You formed a SAS in France, you live in London, New York, Dubai or Singapore, and now comes the most practical question of all: how does the French company pay you? Three channels exist, and each one carries its own tax and social security logic. A salary makes you an assimilé salarié affiliated to the French general scheme, with contributions due on the pay. Dividends are voted profits, taxed at distribution and often subject to withholding because you are not a French tax resident. Management fees billed by your foreign entity look flexible but are deductible only against proof of genuine services at a fair price. Choosing blindly is expensive: the wrong channel means contributions on money you thought was exempt from contributions, a withholding applied at the wrong rate, or a fee the tax inspector rejects as unjustified. This article walks through the three routes in the order a foreign founder should examine them, with the exact legal texts that govern each step.
Practical vocabulary first, because every French acronym below matters. The Kbis is the official identity certificate of your company, issued by the greffe, the registry of the commercial court. URSSAF is the body that collects social security contributions. The BODACC is the official gazette where company creations and changes are published. The DSN (déclaration sociale nominative) is the monthly payroll return every French employer files. Filings are made through the Guichet unique, the single online portal operated by the INPI, the French intellectual property and companies institute. If your registered office sits in Paris, your company answers to the Paris commercial court and the Paris URSSAF office, but the rules below are national.
I. Should your French SAS pay you a salary when you live abroad?
Paying yourself a salary feels like the natural option: it is regular, it builds social rights, and accountants present it as the default. For a non-resident president of a SAS, the salary route works, but it drags the French social security system into your personal tax life. Before signing a pay slip, you need to understand the status the salary gives you and the withholding the salary triggers.
A. As president of a SAS, you belong to the French general scheme even when you live abroad
French social security does not ask where you sleep at night; it asks what office you hold. The Social Security Code lists the persons compulsorily affiliated to the general scheme, and the list expressly names “Les présidents et dirigeants des sociétés par actions simplifiées et des sociétés d’exercice libéral par actions simplifiées”. That is article L311-3, item 23, of the Code de la sécurité sociale. If you are appointed president of your SAS, you are an assimilé salarié, affiliated to the general scheme for the pay attached to that office, whether you manage from Paris or from abroad.
This status is the mirror image of the gérant majoritaire of a SARL, who belongs to the self-employed scheme. Contributions of self-employed workers are assessed on the base defined at article L131-6 of the Code de la sécurité sociale, while yours, as an assimilated employee, follow the general scheme. The base for general-scheme contributions is set by article L242-1 of the Code de la sécurité sociale, which provides that contributions due for persons affiliated under articles L311-2 and L311-3 are assessed on employment income as taken into account for the base defined at article L136-1-1. In plain terms: pay yourself a salary as president, and employer plus employee contributions apply to it, collected through the monthly DSN, exactly as for any French executive.
The courts apply this affiliation strictly, in both directions. In a judgment of 19 January 2026, the social protection division of the Créteil judicial court dealt with a president and majority shareholder of a SAS who disputed the pension contributions claimed from his company for 2019, 2020 and 2021, arguing in substance that no income had been received. The tribunal examined the demands year by year and ordered the company to pay the contributions and late surcharges for each of the three years, in case RG 24/00186. The lesson for a foreign founder is direct: the affiliation follows the office, and contesting the bill requires producing your tax notices and company accounts, not simply stating that nothing was paid. Keep every payslip, every board minute fixing your remuneration, and every tax assessment, because URSSAF will ask for documents, not explanations.
Two practical consequences follow. First, the remuneration of the president must be decided properly. In a SAS, the articles of association decide which decisions the shareholders take collectively, and the annual accounts and profits always belong to them under article L227-9 of the Code de commerce. Fix your pay in a written decision, with amount, effective date and payment terms, before the first transfer. Second, if you pay yourself nothing at all, clarify your social position in writing with URSSAF rather than assuming that zero salary means zero obligations. Health coverage, pension accrual and the French residence-based health contribution each obey their own logic for non-residents, and the answers depend on your country of residence and any social security agreement between that country and France. A short written confirmation beats a confident assumption.
Paying a salary from abroad also means running French payroll from abroad. The company registers as an employer, issues compliant payslips, files the DSN each month and pays contributions by the due dates. Distance changes nothing: the obligations are identical whether the president signs from the 8th arrondissement or from another continent. Many foreign founders discover this only when the first URSSAF reminder arrives, with surcharges attached. Budget the full employer cost, not the net figure that lands on your bank statement, and set up the payroll circuit before the first payment, not after.
B. A French-source salary paid to a non-resident faces withholding at source
The salary is taxable in France because the work is done for a French company, and French tax law treats you as a non-resident. Salaries, allowances, emoluments and wages form part of global taxable income under article 79 of the Code général des impôts. Because you are not domiciled in France for tax purposes, the company does not simply pay you the gross amount and leave you to file: it must withhold tax at source.
The mechanism sits at article 182 A of the Code général des impôts, which states that “les traitements, salaires, pensions et rentes viagères, de source française, servis à des personnes qui ne sont pas fiscalement domiciliées en France donnent lieu à l’application d’une retenue à la source.” The base is the net amount paid, determined under income-tax rules but without the deduction of actual professional expenses, and the withholding follows an annual scale set out in the same article. Your company acts as the collecting agent: it computes the withholding, pays it to the Treasury and gives you the certificate you will need in your country of residence.
That certificate matters because the same salary may interest two tax administrations. France taxes the French-source pay, and your country of residence usually taxes your worldwide income, then eliminates the double taxation under the applicable tax treaty, typically by crediting the French levy. The treaty between France and your country of residence is therefore the second document to read after article 182 A: it confirms which state may tax the salary, whether a cap or exemption applies to short assignments, and which form claims the relief. Recent court disputes show that the distributing company must determine and apply the correct levy rate among the available ones, and that getting the rate wrong creates litigation between the company, its advisers and the recipient. The Paris Court of Appeal addressed exactly this type of dispute over withholding on payments to non-residents in a judgment of 15 September 2026, RG 24/06926, on the neighbouring mechanism of article 119 bis 2. Read the treaty first, apply the rate the treaty allows, and keep the residence certificate of the year of payment.
One question returns in every consultation: can the salary be kept small to limit contributions, with the rest taken as dividends? The answer is that the two channels are taxed independently, and shrinking the salary does not shrink the dividend tax. The salary bears contributions and progressive income tax with withholding; the dividend bears its own levy at distribution. Each euro must be assigned consciously to one channel or the other, documented separately, and reported in the right return. Mixing them, for instance by paying a fixed monthly amount and calling it an advance on dividends, creates a reclassification risk on both fronts: URSSAF may treat the payment as disguised salary, and the tax administration may treat it as a distribution without a proper vote. Separate decisions, separate transfers, separate labels.
II. Should you take dividends or bill management fees instead?
If the salary route looks heavy, the two alternatives each solve one problem while creating another. Dividends avoid social contributions but require real profits, a proper vote and a withholding for non-residents. Management fees keep money in your foreign structure but are deductible only if the services are genuine and the price is fair. Neither route works without paperwork, and both are classic audit targets precisely because foreign founders use them so often.
A. Dividends mean voted profits, taxed at distribution, with withholding when you live abroad
Dividends are not a tap you open at will. They are a share of profits that the shareholders vote to distribute, after the annual accounts are approved. In a SAS, the articles decide how shareholders vote, but the accounts and the profits always fall within their collective power under article L227-9 of the Code de commerce. No approved accounts, no distributable profit, no dividend. An interim dividend during the year is possible only under strict statutory conditions with a certified balance sheet, so the standard rhythm for a young company is one distribution per year, after the accounts are closed and approved.
Tax law defines what counts as distributed income broadly. Article 120 of the Code général des impôts treats as income dividends, interest, arrears and all other products of shares of any kind, and distributions to shareholders other than repayments of contributions or issue premiums. A repayment qualifies as such only if all profits and reserves were distributed first. The consequence is practical: before labelling a payment a repayment of your initial contribution treated as a return of capital, check that the reserves position actually allows it, with the balance sheet in front of you.
Because you are not a French tax resident, the dividend does not reach you gross. Article 119 bis of the Code général des impôts provides that income from transferable securities and distributed products paid to persons who do not have their tax domicile in France give rise to a withholding at source, at the rate set by article 187. The French company withholds, pays the Treasury and remits you the net. Your residence country then taxes the dividend under its own rules and grants treaty relief, usually as a credit for the French withholding within the treaty limit. The applicable treaty may lower the French rate below the domestic one, sometimes substantially for parent companies holding a qualifying stake, but the reduced rate applies only if the formalities are completed: residence certificate, claim form and timing imposed by the paying chain. Ask your bank or paying agent which form it requires and by when, because a missed deadline converts a treaty rate into a reclaim procedure.
The Paris Court of Appeal judgment of 15 September 2026, RG 24/06926, illustrates why the rate question deserves attention before the payment, not after. The case concerned the liability attached to applying the correct withholding rate on distributions to non-residents under article 119 bis 2, with the claimant arguing that the distributing company had to determine and apply the appropriate levy among the available rates. Whatever the outcome of any single case, the structural message is stable: the company paying the dividend is the first line of responsibility for the withholding, and advisers who set up the payment chain share the exposure. For a founder who is both the president signing the distribution and the non-resident receiving it, the discipline is the same on both sides of the table: vote the distribution properly, identify the correct treaty rate before paying, withhold it, and keep the proof.
Dividends also interact with your salary decision. A company that pays no salary to its working president and distributes everything may attract questions about whether the distributions disguise remuneration, while a company that pays a salary without a written decision invites URSSAF to reconstruct the base. The clean pattern is boring and effective: a written salary decision with payslips and DSN filings for the work, plus an annual distribution decision with approved accounts and withholding certificates for the return on capital. Each channel documented for what it really is.
B. Management fees are deductible only with proof of real services at a fair price
The third route consists of billing the French SAS from your foreign company: strategy days, commercial introductions, administrative support, shared tools. The appeal is obvious, since the fee lands in the structure of your choice and the French company deducts it. The constraint is equally clear, and it sits in the very first article on deductible profit. Article 39 of the Code général des impôts allows the deduction of general expenses, but adds that “les rémunérations ne sont admises en déduction des résultats que dans la mesure où elles correspondent à un travail effectif et ne sont pas excessives eu égard à l’importance du service rendu”, a rule it extends to all direct or indirect remuneration, including allowances, benefits in kind and expense reimbursements. A management fee is deductible only if the work was really done and the price is not excessive for the service rendered.
Tax inspectors test management fees with three questions. First, what exactly was done: board packs, signed reports, dated deliverables, travel records, time sheets. A monthly invoice labelled “management fees” with no attachment fails this test. Second, who did it and with what means: the foreign company must have the staff, skills or subcontractors matching the invoice, because a letterbox company cannot genuinely supply strategic services. Third, what is it worth: comparable market prices for equivalent services, ideally documented before the audit, not reconstructed during it. Between related companies, the fee must also survive transfer-pricing scrutiny, with documentation proportionate to the amounts at stake. A short memo explaining the pricing method, kept with the year’s accounts, costs little and weighs heavily in a discussion with the administration.
Company law adds a second layer of control. The president represents the company toward third parties with the broadest powers to act in all circumstances within the corporate purpose, since article L227-6 of the Code de commerce provides that “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.” That breadth of power is not a permission to contract with yourself without control: agreements between the company and its president or shareholders follow approval and disclosure procedures, and their terms must be fair to the company. Sign the service agreement before the services start, have it approved by the competent body under your articles, record the approval in writing, and invoice only what the agreement covers.
The courts review payments to managers for excess with real attention to the accounts. In a much-discussed case, a general meeting granted its manager an exceptional bonus of 83,000 euros plus a salary reminder, and the Cour de cassation had to decide whether the annulment of those resolutions for abuse of majority was properly reasoned. The facts recorded that the meeting “a décidé d’octroyer à M. V…, au titre de ses fonctions de dirigeant, une prime de 83 000 euros”, and the commercial chamber quashed the appeal decision in its judgment of 13 January 2021, pourvoi No. 18-21.860, holding in substance that excessiveness must be measured correctly against the company results, before deduction of the disputed bonus and its social charges, rather than against a profit figure already reduced by it. The technical point carries a general warning: judges compare the payment to the company’s means with accounting precision, and whoever pays a manager, by salary, bonus or fee, should be ready to justify the amount against the accounts of the year.
Translate this into a routine your company can actually follow. Put every recurring payment to yourself or your foreign entity under a written instrument: employment terms or management agreement, fee grid, invoicing rhythm, deliverables. Keep time records and outputs for each invoice. Benchmark the price once a year against at least one external reference and note the method in a short memo. Have related-party agreements approved and filed as your articles require. None of this requires flying to Paris: signatures are electronic, filings go through the Guichet unique, and the Kbis reflecting any change can be downloaded once the greffe has processed the entry. What cannot be done remotely is inventing substance after the fact, so build the file as the money moves.
Conclusion
A French SAS can pay its foreign founder in three ways, and each way answers a different need. The salary rewards the work, affiliates the president to the general social scheme under article L311-3, and triggers contributions plus the article 182 A withholding for non-residents. The dividend rewards the capital, requires approved accounts and a proper vote under article L227-9, and suffers the article 119 bis withholding before treaty relief. The management fee rewards genuine services to the company, deductible only for real work at a fair price under article 39, within agreements the president is empowered to sign under article L227-6 but must have properly approved. Most founders end up combining at least two channels: a modest documented salary that reflects the actual management work and builds rights, plus an annual dividend once profits allow, with management fees reserved for services the foreign entity truly performs. Whatever combination you choose, decide it in writing before the money moves, apply the correct withholding at payment, keep the treaty certificates of the year, and file the payroll and corporate returns on time. The French system is demanding but predictable: it punishes undocumented improvisation and rewards founders whose paperwork matches their cash flows.