You live in London, New York, Dubai or Singapore. Your French company is registered: the Kbis (the official identity card of a French company, issued by the greffe, the registry of the commercial court) is in your inbox, the SIREN (the nine-digit identification number assigned by INSEE, the French statistics institute) is active, and your first French customer is asking for an invoice. Then your accountant writes three sentences that freeze everything: the French VAT number has not arrived yet, the invoice you already sent does not comply with French invoicing rules, and the first VAT return is due online even though you have never logged into the French tax portal. Every week of improvisation from this point costs real money, because VAT paid to suppliers without a valid number cannot be recovered, invoices without the correct VAT treatment get challenged by customers, and missed returns trigger penalties that grow on their own. This guide explains, entirely in English and step by step, how a foreign owner running a French company from abroad gets the VAT number, knows when French VAT applies, files and pays from another country, switches to mandatory e-invoicing, and fixes mistakes before they turn into a reassessment.

French VAT looks technical because every rule is written in dense administrative French and every acronym hides a procedure. Its logic, however, is simple and strict: registration gives you a number, the number goes on every invoice, invoices follow the correct rate and format, returns report the VAT collected minus the VAT paid, and the tax office checks the chain from abroad through your online professional account. The trap for foreign owners is rarely the substance of the rate. It is distance plus delay: documents sleeping at the registered office (the siège social), a return nobody filed because nobody felt concerned, a wrong rate copied from one invoice to the next for a year. Read this article as an operating manual. At each stage, note who does what, by when, and with which proof, because in VAT disputes the administration rarely argues about intentions. It asks for the number, the invoice, the return and the payment, in that order.

I. How a foreign-owned French company gets its VAT number and knows when French VAT applies

Before you charge a single euro of French VAT, two questions must be answered in order: does your company hold a French VAT number, and are its sales actually subject to French VAT? Foreign founders often answer the second question first and the first never, which produces the classic blockage: a company that invoices with foreign VAT logic, or with no VAT logic at all, while the French file does not even exist yet. The two steps below put the file and the logic in the right order.

A. Getting the French VAT number from abroad: registration, the tax office and your invoices

Your company receives its basic identity at registration: the SIREN, the nine-digit number that identifies the legal entity, and one or more SIRET numbers (each SIRET adds five digits identifying each establishment) for each place of business. Registration runs through the single online portal (the guichet unique des formalités), and the commercial court registry, the greffe, then issues the Kbis that proves the company exists. If you chose a SAS (société par actions simplifiée, the flexible joint-stock company most foreign founders prefer) or a SARL (société à responsabilité limitée, the more rigid private limited company), that choice is already made by now; if it is not, read our guide on choosing between a SAS, a SARL, a branch and a subsidiary when you invest from abroad before going further, because the vehicle determines who signs tax documents and who is liable when filings go wrong. The VAT number itself, called the numéro de TVA intracommunautaire, is a separate identifier built on the SIREN: the official business portal explains that le service des impôts des entreprises (SIE) transmet automatiquement le numéro de TVA intracommunautaire à l’entreprise au moment de son immatriculation, where the SIE (service des impôts des entreprises) is the local branch of the DGFIP (direction générale des finances publiques, the French tax administration) that holds your company’s tax file. In plain terms, for a company liable to VAT, you do not apply for the number in a separate procedure: the tax office sends it automatically once the company is registered, and the number then follows a fixed structure, with the official portal confirming that en France, le numéro est constitué du code FR, d’une clé informatique (2 chiffres) et du numéro SIREN de l’entreprise (9 chiffres), meaning FR plus a two-digit computer key plus your nine-digit SIREN.

The statute behind that number is article 286 ter of the French Tax Code (code général des impôts, universally shortened to CGI), which states 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”, in other words every taxable person carrying out supplies that open a right to deduct VAT gets an individual number. Note the condition hidden in that sentence: the number exists to track deductible VAT, so a company that will never deduct anything may never receive one automatically. The same tax article that creates the obligation to register also sets your first deadline as a taxable person: “Toute personne assujettie à la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée doit : 1° 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.” Within fifteen days of starting operations, the company must file the opening declaration with the designated office. From abroad, treat that fortnight as your first real test of organisation: your accountant (expert-comptable) or tax adviser should hold a signed mandate (a simple written authority is enough in practice), monitor the mail arriving at the siège social, and create the company’s espace professionnel, the secure online business account on the impots.gouv.fr portal, because almost every VAT step afterwards happens there. The tax administration itself points companies to that account, noting that your VAT regime can be checked inside votre espace professionnel sur le site impots.gouv.fr via le service « Déclarer la TVA », your professional account on the impots.gouv.fr website through the declare-VAT service.

Two frequent foreign-founder situations deserve a warning at this stage. First, if your company stays under the small-business exemption thresholds and pays no VAT (the franchise en base de TVA explained below), the official portal warns that attribution of an intra-Community VAT number in that case n’est pas automatique, it is not automatic, so you will have to request the number expressly if you need one for cross-border purchases or sales. Founders who chose the exemption to save accounting fees and then discover they need a number for a German supplier or a Spanish customer lose weeks at exactly the moment the business starts moving. Decide the question before registration if you can: if the company will buy or sell across borders in its first year, assume it needs a VAT number from day one and organise the file accordingly. Second, once the number arrives, it must appear everywhere the administration looks. The official guidance states that the number must appear on the company’s commercial and administrative documents, expressly naming facture, déclaration de TVA, etc., invoices, VAT returns and similar papers. An invoice issued by your French company without its VAT number is not a formal detail: it tells the customer that your file is incomplete, it prevents a VAT-liable customer from recovering the VAT you charged, and it is the first document an inspector asks for in any control. From abroad, the practical rule is therefore simple: no compliant invoice leaves the company before the VAT number is confirmed in writing, and every template used by your sales team, your billing software and any freelancer issuing invoices in your name must show the number, the rate applied, and the VAT amount in euros.

B. Knowing when you must charge French VAT: territory, services and intra-EU purchases

With the number in hand, the next question is where French VAT applies to what you sell. The founding rule sits in article 256 of the Tax Code: “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.” Supplies of goods and services made for consideration by a taxable person acting as such are subject to VAT. Your French SAS or SARL, once operating, is precisely that taxable person (assujetti), so the default answer is that its sales for payment fall inside French VAT unless a specific exemption, place-of-supply rule or reverse-charge mechanism moves them outside. Three families of situations matter most for foreign owners. Goods delivered in France to French customers carry French VAT at the applicable rate. Services follow the place-of-supply rules of article 259, whose starting point 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”, the place of services is in France when the customer is a taxable person with the seat of its economic activity in France, which in practice means business-to-business services for a French-established client are French-taxed while the same services for a client established in another country usually move elsewhere under rules your adviser must map contract by contract. Purchases are the mirror image: article 256 bis provides that “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”, intra-Community acquisitions of movable goods for consideration by a taxable person are also subject to VAT, so goods your French company buys from a German, Italian or Spanish supplier and brings into France generate French VAT that you declare and, where the conditions are met, deduct in the same return.

Charging VAT also means charging the right rate, and the right rate is where foreign owners lose the most money through inattention. The standard rule is brutally short: article 278 states that “Le taux normal de la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée est fixé à 20 %.” Twenty percent is the default, and every reduced rate is an exception that you must be able to justify line by line. The best-known reduced rate comes from article 279, which opens with “La taxe sur la valeur ajoutée est perçue au taux réduit de 10 % en ce qui concerne” before listing the covered transactions sector by sector. A recent Paris appeal decision shows what happens when a company reads that list too generously. In that case, a franchisee’s customer invoices had all been drawn up at the reduced rate, since “Les factures clients ont toutes été dressées au taux de taxe sur la valeur ajoutée (TVA) réduit prévu à l’article 279 du code général des impôts (soit 10 %)” (Paris Court of Appeal, Pôle 5, Chamber 4, 2 October 2024, case no. 22/14165). The tax administration disagreed and sent a reassessment, considering that “elle aurait dû soumettre ses prestations au taux normal de TVA (soit 20 %) dès le début de son activité”, it should have applied the standard 20 percent rate from the start of its activity. The franchisee, which blamed its franchisor’s network doctrine for the rate choice, lost at every level: the commercial court dismissed all its claims and the Court of Appeal ended with “Confirme le jugement entrepris en toutes ses dispositions soumises à la cour”, confirming the lower judgment in all its provisions before the court. For a foreign owner, the lesson travels directly: the rate on your invoices is your decision and your risk, even if a network, a template or a well-meaning adviser suggested it. Before your company issues its first hundred invoices at 10 percent, 5.5 percent or zero, ask your French adviser to confirm in writing which article covers each product or service line, keep that written analysis with the contracts, and re-check it whenever the offer changes, because a rate error repeated for a year becomes a reassessment for a year plus surcharges.

One more threshold question belongs in this first part because it decides whether you charge VAT at all. Small businesses established in France may benefit from the franchise en base, the exemption that spares them from charging and paying VAT while their turnover stays below statutory ceilings. Article 293 B frames it as follows: “Pour leurs livraisons de biens et leurs prestations de services, les assujettis établis en France bénéficient d’une franchise qui les dispense du paiement de la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée”, established taxable persons benefit from a franchise releasing them from paying VAT. The exemption is comfortable but double-edged: you charge no VAT, but you deduct none either, so a company with heavy French suppliers or equipment purchases often pays more VAT hidden in its costs than it saves in paperwork. Invoices under the franchise must state that VAT does not apply by reference to the franchise, so customers know why no VAT appears. Foreign founders should run the arithmetic with their accountant before electing the franchise: compare the VAT you would collect from customers against the VAT you would recover from suppliers, factor in cross-border needs that require a VAT number anyway, and remember that crossing the turnover ceiling mid-year pushes the company into normal VAT with invoicing and return duties from the crossing date, a transition that fails whenever nobody watches the monthly sales figures from abroad.

II. How you file, pay and correct French VAT from abroad without penalties

Charging VAT correctly is only half the job. The other half is periodic and unforgiving: declare it, pay it, document it electronically, and correct every error through the proper channel before the administration prices it for you. Distance changes nothing in these duties. Returns are filed online from anywhere, payments leave any SEPA account, and corrections follow the same forms whether you sign them in Paris or in another hemisphere. What distance changes is vigilance, so this second part turns each duty into a routine you can supervise from abroad.

A. Filing and paying French VAT from abroad: returns, reverse charge and e-invoicing

The core routine is the VAT return, in practice the form known as the CA3 (formulaire 3310-CA3-SD, the standard French VAT return). Article 287 sets the duty without ambiguity: “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 conforme au modèle prescrit par l’administration.” Every identified VAT person must file the prescribed return with its tax office within the set time. Frequency depends on the company’s VAT regime: companies under the standard regime file monthly, since the article continues that “Les redevables soumis au régime réel normal d’imposition déposent mensuellement la déclaration visée au 1”, persons under the standard actual-taxation regime file the return monthly. Smaller companies may qualify for quarterly filing or the simplified regime with lighter periodic duties, but the logic never changes: each return states the VAT collected on sales, subtracts the deductible VAT paid on purchases and expenses, and the balance is either paid to the Treasury or carried as a VAT credit (crédit de TVA) where deductions exceed collections. From abroad, organise this as a monthly closing ritual even if your regime allows quarterly filing: on a fixed day, your accountant receives all sales invoices, purchase invoices, bank statements and customs documents, prepares the return in the espace professionnel, and you approve payment before the deadline. Never let returns accumulate because the activity seemed small or the company dormant: a company with no sales still files, marking zeros or the credit carried forward, because a missing return is itself a breach that draws penalties and flags the file for control, while a zero return keeps the file clean and the credit alive.

The return also hosts two mechanisms foreign owners meet constantly: reverse charge (autoliquidation) and deduction. Reverse charge shifts the duty to pay VAT from the supplier to the customer, which matters whenever your French company buys services from providers established outside France or subcontracts works in sectors where the law imposes it. The general mechanism of article 283 starts from the principle that “1. La taxe sur la valeur ajoutée doit être acquittée par les personnes qui réalisent les opérations imposables”, VAT must be paid by the persons carrying out the taxable transactions, before the same article moves the burden to the French customer where the supplier is established outside France. A Paris decision illustrates the mechanism in its most common French setting, construction subcontracting: the court recalls that “Dans le secteur du bâtiment et des travaux publics (BTP), l’auto-liquidation de la TVA s’applique lorsque des travaux sont effectués par un sous-traitant pour le compte d’un donneur d’ordre assujetti à la TVA.” In the building and public-works sector, VAT reverse charge applies where works are performed by a subcontractor for a VAT-liable project owner. It continues that “La taxe due pour les travaux de construction réalisés par le sous-traitant doit alors être acquittée par le donneur d’ordre.” The tax due on the subcontractor’s construction works must then be paid by the project owner, and draws the practical conclusion that “Le sous-traitant n’a plus ni à déclarer, ni à payer la TVA pour ces opérations.” The subcontractor no longer has to declare or pay VAT on those transactions (Paris Court of Appeal, Pôle 5, Chamber 10, 16 January 2023, case no. 21/08496). If your French company hires foreign consultants, buys intra-EU goods, or acts as project owner with French subcontractors, each invoice must state who accounts for the VAT, the return must show the reverse-charged amounts on both the collected and deductible lines where the rules provide, and your contracts should allocate the VAT duty expressly, because the most expensive reverse-charge disputes are not about rates but about two companies each assuming the other paid.

Invoicing itself is a legal duty independent of payment, and it is becoming electronic by statute. Article 289 provides the foundation: “I. – 1. 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”, every taxable person must ensure that an invoice is issued, by itself or in its name and on its behalf by its customer or a third party. Every sale to a VAT-liable customer or a non-liable legal person, unless exempt under the listed articles, must therefore produce a compliant invoice with the mandatory particulars: identities and addresses, VAT numbers, date, unique number, description, price, rate, VAT amount and total. Since 2026 that paper invoice is no longer enough between French-established taxable businesses. Article 289 bis commands the shift: “Pour l’application de l’article 289 et par dérogation au VI du même article 289, l’émission, la transmission et la réception des factures relatives aux opérations mentionnées aux a et d du 1 du I dudit article 289 ainsi qu’aux acomptes s’y rapportant s’opèrent sous une forme électronique, selon des normes de facturation électronique définies par arrêté du ministre chargé du budget, lorsque l’émetteur de la facture et son destinataire sont des assujettis qui sont établis ou ont leur domicile ou leur résidence habituelle en France.” Issuing, sending and receiving those invoices now happens electronically under ministerial e-invoicing standards where both supplier and customer are taxable persons established, domiciled or habitually resident in France. The tax administration confirms the timetable publicly: en France, à partir du 01/09/2026, la facturation électronique est généralisée entre entreprises, from 1 September 2026 e-invoicing is generalised between businesses. For a foreign owner this reform is an organisation project, not a software purchase: designate who in the company issues invoices and through which certified platform or operator, connect the billing tool to the directory and the e-reporting duties for transactions with private individuals and foreign customers, train whoever sends invoices that a PDF attached to an email is no longer an electronic invoice, and calendar the company’s own reception duty, because from the same date your company must be able to receive electronic invoices from French suppliers through the same channel. Companies that run billing from abroad through a foreign system with no French e-invoicing connection will discover the gap on the first rejected invoice, so test the full loop, issue and receive, with your accountant before the first real transaction of the month.

B. Correcting VAT mistakes from abroad: wrong rate, missed return and reassessment

Mistakes happen in every VAT file; what separates a routine correction from a reassessment is speed, channel and proof. Take the wrong rate first, the error the franchisee case above illustrates at full scale. If your company charged 10 percent where 20 percent applied, or 20 percent where an exemption or a reduced rate applied, the correction runs through documents, not through goodwill: issue a corrective invoice or a credit note (avoir) referencing the original invoice number and date, show the correct taxable base, rate and VAT amount, send it to the customer through the same compliant channel as the original, and report the adjustment on the next CA3 with the supporting papers kept together. Where the customer already recovered the wrong VAT, warn them in writing so they correct their own deduction, because a rate correction that your customer ignores becomes a dispute between you about who bears the difference. Where the error ran for months, quantify the whole period before the administration does: extract every affected invoice, total the undercharged or overcharged VAT, and file the corrections return by return rather than burying a full year in a single line, since a clean, documented self-correction presented by your adviser reads as diligence while the same amounts discovered by an inspector read as concealment.

Missed returns follow the same philosophy with even less room for waiting. A return that was never filed does not age well: late-filing interest and surcharges accrue, the file gets flagged, and any VAT credit sleeping in the unfiled period cannot be used or refunded until the return exists. The remedy from abroad is immediate and boring: mandate your accountant to file every missing return now, oldest first, pay each balance shown through the online account, and claim each crédit de TVA on the return itself so the credit is recorded before any time limit bites. Do not net periods informally, do not offset a missing month against the next one without showing both returns, and do not assume that a dormant company owes nothing without filing the zero returns that prove it. Keep the proof of each filing and each payment, confirmation receipts, bank debits, return copies, because a later dispute about whether a period was filed is won with the confirmation number, never with recollection. If cash is tight, French procedure offers formal payment timing routes through the tax office file, but those routes are negotiated with documents and guarantees, not obtained by silence, so instruct your adviser to contact the SIE with accounts and a plan rather than letting direct debits fail one after another.

When prevention fails, the reassessment procedure (contrôle fiscal with proposition de rectification, the reasoned notice of adjustments) takes over, and distance must not slow your answer by a single day. The pattern is visible in the franchisee decision quoted above: the administration sent its figures, the company paid the amount claimed and then went to court, since it “s’est, à réception d’un avis de mise en recouvrement, acquittée de la somme réclamée puis a saisi le tribunal administratif de Paris pour voir prononcer la décharge de ces rappels de TVA”, on receiving a recovery notice paid the sum claimed then petitioned the Paris administrative court to discharge the VAT reassessments. Paying first and litigating after is sometimes the rational choice to stop surcharges, but it is a choice to make with counsel within days, not a default discovered months later when the payment is treated as acceptance. Your standing routine for any audit letter arriving at the siège social should therefore be written down and known to everyone with access to the mail: forward it to your French adviser the same day, calendar the reply deadline from the receipt date, gather the contracts, invoices, transport documents and bank proofs for the inspected period, and answer each adjustment point by point with exhibits before arguing law. The Paris construction decision shows why exhibits decide cases: the dispute turned on whether site invoices (situations) were stated excluding tax, and the court read the actual billing documents rather than the parties’ later explanations. Keep every VAT-relevant paper, contracts, orders, delivery slips, intra-EU transport proof, customs papers, invoices issued and received, returns and payment confirmations, for the full statutory retention period in a shared archive your successor or a new accountant can open without you, because the company that produces complete records from abroad in forty-eight hours negotiates from strength, while the company that searches three mailboxes for a missing invoice negotiates from weakness.

Conclusion

Running French VAT from abroad is an organisational discipline built on four reflexes. First, secure the VAT number at registration, confirm it in writing, and print it on every invoice before any sale, requesting it expressly where the small-business franchise would otherwise leave the company without one. Second, map every sales line to its VAT treatment in writing, defaulting to the 20 percent standard rate and treating each reduced rate as an exception tied to a precise article, because the rate your company repeats for a year is the reassessment it may pay for a year. Third, file every CA3 on time through the espace professionnel, show reverse-charged transactions on both sides of the return where required, and complete the switch to standardised e-invoicing for all domestic business-to-business flows now generalised since September 2026. Fourth, correct every error through documents, corrective invoices and corrective returns, oldest period first, and answer any audit letter the day it reaches the registered office with exhibits rather than explanations. A foreign owner who holds these four routines does not need to live in France to keep a French VAT file clean. The owner who neglects them discovers, usually through a customer’s complaint or an inspector’s letter, that French VAT forgives ignorance of neither the number, nor the rate, nor the calendar.