You incorporated your company in France, received the Kbis (the official registration certificate issued by the greffe, the clerk’s office of the commercial court), and you are listed as président of a société par actions simplifiée (SAS, the flexible French joint-stock company). But you live in London, New York, Dubai or Singapore. Now comes the question every foreign founder asks first: how do I pay myself, what will French social security cost me, and should I take a salary, dividends, or a mix of both? The answer matters because the wrong choice can easily cost you tens of thousands of euros a year in unnecessary charges, or leave you with no health cover and no pension rights in France. French law gives the president of a SAS a very specific status: you are neither a true employee nor a self-employed worker, but an assimilé salarié, a person treated like an employee for social security purposes. That single classification drives everything that follows: which contributions you pay, which benefits you get, and why dividends are taxed so differently from pay. This article explains, for a founder who does not live in France, what your status as president really means, what living abroad changes in practice, what a salary costs and buys you, and when dividends are the better route.

I. Your status as president of a French SAS when you live abroad: an assimilated employee with French social cover on French pay

A. French law puts the SAS president in the general social security scheme, with one major exclusion

Every SAS must have a president, who may be a natural person or a legal entity, French or foreign, resident or not. The president is the person who represents the company toward third parties: “La société est représentée à l’égard des tiers par un président désigné dans les conditions prévues par les statuts.” And once appointed, “Le président est investi des pouvoirs les plus étendus pour agir en toute circonstance au nom de la société dans la limite de l’objet social.” In plain English: you sign contracts, open the bank account, hire staff and answer for the company, within the limits of the corporate purpose. If you are still hesitating between a SAS, a SARL, a branch or a subsidiary for your French project, read first our overview of how to choose the right vehicle for doing business in France from abroad, because the social regime described here is one of the main reasons foreign founders pick the SAS.

For social security, the rule is short and decisive. Article L. 311-3 of the Social Security Code lists the persons covered by the general scheme, and its paragraph 23 states: “Les présidents et dirigeants des sociétés par actions simplifiées et des sociétés d’exercice libéral par actions simplifiées”. You are therefore an assimilé salarié: affiliated to the régime général (the general social security scheme that covers employees), not to the scheme for the self-employed. The affiliation is mandatory and broad: “Sont affiliées obligatoirement aux assurances sociales du régime général” all persons working in France whatever their nationality, whatever the amount of their pay and whatever their formal status. Your foreign passport and your foreign address change nothing about this principle: if the French SAS pays you for your duties as president, French social security applies to that pay.

This classification is generally a good deal compared with the alternative. The majority manager (gérant majoritaire) of a SARL (the French limited liability company) is a travailleur indépendant, a self-employed worker: “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.” For tax, his pay follows the specific regime of Article 62 of the General Tax Code: “Les traitements, remboursements forfaitaires de frais et toutes autres rémunérations sont soumis à l’impôt sur le revenu au nom de leurs bénéficiaires” when allocated to the majority managers of SARLs. The self-employed scheme has lower contribution rates but a thinner cover, and its retirement math is different. As president of a SAS, you pay contributions at rates close to those of an executive employee, and in exchange you build rights in the general scheme: health and maternity cover, family allowances, basic retirement plus complementary executive retirement, daily allowances if you fall ill, and cover for work accidents and occupational illness. The official URSSAF simulator states the point bluntly: certain company directors, notably in SAS structures, are treated as assimilated employees, belong to the general scheme, but ils ne cotisent pas au chômage, et n’y ont donc pas droit, they do not contribute to unemployment insurance and therefore have no right to it. That is the one structural gap you must understand before choosing between pay and dividends: as a president without a separate employment contract, you can never claim French unemployment benefits, however much you contribute otherwise. The statute confirms that unemployment benefits are built around employment contracts: “Ont droit à l’allocation d’assurance les travailleurs aptes au travail et recherchant un emploi” whose loss of employment is involuntary or whose employment contract was terminated. A corporate mandate (mandat social) that ends is not a lost employment contract, so no benefit follows.

Many foreign founders start with an unpaid mandate to preserve cash, and the law allows it: nothing forces a SAS to pay its president. But understand what unpaid really means over several years. With no declared pay you accumulate no health rights of your own in France, no daily allowances, no retirement quarters and no complementary pension points, so an illness, a pregnancy or a long incapacity during a Paris assignment can leave you relying entirely on your foreign cover, which may exclude care received in France or reimburse it poorly. Some founders bridge the gap with international private health insurance and voluntary pension savings in their country of residence, which is legitimate planning as long as it is conscious: the danger is not the unpaid mandate itself but discovering its consequences in an emergency room or at retirement age. If you choose zero pay, minute the shareholders’ decision so the paper trail is clean, keep the mandate genuinely unpaid rather than compensated through opaque expense reimbursements, and diary an annual review, because the right answer in year one of losses is rarely still the right answer in year three of profits.

Your contributions as president are computed on your actual pay for duties performed. The Code provides: “Les cotisations de sécurité sociale dues au titre de l’affiliation au régime général des personnes mentionnées aux articles L. 311-2 et L. 311-3 sont assises sur les revenus d’activité”. In practice this means the company declares your gross pay every month through the DSN (déclaration sociale nominative, the monthly online payroll return every French employer files), URSSAF (Union de recouvrement des cotisations de sécurité sociale et d’allocations familiales, the agency that collects social contributions) calculates both the employer and the employee shares, and the company pays the total. No pay means no contributions, but also no new rights: an unpaid president costs the company nothing in charges and earns himself nothing in cover. Conversely, a symbolic pay of a few hundred euros a month buys almost no retirement quarters, because validating a quarter requires a minimum level of contributions over the year. There is no legal minimum wage for a corporate mandate itself: the SMIC (salaire minimum interprofessionnel de croissance, the statutory minimum wage) and working-time rules protect employees, not mandataries. Your pay as president is whatever the shareholders decide, including zero, and that freedom is precisely what makes the pay-versus-dividends calculation so important.

B. Living abroad changes nothing about the principle and a lot about the paperwork, and it never turns you into your own employee

The first thing to accept is that distance does not exempt you. The affiliation rule quoted above applies whatever your nationality and wherever you actually sit when you manage the company. If the French SAS pays you for directing it, that pay is French-source professional income attached to a French company, and the French general scheme claims it. Founders sometimes imagine that keeping their tax residence abroad or having no French home removes them from URSSAF: it does not. Social security affiliation follows the place where the work is legally attached, not the place where you sleep. What your foreign residence does change is coordination: within the European Union, a person working in two Member States is subject to one single legislation, documented by the portable A1 certificate, and bilateral social security treaties play the same role with many non-EU countries. If you also work or already contribute in your country of residence, get the coordination analysis done before the first payroll, because paying full contributions in two countries on the same income is the most expensive mistake in this file. Practically, you will also need a French social security number to be properly registered, and registration normally flows automatically from the company’s own registration: since the guichet unique (the single online company-registration portal run by the INPI, the French intellectual property and business-registration institute) transmits the new company to all agencies, URSSAF opens the employer account on first hiring or first paid mandate. Check that it did, because a missing employer account means undeclared pay, and undeclared pay means reassessment with penalties.

On the practical side, treat the setup as a checklist, not as folklore. Confirm that the company holds a Siret number and an active URSSAF employer account before the first payroll run, appoint a French payroll provider or accountant who files the DSN monthly even when the pay is zero some months, obtain your French social security number through the CPAM (caisse primaire d’assurance maladie, the local health insurance fund) affiliation process, and keep every shareholder decision on pay in writing with its date. If you split your working time between France and another EU state, request the A1 determination early, because the certificate decides which country collects contributions and it is far easier to obtain before URSSAF or its foreign counterpart opens a file than after both claim you. Keep also a clear diary of where management decisions are actually taken, since your personal tax residence, the company’s French establishment and your social affiliation are three different questions answered by three different sets of rules, and confusing them is how founders end up taxed in one country, affiliated in another and covered nowhere.

The second trap is the employment contract you might be tempted to give yourself. As sole shareholder and president, you cannot in practice also be your own employee: an employment contract requires a real relationship of subordination, and nobody can be subordinate to himself. French courts apply this strictly. In a case about a founder who was both president of a SASU (a one-person SAS) and, on paper, its salaried head chef, the Versailles Court of Appeal recalled that holding a corporate office alongside an employment contract is possible only on three cumulative conditions: the salaried duties must be real and clearly distinct from the duties of the office, the officer must perform them in genuine subordination to the employer, and they must be separately paid (CA Versailles, 15th chamber, 30 November 2023, RG 21/03481). The court restated the Court of Cassation test for subordination, namely work performed under an employer who can issue orders and instructions, monitor how they are carried out and punish breaches (citing Cass. Soc., 13 November 1996). For a foreign founder who owns 100 percent of his SAS and chairs it, these three conditions are almost never met together: the salaried duties are rarely distinct from management, and no one above you can give you orders, check your work or discipline you. A sham employment contract bought only to unlock unemployment rights or employee protections will be reclassified, the contributions re-examined, and the expected benefits refused. If you genuinely perform separate technical work under someone else’s authority inside the group, structure it cleanly with distinct duties, distinct pay and a real hierarchy; otherwise, accept your status as mandataire and build your strategy around it, which is exactly what the second part of this article does.

II. Salary or dividends: how a foreign president takes money out of a French SAS without overpaying

A. Paying yourself a salary costs roughly twice its net amount but buys cover, deductibility and credibility

A salary is the expensive but protective route. On a gross pay, the company pays employer contributions of roughly forty to forty-five percent on top, and the employee share takes roughly twenty to twenty-five percent off the gross before you see the net, with exact rates varying by tranche, ceiling and year. Budget accordingly: ten thousand euros net a month to the president easily represents eighteen to twenty thousand euros a year in total cost multiples that founders living in low-charge countries find shocking. The return on that cost is fourfold. First, cover: health, maternity, family, basic and complementary retirement, daily sickness allowances and work-accident protection accrue with declared pay. Second, deductibility: genuine pay for actual management is a deductible expense of the company, so it reduces the corporate profit subject to French corporate tax, whereas dividends are paid out of after-tax profit and never deductible. Third, credibility: banks, landlords, visa officers and business partners read a regular executive pay slip far better than irregular dividend vouchers, and a foreign founder seeking a French residence permit or a company loan will feel the difference. Fourth, retirement quarters: each year of sufficiently paid mandate validates up to four quarters in the general scheme, which matters if you plan to spend part of your career in France.

Review the salary level every year in a dated shareholder minute, because a pay that was reasonable when the company lost money can look like disguised reserves management once profits explode, and a pay frozen for five years while the business triples can look incoherent the other way. Document the link between the amount and the reality: time spent, responsibilities assumed, turnover generated, staff managed, results achieved. If the French company is part of a group and you also draw income abroad, make sure the French pay reflects the French duties and keep the transfer-pricing logic consistent with what the group declares elsewhere, since a president paid full-time in two countries for the same hours invites questions from both sides. And when the company cannot afford market pay yet, prefer a lower declared salary plus properly voted dividends later over an inflated salary that the cash cannot fund: unpaid salary arrears owed by your own company create accounting and legal tangles, while undistributed profits simply wait for a lawful distribution.

The mechanics are unforgiving and must be set up before the first euro. The shareholders fix the president’s pay, the company runs a monthly payroll, files the DSN, pays URSSAF, withholds income tax at source under the French prélèvement à la source system, and issues pay slips. For tax, the president’s pay is taxed as employment income in France when the duties are performed for a French company, with the treaty between France and your country of residence deciding which state taxes what and how double taxation is relieved. Keep three discipline points. One, never confuse the mandate with a job: do not write yourself an employment contract to chase unemployment cover, as explained above, because reclassification destroys the whole construction. Two, never pay yourself informally: current-account advances (comptes courants d’associé) drawn like a salary without payroll produce the worst of both worlds, contributions reassessed without the matching rights. Three, never leave the company without any declared pay for years and then claim full French social protection: rights follow contributions, and the file will show the gap. A common balanced pattern for a founder living abroad is a modest but real monthly pay that keeps health cover and retirement quarters alive, sized to what the French activity genuinely requires, with the rest of the return taken as dividends once profits allow.

B. Taking dividends pays no social charges but requires real profits, a real vote and attention to withholding

Dividends are the flexible but conditional route. Their great advantage for a SAS president is that they bear no French social contributions: unlike the majority SARL manager, whose dividends above a threshold can be pulled back into the self-employed contribution base, the assimilated-employee president pays social charges on his salary only, never on his dividends. When the company has distributable profits, the shareholders vote the dividend in general meeting after approving the accounts, the company pays it, and the founder receives capital income instead of earned income. For a founder living abroad who needs little French social cover, who already has health and pension protection in his country of residence, or whose French company is highly profitable relative to the management time spent, dividends can therefore be dramatically cheaper than salary: no employer share, no employee share, no payroll, just the tax on distributed income. The limit is legal, not tactical: dividends can only be paid out of distributable sums, meaning approved profits plus available reserves minus losses and legal allocations, and fictive dividends paid without profits can be reclassified as pay with the full charge bill attached. Never vote yourself a dividend the accounts do not support, and never document a monthly fixed anticipé as a dividend, because URSSAF and the tax administration read regularity as salary.

Timing matters as much as amount. Dividends follow the annual corporate cycle: the shareholders approve the yearly accounts, determine the distributable profit, vote the dividend and set its payment date, and the company then operates the applicable levies before paying you. Do not invert the sequence by paying yourself during the year and voting later, because money taken before any profit exists is legally fragile and easily recharacterised. Keep the distribution paperwork with the company’s records alongside the filed accounts, since the greffe filing and the published accounts are what make the profit real to third parties, and since the BODACC (Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales, the official gazette where company events are published) culture of French corporate life means every material step should be traceable. A founder living abroad should also calendar the treaty formalities in advance: residence certificates, beneficial-owner declarations and reduced-rate claims take weeks to assemble, and discovering the paperwork after the dividend is paid means suffering the full levy first and chasing a refund later.

On the tax side, France applies to resident individuals a flat levy at payment: “sont assujetties à un prélèvement au taux de 12,8 %” on distributed income, with an exemption available for modest households since taxpayers whose reference income of two years earlier sits below fifty thousand euros for a single person or seventy-five thousand for a jointly taxed household may ask to be dispensed from that levy. Social levies on capital income come on top, and the annual return then settles the final position. For a founder who is not a French tax resident, a further layer applies: French dividends paid abroad can suffer a withholding tax at source, reduced or eliminated by the applicable tax treaty, with the paying company operating the levy and the treaty formalities deciding the final rate. Because that withholding chain, the treaty paperwork and the refund procedures are a subject of their own, with exact rates, forms and deadlines, we detail them in our companion guide on getting dividends out of France: withholding tax, treaties and the exit chain. Read the two articles together: this one tells you why dividends can beat salary on charges, the companion tells you what tax the border takes before the money reaches your foreign account. In practice, most profitable SAS structures run by non-residents end on a mix: enough salary to stay credible, covered and deductible, and dividends for the surplus once the accounts, the vote and the treaty position are secured.

Conclusion

Running a French SAS from abroad does not free you from French social logic: as president you belong to the general scheme on your French pay, without unemployment cover, and your foreign address organizes coordination rather than exemption. Do not try to become your own employee, because the courts require a real distinct job, a real subordination and a real separate pay, three conditions a sole president-shareholder cannot meet. Price the choice honestly: salary costs roughly double its net but buys health, retirement, deductibility and credibility, while dividends escape social charges but demand real approved profits, a proper shareholder vote and a clean withholding position under the treaty with your country. Set the payroll correctly from the first month through the DSN and URSSAF, vote nothing the accounts cannot support, and revisit the mix every year as profits, residence and cover evolve. A modest pay plus voted dividends is, for most foreign founders, the equilibrium that keeps the company credible in France and the founder protected on both sides of the border.