You live abroad, your French company runs in Paris, Lyon or Bordeaux, and one morning your accountant forwards a registered letter from the French tax office: your société par actions simplifiée (SAS, the flexible joint-stock company most foreign founders choose) or your société à responsabilité limitée (SARL, the closed limited-liability company) will undergo a vérification de comptabilité, the on-site audit of its accounts. The letter lists the financial years under review, reminds you that you may appoint an adviser, and sets a first meeting. Panic is the normal first reaction, especially when the Kbis (the official identity certificate issued by the greffe, the commercial court registry) bears your name as president or gérant (manager) and every document is in French.
This guide walks you through the procedure exactly as the statute books and the administrative courts describe it: the audit notice and why a defective one can void the whole reassessment, what the inspector may examine on your premises including computerized records, the three-month clock that protects small companies, the oral and adversarial debate you are entitled to, then the reasoned reassessment proposal, your thirty days to reply, the burden of proof when accounts are rejected, the penalties for missing returns, and finally how a foreign owner challenges the bill from abroad. Every decisive rule below is quoted from the Livre des procédures fiscales (LPF, the Tax Procedure Book), the Code général des impôts (CGI, the General Tax Code) or a court of appeal judgment, with an official Légifrance link so you or your adviser can check the source in one click.
I. Your audit notice and the on-site inspection: what the inspector may do and the guarantees that protect you
A. Receiving the audit notice: the years under review, your right to counsel and the taxpayer’s charter
No on-site audit of a company’s accounts and no personal tax examination can start without a written warning. Article L47 of the Tax Procedure Book provides that “Un examen contradictoire de la situation fiscale personnelle d’une personne physique au regard de l’impôt sur le revenu, une vérification de comptabilité ou un examen de comptabilité ne peut être engagé sans que le contribuable en ait été informé par l’envoi ou la remise d’un avis de vérification ou par l’envoi d’un avis d’examen de comptabilité.” In plain English: the tax office must send or hand over an audit notice (avis de vérification) before any verification of your company’s accounts begins. For a foreign owner, this is the first document to have translated and reviewed the day it arrives, because every deadline of the procedure runs from it.
The notice must do two things (LPF, art. L47), and the statute attaches the heaviest sanction to the second: “Cet avis doit préciser les années soumises à vérification et mentionner expressément, sous peine de nullité de la procédure, que le contribuable a la faculté de se faire assister par un conseil de son choix.” The notice must therefore state precisely which years are audited and must expressly remind you, on pain of nullity of the whole procedure, that you may be assisted by an adviser of your choice. A notice that omits the audit years or forgets the right to counsel is not a minor clerical slip: it can wipe out the resulting reassessment (redressement, the additional tax bill). Your first reflex as a foreign shareholder or director is to check these two lines and to appoint that adviser immediately, ideally a French avocat fiscaliste (tax lawyer) or expert-comptable (chartered accountant) who will receive the inspector, because everything the inspector sees and hears from the first meeting can shape the final bill.
The notice also tells you that the charte des droits et obligations du contribuable vérifié (the charter of the audited taxpayer’s rights and obligations) can be read on the tax administration’s website or obtained on simple request. Ask for it and read it: it summarises the guarantees described below, including the closing discussion with the inspector before any proposal is sent. One practical point settled by the Paris administrative appeal court (CAA, cour administrative d’appel) in a 15 November 2018 judgment, case 17PA01003 (CAA Paris, 15/11/2018, 17PA01003): where the audit notice correctly reminded the taxpayers of the right to counsel and attached the charter, “la circonstance que le courrier du 1er juillet 2013 par lequel le vérificateur leur a proposé un premier entretien ne réitère pas cette faculté est sans incidence sur la régularité de la procédure”. A later letter fixing the first meeting does not need to repeat the warning. So keep the original notice preciously: it is the document that proves the guarantees were given, and later correspondence will not cure a notice that lacked them.
There is one exception to the advance notice (LPF, art. L47), and foreign owners sometimes discover it brutally: the surprise inspection. Article L47 provides that “En cas de contrôle inopiné tendant à la constatation matérielle des éléments physiques de l’exploitation ou de l’existence et de l’état des documents comptables, l’avis de vérification de comptabilité et la charte des droits et obligations du contribuable vérifié sont remis au contribuable au début des opérations de constatations matérielles.” When inspectors arrive unannounced to record the physical state of the business or the existence of accounting documents, the notice and the charter are handed over at the start of those findings. The safeguard that remains is essential: “L’examen au fond des documents comptables ne peut commencer qu’à l’issue d’un délai raisonnable permettant au contribuable de se faire assister par un conseil.” The substantive review of the accounts cannot begin until a reasonable period has allowed you to call your adviser. If inspectors show up at your Paris premises while you are in London, New York or Dubai, your manager’s only job is to accept the papers politely, note the inspectors’ names, call your adviser at once, and refuse any substantive discussion until counsel is present.
Finally, note the boundary with the personal audit. If you personally live in France part of the year, the administration can also open an examen contradictoire de la situation fiscale personnelle, the adversarial examination of your personal tax situation, under article L12 of the Tax Procedure Book, which allows the office to compare declared income with wealth, cash and lifestyle. That personal procedure is distinct from your company’s account verification, follows its own one-year time limit, and belongs to individual tax defence. This article covers your company’s audit; if both procedures arrive together, each must satisfy its own guarantees, and you need an adviser who tracks both files separately.
B. The on-site verification: computerized accounts, the three-month clock and the oral debate
The core of the procedure is the on-site review of your books. Article L13 of the Tax Procedure Book states: “Les agents de l’administration des impôts vérifient sur place, en suivant les règles prévues par le présent livre, la comptabilité des contribuables astreints à tenir et à présenter des documents comptables.” Tax agents verify, on your premises and under the rules of the Procedure Book, the accounts of taxpayers required to keep and present accounting documents. Two practical consequences follow for a foreign-owned company. First, the audit can by mutual agreement be held elsewhere than your offices, typically at your French accountant’s firm, which is exactly what the manager of a Lyon-area company did in a case decided by the Lyon appeal court on 14 October 2021, case 19LY02326 (CAA Lyon, 14/10/2021, 19LY02326): on the first day he asked that the control take place at his expert-comptable‘s office and authorised the accountant to answer questions and hand over documents. If you live abroad, give your French accountant a written authorisation in the same way, so the inspector has a competent contact and your staff never improvise answers. Second, without agreement the administration may decide to hold the verification in its own offices, so do not ignore a proposal to fix the venue: silence can move the audit to the tax office.
Modern audits are digital. Article L13 continues: “Lorsque la comptabilité est tenue au moyen de systèmes informatisés, le contrôle porte sur l’ensemble des informations, données et traitements informatiques qui concourent directement ou indirectement à la formation des résultats comptables ou fiscaux et à l’élaboration des déclarations rendues obligatoires par le code général des impôts ainsi que sur la documentation relative aux analyses, à la programmation et à l’exécution des traitements.” When your accounts are kept on software, the control covers all data and IT processes that directly or indirectly build the accounting and tax results, plus the programming documentation. In practice the inspector will ask for the FEC (fichier des écritures comptables, the standardised file of all accounting entries) and may run his own queries on your sales, purchasing and stock software. Tell your accountant before the first meeting which software holds what, keep user manuals and access logs, and never delete or rewrite entries once the notice has arrived: unexplained gaps in a computerized ledger are the fastest route to having your whole accounts declared unreliable, as the next part explains.
Small companies enjoy a precious time limit. Article L52 of the Tax Procedure Book provides: “Sous peine de nullité de l’imposition, la vérification sur place des livres ou documents comptables ne peut s’étendre sur une durée supérieure à trois mois en ce qui concerne : 1° Les entreprises industrielles et commerciales ou les contribuables se livrant à une activité non commerciale dont le chiffre d’affaires ou le montant annuel des recettes brutes n’excède pas les seuils prévus aux 1° et 2° de l’article L. 162-4 du code des impositions sur les biens et services”. On pain of nullity of the assessment, the on-site verification of the books of small businesses under the statutory turnover thresholds cannot last more than three months. Most foreign-owned SAS and SARL in their first years fall under this protection, and exceeding the three months voids the tax bill. The same article lists the exceptions, and you must know them: “En cas de graves irrégularités privant de valeur probante la comptabilité. Dans ce cas, la vérification sur place ne peut s’étendre sur une durée supérieure à six mois.” Where serious irregularities strip the accounts of evidential value, the on-site work can run up to six months. Hidden activity, judicial investigations and requests concerning other activities or private accounts also lift the three-month shield. Your adviser should therefore diary the exact dates of each on-site visit from day one: the duration argument is won with a calendar, not with impressions.
The strongest everyday guarantee is the oral and adversarial debate (débat oral et contradictoire). The inspector must discuss his findings with you or your representative during the on-site work, ending classically with a closing meeting (réunion de synthèse) where the envisaged reassessments are explained before anything is put in writing. The Lyon judgment 19LY02326 shows both the force and the limits of this guarantee. The company complained that its manager had not been told the dates of meetings between the inspector and the accountant and had attended only the first visit and the final closing meeting. The court answered that the manager had authorised the accountant to answer and produce documents, that nobody claimed the inspector had refused any exchange of views with her, and that in those conditions the manager’s absence from intermediate meetings did not breach the adversarial principle. Lesson for foreign owners: appointing a qualified representative works, but brief that person fully, demand copies of every document handed over, and attend the closing meeting yourself, by video where accepted or through counsel with a precise written mandate, because that meeting is your last chance to correct a misunderstanding before the written proposal freezes the inspector’s position.
The same judgment (CAA Lyon, 14/10/2021, 19LY02326) clarifies what must be debated when the inspector gathers documents outside your company. The court held that “l’administration est tenue, lorsque, faisant usage de son droit de communication, elle consulte au cours d’une vérification tout ou partie de la comptabilité tenue par l’entreprise vérifiée mais se trouvant chez un tiers, de soumettre l’examen des pièces obtenues à un débat oral et contradictoire avec le contribuable”. When the office uses its right of disclosure to consult your own accounts held by a third party, it must submit those documents to oral adversarial debate with you. But documents that are not your accounting records, such as supplier invoices obtained from the German and Romanian tax authorities through international assistance in that case, do not trigger the same obligation. If your French company trades across borders, expect the inspector to request foreign evidence through administrative assistance; your defence then shifts to the written stage, demanding communication of those documents under article L76 B, discussed below, rather than relying on an oral debate that the courts do not require for non-accounting papers.
II. From the reassessment proposal to collection: how to answer, challenge and pay without mistakes
A. The rectification proposal: reasons, figures, thirty days and the burden of proof
The on-site work ends with a document that matters more than everything before it: the proposition de rectification, the reasoned proposal notifying the additional corporate income tax (IS, impôt sur les sociétés), value added tax (TVA, the French VAT) and penalties the office intends to assess. Article L57 of the Tax Procedure Book commands: “L’administration adresse au contribuable une proposition de rectification qui doit être motivée de manière à lui permettre de formuler ses observations ou de faire connaître son acceptation.” The administration sends a proposal that must be reasoned so that you can submit observations or accept. A proposal that merely states figures without explaining them is procedurally defective, and courts annul assessments built on unreasoned proposals. The statute adds two sentences foreign owners often overlook: “Sur demande du contribuable reçue par l’administration avant l’expiration du délai mentionné à l’article L. 11 , ce délai est prorogé de trente jours.” On your request received before expiry, the reply period is extended by thirty days. And: “Lorsque l’administration rejette les observations du contribuable sa réponse doit également être motivée.” When the office rejects your observations, its answer must also be reasoned. Always request the extension in writing before the first deadline expires, even if you think your reply is ready: the extra month lets your adviser obtain missing invoices, commission an expert valuation, or align the French reply with parallel proceedings abroad.
What does sufficient reasoning look like? The Lyon court in 19LY02326 gives the checklist judges actually apply: “pour être régulière, une proposition de rectification doit comporter la désignation de l’impôt concerné, l’année d’imposition, la base d’imposition et énoncer les motifs sur lesquels l’administration entend se fonder pour justifier les redressements envisagés, afin de permettre au contribuable de formuler ses observations.” A valid proposal must identify the tax, the year, the taxable base, and the reasons the office relies on, so that you can usefully respond. In that case the proposal concerning VAT on margin for vehicle sales set out the legal and factual reasons vehicle by vehicle, stated the amounts, and explained why the company could not have ignored the correct regime; the court held the company had been able to mount a real adversarial discussion, which it had in fact done, and rejected the defective-reasoning plea. When you receive your proposal, test it against this four-item checklist with your adviser: tax, year, base, reasons. If one is missing or purely formulaic, say so in your observations and keep the point for court, because reasoning defects must be raised early and precisely.
The proposal must also show the money in full. Article L48 of the Tax Procedure Book (LPF, art. L48) requires that “l’administration doit indiquer, avant que le contribuable présente ses observations ou accepte les rehaussements proposés, dans la proposition prévue au premier alinéa de l’article L. 57 ou dans la notification mentionnée à l’article L. 76, le montant des droits, taxes et pénalités résultant de ces rectifications.” Before you accept or reply, the office must state the amount of duties, taxes and penalties produced by the corrections. Verify the arithmetic line by line: principal, surcharges (majorations) and late interest. Do not confuse the proposal with the final bill: the Bordeaux appeal court held on 13 February 2024, case 23BX01088 (CAA Bordeaux, 13/02/2024, 23BX01088), that these L48 guarantees operate at the notification stage, and that later adjustments of the amounts only require written notice before collection: “l’article L. 48 imposant uniquement que ces rectifications soient portées par écrit à la connaissance du contribuable avant la mise en recouvrement, qui peut alors intervenir sans délai.” Once the proposal was regular, the office could adjust figures and recover without delay after informing the taxpayer in writing. That case concerned a property company’s group where the audit of one entity fed the manager’s personal assessments, a pattern foreign owners of French real-estate structures know well: the company’s audit is often only the first domino, so align the company’s reply with the position of the shareholders and sister entities from the start.
If the inspector used documents obtained from third parties, a second guarantee applies. In 19LY02326 the court recalled article L76 B: “L’administration est tenue d’informer le contribuable de la teneur et de l’origine des renseignements et documents obtenus de tiers sur lesquels elle s’est fondée pour établir l’imposition faisant l’objet de la proposition prévue au premier alinéa de l’article L. 57 ou de la notification prévue à l’article L. 76. Elle communique, avant la mise en recouvrement, une copie des documents susmentionnés au contribuable qui en fait la demande”. The office must tell you the content and origin of third-party material it relied on, and must send you copies before collection if you ask. The court drew two consequences you should use: the office must give you enough detail to access the material before collection, and on your request it must generally disclose the documents used against you so you can check authenticity and discuss their meaning. In that case the foreign-supplied invoices were sent on 3 March 2016, after the reply deadline but before collection, and the court held that timing lawful since no rule imposes earlier disclosure. Request those copies the day you receive the proposal, not the day before collection: early access lets you challenge an unreliable foreign invoice or an out-of-context bank statement while the file is still open.
The darkest scenario is the rejection of your accounts. If the inspector finds no reliable supporting documents, he can treat your books as worthless and rebuild your turnover himself. The Versailles appeal court approved exactly that on 21 June 2022, case 21VE00718 (CAA Versailles, 21/06/2022, 21VE00718), concerning a small leisure business whose audit revealed, over the whole period, a total and systematic absence of receipts and stock records: “Dans ces conditions, il n’était pas possible de vérifier les résultats déclarés. Par suite, le vérificateur a pu à bon droit regarder la comptabilité comme dépourvue de valeur probante et, en conséquence, reconstituer le chiffre d’affaires de cet établissement.” With declared results unverifiable, the inspector could lawfully discard the accounts and reconstruct turnover, here from laundry supply slips corroborated by outside contracts. The judgment then recalls article L192 of the Procedure Book: “la charge de la preuve incombe au contribuable lorsque la comptabilité comporte de graves irrégularités et que l’imposition a été établie conformément à l’avis de la commission ou du comité.” Once accounts show grave irregularities and the assessment follows the departmental commission’s opinion, the burden of proof flips to you. For a foreign-owned company this is the existential warning: missing invoices, cash sales without receipts, inventory never counted, or a rewritten software ledger can move the dispute from “the inspector must prove” to “you must disprove”, a much harder fight conducted in French before judges who see reconstructed assessments every week. Keep every invoice, contract, bank statement and stock count, and if the inspector announces he considers the accounts unreliable, flood the file with corroborating evidence before the proposal is drafted, because after the proposal the reversal of the burden is brutally hard to undo.
Understand the penalties stacked on the principal. Missing or late returns trigger article 1728 of the General Tax Code (CGI, art. 1728): “Le défaut de production dans les délais prescrits d’une déclaration ou d’un acte comportant l’indication d’éléments à retenir pour l’assiette ou la liquidation de l’impôt entraîne l’application, sur le montant des droits mis à la charge du contribuable ou résultant de la déclaration ou de l’acte déposé tardivement, d’une majoration de : a. 10 % en l’absence de mise en demeure ou en cas de dépôt de la déclaration ou de l’acte dans les trente jours suivant la réception d’une mise en demeure d’avoir à le produire dans ce délai ; b. 40 % lorsque la déclaration ou l’acte n’a pas été déposé dans les trente jours suivant la réception d’une mise en demeure d’avoir à le produire dans ce délai”. No return on time means a 10 % surcharge, rising to 40 % if you still file nothing within thirty days of a formal demand, and up to 80 % for hidden activity. During an audit, file every missing return immediately, even imperfectly: dropping from 40 % to 10 % on a large IS or VAT reassessment can save tens of thousands of euros, and a spontaneous filing before the formal demand is the cheapest defence in the whole procedure. Our companion guides explain the two most frequent filing crises in detail: the corporate tax return form 2065 rejected on electronic filing (how a foreign founder corrects the filing) and the missed VAT return with CA3 penalties (how a foreign company fixes it). For the general corporate tax landscape behind the audit, from the 25 % IS rate to branch-versus-subsidiary consequences, see our pillar guide (French corporate tax for foreign owners).
B. After your reply: revised amounts, collection, and challenging the bill from abroad
Once your observations are filed, three paths open. The inspector may accept them wholly or partly and reduce the reassessment, may answer with a reasoned rejection letter, or may adjust the figures upward or downward in light of what the file now contains. Remember the Bordeaux rule: adjustments after the proposal need only be communicated in writing before collection, after which recovery can proceed without delay. Read every letter that follows your reply as carefully as the proposal itself, because the final collection notice (avis de mise en recouvrement, the document that makes the bill enforceable) will mirror the last written position, not the first. If an amount changed and you never received the written update, that omission is a live procedural plea for court, so keep envelopes, registered-mail slips and the tax office’s online messages: French judges decide notification disputes on paperwork, and a foreign owner who kept everything from abroad wins these points more often than one who trusted memory.
Your reply itself should be built like a court file, because it often becomes exhibit one before the judges. Answer every reason in the proposal in the same order, attach numbered exhibits with an inventory, quantify each alternative you propose, and state expressly which points you accept: a partial acceptance narrows the litigation, reduces penalties on the accepted part through quicker payment, and gives the judge confidence in your good faith on the disputed remainder. Ask for the departmental commission where the dispute turns on facts, such as the reconstruction of turnover or the valuation of stock: in the Versailles case the commission examined the taxpayer’s arguments, applied reductions and allowances, and its opinion, once followed, shifted the burden of proof. Commissions do not hear pure points of law, so split your defence cleanly, facts to the commission, law to the written observations, and have counsel confirm in which cases your taxes even qualify for commission review, since the rules differ between direct taxes and VAT.
From abroad, organise the defence as a project with four workstreams. First, representation: your French lawyer or accountant holds a written mandate covering receipt of documents, attendance at meetings, requests for extensions and copies of third-party material, and settlement discussions. The Lyon case proves a mandated accountant suffices for day-to-day debate, but reserve strategic decisions, partial acceptances and court appeals to yourself in writing, with translations you actually understand. Second, evidence: rebuild complete yearly files, year by year, matching each declared figure to invoices, contracts, bank lines and payroll records, and translate only the decisive pages with a certified translator where the originals are in English. Third, calendar: French limitation periods run in years and the reply periods in days, and missing the claim deadline after collection forfeits even a winning argument, so your adviser maintains a shared deadline table with the notice date, the thirty-day reply, the requested extension, the collection date and the appeal cut-off. Fourth, money: once collection arrives, the principal, surcharges and interest become due, and any challenge before the administrative court follows the familiar two-level path seen in every judgment cited here, from the administrative tribunal (TA, tribunal administratif) to the administrative appeal court. Paris-based companies start before the Paris administrative tribunal with appeal to the Paris court, the very route of case 17PA01003 (CAA Paris, 15/11/2018, 17PA01003), so a foreign owner with a Paris subsidiary should budget for that specific two-stage litigation and instruct Paris counsel early rather than after the first adverse judgment.
Three mistakes kill foreign-owned files. The first is silence: ignoring the notice, skipping the closing meeting or never answering the proposal converts a negotiable audit into maximum reassessment plus 40 % surcharges, and judges show little mercy to taxpayers who refused debate, as the Lyon, Versailles and Bordeaux rejections all illustrate. The second is parallel improvisation: sending the inspector informal English emails while counsel argues something different in French, or producing contradictory figures to the French office and to a foreign tax authority, destroys credibility across both files. Funnel everything through one adviser. The third is paying without understanding: payment alone does not extinguish your right to challenge, but an unexplained payment accompanied by a signed unreserved acceptance letter can. Never sign an acceptance you have not had translated, and if cash flow forces you to pay, state in writing that payment is made to stop enforcement while you contest the principle, then file the formal claim within the deadline your adviser diaries.
Conclusion
A French tax audit of your company is a coded but navigable procedure: a notice that must name the years and your right to counsel on pain of nullity, an on-site verification of all records including computerized data, a three-month shield for small businesses, a genuine oral debate with your appointed representative, then a reasoned proposal giving tax, year, base, reasons and full amounts, thirty days extendable to answer, disclosure of third-party evidence before collection, and a two-level judicial review from the administrative tribunal to the appeal court. The judgments studied here all rejected the taxpayers’ claims, which is precisely why they are useful: they map where challenges fail, so yours can be built where they succeed, on a defective notice, an exceeded time limit, an unreasoned proposal, undisclosed third-party documents, or a reconstruction your complete records make unnecessary. From abroad, the winning posture is early mandate to French counsel, a disciplined venue and calendar, a fully evidenced reply, and no signature you have not understood. Handled that way, the registered letter from the tax office becomes a managed project with a beginning, middle and end, rather than the crisis that consumes your French venture.
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