically non-interest-bearing and you now want interest, sign an amendment for the future; backdating interest documents is a forgery risk no tax saving justifies.

Second, the company’s deduction is capped by law even when your agreed rate is higher. The Tax Code (CGI, Code général des impôts) allows deduction only within this limit: “Les intérêts servis aux associés à raison des sommes qu’ils laissent ou mettent à la disposition de la société, en sus de leur part du capital, quelle que soit la forme de la société, dans la limite de ceux calculés à un taux égal à la moyenne annuelle des taux effectifs moyens pratiqués par les établissements de crédit et les sociétés de financement pour des prêts à taux variable aux entreprises, d’une durée initiale supérieure à deux ans.” (Article 39, Code général des impôts, Légifrance). Each quarter the tax administration publishes the average rate of variable-rate business loans over two years; interest above that reference rate is permanently non-deductible for the company, though it remains taxable in your hands. Deduction is also conditional on the share capital being fully paid up (capital entièrement libéré): if you subscribed 10,000 euros of capital but only paid 5,000 into the bank, none of the current-account interest is deductible until you pay the balance. Foreign founders are regularly caught here because French banks sometimes open the company account and release the Kbis while part of the capital remains unpaid, and the founder then lends large advances on top. Pay the capital balance first; it is usually the cheapest tax action of the year. Our companion guide on depositing capital and forcing a French company account open from abroad walks through the deposit certificate (certificat de dépôt des fonds) and the droit au compte procedure when a bank refuses you.

Third, advances from a related company face an additional test. Where the lender is not you personally but your foreign parent company, article 212 of the General Tax Code on interest paid to related companies caps deduction by reference to the article 39 rate or, if higher, the rate the French borrower could have obtained from an independent bank in similar conditions. Document that arm’s-length comparison with at least one bank term sheet or overdraft offer; in a tax audit (vérification de comptabilité) the inspector will ask for it. Intra-group cash advances also sit next to the banking-monopoly boundary: article L. 511-5 of the Monetary and Financial Code prohibits habitual lending by non-banks, while article L. 511-7 of the same Code exempts treasury operations between companies linked by capital control. A parent funding its own subsidiary is inside the exemption; a founder systematically lending to third-party French companies for interest is not. Keep shareholder lending to companies you own or control.

On your side as lender, interest received is income. French tax law lists taxable investment income expressly, including:

“Des dépôts de sommes d’argent à vue ou à échéance fixe, quel que soit le dépositaire et quelle que soit l’affectation du dépôt” (Article 124, Code général des impôts, Légifrance) and, in the same article, “Des comptes courants.” (Article 124, Code général des impôts, Légifrance). If you are tax-resident in France, the paying company withholds the standard levy on investment income and you report the interest in your return. If you live abroad, the France-source interest may bear French withholding, reduced or removed by the applicable tax treaty, and you must also report it at home; keep the French withholding certificate (attestation de retenue) to claim treaty relief in your country of residence. The numbers matter: on a 100,000-euro advance at 4 percent, annual interest is 4,000 euros; if the published cap rate is 3 percent, only 3,000 euros is deductible by the company while the full 4,000 stays taxable to you. Price the rate at or just below the expected cap unless a documented bank comparison justifies more. Where the advance comes from your foreign company rather than from you personally, coordinate this analysis with transfer-pricing documentation, as explained in our guide to management fees, transfer pricing and audit defence for French subsidiaries.

B. The paper trail that gets you repaid and survives a tax audit

Shareholder loans fail in practice for lack of paper, not for lack of rights. A founder who can produce a complete file is repaid voluntarily in most cases and wins quickly in the others; a founder with only wire screenshots faces months of argument about the nature of the payment (gift, capital contribution, payment of an invoice, or loan). Build the file once, in English with a French heading for each document, and keep it where your accountant and your lawyer can reach it.

The core file has six items. First, the loan letter or current-account agreement signed before or with the first wire: parties, maximum amount, rate in figures and words, repayment on demand or at term, and any freeze with its exact end date. Second, the SWIFT confirmations and both bank statements showing each transfer from your personal or parent-company account to the company account. Third, the company’s ledger extract (account 455 for shareholder current accounts, or account 168 for the frozen portion) showing each credit in your name and the running balance. Fourth, the annual-meeting minutes and approved accounts mentioning the balance, which stop the company from later denying the debt. Fifth, your written repayment demand with proof of delivery and the company’s reply, if any. Sixth, the withholding certificates and tax returns recording any interest on both sides. With this file, a demand letter carries weight: it cites the balance, encloses the ledger extract, recalls that the advance is repayable on demand absent a written freeze, and sets a payment deadline with bank details including IBAN and BIC for the cross-border return wire.

Two company-law approvals must appear in the file wherever the borrower is a SARL or a SAS. In a SARL (limited liability company with intuitu personae, where the manager is called the gérant), the manager or the statutory auditor files a report on agreements between the company and any manager or shareholder, and the shareholders vote on it: “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.” (Article L. 223-19, Code de commerce, Légifrance). In a SAS (simplified joint-stock company, run by a président), the mirror rule applies to agreements with the president, senior officers and shareholders holding more than 10 percent of voting rights: “Le commissaire aux comptes ou, s’il n’en a pas été désigné, le président de la société présente aux associés un rapport sur les conventions intervenues directement ou par personne interposée entre la société et son président, l’un de ses dirigeants, l’un de ses actionnaires disposant d’une fraction des droits de vote supérieure à 10 % ou, s’il s’agit d’une société actionnaire, la société la contrôlant au sens de l’article L. 233-3.” (Article L. 227-10, Code de commerce, Légifrance). Unapproved agreements still bind the company, but the interested person bears any harmful consequences, so secure the vote at the next meeting after each new advance. In a one-shareholder company, record the agreement in the decision register (registre des décisions) instead of a vote. And respect the absolute prohibition that runs in the opposite direction: managers and individual shareholders of a SARL may not borrow from the company or have it guarantee their debts: “A peine de nullité du contrat, il est interdit aux gérants ou associés autres que les personnes morales de contracter, sous quelque forme que ce soit, des emprunts auprès de la société, de se faire consentir par elle un découvert, en compte courant ou autrement, ainsi que de faire cautionner ou avaliser par elle leurs engagements envers les tiers.” (Article L. 223-21, Code de commerce, Légifrance). The direction of the money decides everything: you lending to the company is normal; the company lending to you as an individual SARL shareholder or manager is void.

From abroad, three practical points deserve attention. First, foreign-exchange and transfer logistics: repayments above reporting thresholds trigger bank compliance questions, so warn your bank in advance, provide the loan agreement and the shareholders’ approval, and keep the “repayment of shareholder loan” reference on every return wire. Second, timing with the company’s calendar: demand repayment before the accounts-closing meeting where possible, so the approved balance is fresh, and never let year-end pass without the balance appearing in the approved accounts; our guide to the French company’s annual legal calendar from abroad gives the six-month approval and one-to-two-month filing sequence at the greffe. Third, if a tax audit opens, the inspector will test exactly three things: the written rate, the published cap computation, and full payment of capital. Hand over the agreement, the cap calculation with the quarterly reference rate, and the bank certificate of fully paid capital on day one; audits go badly when these arrive in week six. Where the advance funded a company that later cannot repay, act early: a partial repayment plan signed now beats a default judgment against an empty company later, and where insolvency looms, declare the balance promptly in the proceedings. French-language readers dealing with the general regime will find the complementary domestic analysis in our French-language guide to repayment on demand and blocking agreements for shareholder current accounts.

Conclusion

Money you wired to your French company is a loan the company owes you, repayable on your demand at any time unless a written, time-limited freeze says otherwise. Put the rate in writing before you wire, keep the capital fully paid so interest stays deductible within the published cap, secure the related-party approval at the next meeting, and claim repayment with a documented demand that cites the ledger balance. When the company produces a signed freeze with a fixed end date, diary it and enforce the interest during the wait; when it produces only habit, hope or a majority vote taken without you, the Paris and Tarascon courts order payment with statutory interest from the writ. Paper made before the dispute decides whether your advance returns in weeks or in years.