Your German, Dutch or Italian customer has just written that your French invoice is unusable. They ran your number through VIES (VAT Information Exchange System), the European Commission’s public checker of VAT identification numbers, and the screen came back “invalid”, “not allocated” or simply empty. Until that line turns green, they will not accept intra-community reverse charge, they will not pay a zero-rated invoice, and some of them will not pay at all. For a foreign-owned SAS (société par actions simplifiée, the flexible limited company by shares) or SARL (société à responsabilité limitée, the private limited company), the blockage is rarely a “IT glitch”. It is a legal status: either the Service des impôts des entreprises (SIE, the corporate tax office) has not yet pushed the number into the European database, or it has invalidated it.

This article is written for the owner who does not live in France and who discovers the problem from a customer’s email, not from a registered letter. It explains how a French VAT identification number is created, why VIES is the switch that turns intra-community trade on or off, which texts the tax office uses to freeze a number, and what to do with live orders while the number is down. Every French acronym is unpacked. The analysis sits next to the firm’s guide to setting up a French company as a foreign founder, which covers the first bank account, the Kbis (the official extract from the RCS, registre du commerce et des sociétés, the commercial and companies register) and the first VAT steps, and next to the separate piece on a VAT registration that is refused or delayed before the first invoice. The question here is different: you already have, or think you have, a number, and Europe cannot see it.

I. Why EU customers refuse your French invoice when VIES marks the VAT number invalid

A. How a French VAT identification number is issued, what VIES displays, and why a new company stays invisible

French law does not treat the intra-community VAT number as a marketing extra. Article 286 ter of the code général des impôts (CGI, the French tax code) states: “Est identifié par un numéro individuel :” and then lists, as the first category, “Tout assujetti qui effectue des livraisons de biens ou des prestations de services lui ouvrant droit à déduction ;”. In plain English, every taxable person who makes supplies that open a right to deduct VAT is identified by an individual number. The official page of that article is article 286 ter of the CGI. The same identification feeds the monthly or quarterly VAT return: article 287 of the CGI requires that “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.” That declaration is the CA3 (the standard VAT return of a company on the normal real regime). The text is on article 287 of the CGI.

On the public side, Entreprendre Service-Public describes the French format as the letters FR, a two-digit computer key, and the company’s nine-digit SIREN (système d’identification du répertoire des entreprises, the national enterprise identifier issued by INSEE). For a company that is actually liable for VAT, the SIE is supposed to transmit the number automatically at incorporation. That transmission is not the same thing as appearance on VIES. VIES is the European electronic system through which Member States tell each other which numbers are currently valid. A number can exist in the French file and still read as invalid in VIES if the SIE has not flagged it as valid, if the company is still being asked for complementary information, or if the number has been invalidated after the fact.

The tax office is not a post box. Article L. 10 BA of the livre des procédures fiscales (LPF, the book of tax procedure) gives it a screening power before and after the number is issued. The first paragraph reads: “Avant ou après la délivrance du numéro individuel d’identification prévu à l’ article 286 ter du code général des impôts , l’administration peut demander des informations complémentaires pour statuer sur l’attribution ou le maintien de cet identifiant ainsi que tout élément permettant de justifier de la réalisation ou de l’intention de réaliser des activités économiques prévues au cinquième alinéa de l’article 256 A du même code.” (article L. 10 BA of the LPF). Complementary information must be supplied “dans un délai de trente jours à compter de la réception de la demande.” For a founder who lives in London, New York or Dubai, that thirty-day clock is the real trap: the letter goes to the siège social (registered office) in France, often a domiciliation address, and nobody opens it in time.

Paragraph IV of the same article then lists the cases in which “Le numéro individuel d’identification n’est pas attribué ou est invalidé dans l’un des cas suivants :” (article L. 10 BA of the LPF). The four historic grounds are: no answer within the thirty days; the conditions of article 286 ter are not met; false data were given to obtain identification; changes of data were not notified. A fifth ground was added for non-EU businesses: the obligation to be represented in France by an accredited taxable person, under article 289 A of the CGI, has ceased to be respected. That last point is the bridge to the separate problem of the fiscal representative that the French tax office demands of a foreign company. A French SAS or SARL with a registered office in France is not in that category; a foreign company invoicing in France without a subsidiary still is.

Invalidation is not only a French internal note. It is designed to be seen abroad. The Cour administrative d’appel de Versailles, in its judgment of 23 November 2021, n° 19VE03276, quoted article 23 of Council Regulation (EU) No 904/2010: Member States must ensure that a VAT identification number “soit signalé comme non valide dans le système électronique visé à l’article 17” at least when the person has ceased economic activity or obtained the number with false data. The full decision is on Légifrance at CAA Versailles, 23 November 2021, n° 19VE03276. When VIES says invalid, your customer is reading the consequence of that European duty, not a website bug.

New companies hit a quieter version of the same wall. The Kbis arrives, the SIREN is printed on it, someone builds “FR” plus a guessed key plus the SIREN, and the first German buyer checks VIES the same afternoon. If the SIE has not finished the identification, VIES returns nothing. Guessing the key is also a mistake: the two-digit key is computed by the tax administration, it is not a public formula the founder is invited to improvise. Until the SIE has issued the number and the European feed has caught up, the safe commercial posture is to tell the customer that identification is pending and that the invoice will be reissued, not to send a homemade FR number.

B. Why reverse charge and intra-community exemption collapse without a valid number on both sides

Intra-community trade in goods is not “VAT free”. It is a structured exemption that only exists if both sides are identified. Article 262 ter of the CGI opens with: “Sont exonérés de la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée :” and then, at 1°: “Les livraisons de biens expédiés ou transportés sur le territoire d’un autre Etat membre de l’Union européenne à destination d’un autre assujetti ou d’une personne morale non assujettie qui est identifié aux fins de la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée dans un autre Etat membre que celui du départ de l’expédition ou du transport et a communiqué au fournisseur son numéro d’identification à la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée.” The current version is article 262 ter of the CGI. Two identification numbers therefore sit in the statute itself: the customer’s number, which must be communicated to the supplier, and, as a practical and documentary matter, the supplier’s own number, without which the customer cannot treat the purchase as an intra-community acquisition in their Member State.

The exemption is also tied to a French filing that foreign owners routinely miss. The same article continues: “L’exonération ne s’applique pas lorsque le fournisseur n’a pas déposé l’état récapitulatif mentionné à l’article 289 B ou lorsque l’état récapitulatif qu’il a souscrit ne contient pas les informations mentionnées au II du même article 289 B, à moins que celui-ci ne puisse dûment justifier son manquement à l’administration.” (article 262 ter of the CGI). Article 289 B of the CGI is the état récapitulatif (the recapitulatif statement of EU customers, often still called the DES for services and confused with the old DEB for goods). It provides: “Tout assujetti identifié à la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée doit déposer, dans un délai et selon des modalités fixés par décret, un état récapitulatif des clients, avec leur numéro d’identification à la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée, auxquels il a livré des biens dans les conditions prévues au I de l’article 262 ter”. The official page is article 289 B of the CGI. A missing recapitulatif statement is not a paperwork slap on the wrist. It is a statutory on/off switch for the exemption, and, as we shall see, a ground for invalidating the number itself.

Services follow a different map, which customers still compress into the words “reverse charge”. Article 283 of the CGI, which is the general rule on who pays the tax, states at paragraph 2: “Lorsque les prestations mentionnées au 1° de l’ article 259 sont fournies par un assujetti qui n’est pas établi en France, la taxe doit être acquittée par le preneur.” The official text is article 283 of the CGI. Paragraph 1 of the same article deals with a supplier established outside France who makes a supply referred to in article 259 A: “la taxe est acquittée par l’acquéreur, le destinataire ou le preneur qui agit en tant qu’assujetti et qui dispose d’un numéro d’identification à la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée en France.” In both directions, the number is the key that lets the customer self-account for the tax instead of paying French VAT on the invoice. If your French number is invalid on VIES, a foreign customer who wanted to reverse-charge a service you invoice from France cannot complete their own return with a number their administration will accept. They will ask you to charge French VAT instead, or they will walk away.

Charging French VAT “to be safe” is not always safe. The Conseil d’État, in its decision of 15 November 2019, n° 420251, recalled that where the reverse-charge regime applies, “l’acquéreur d’un bien, qui est redevable de la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée afférente à cette opération, est en droit de déduire cette même taxe, de telle sorte que, en principe, aucun montant n’est dû à l’administration fiscale.” The same decision, mentioned in the Lebon tables, added that where the customer has paid VAT shown in error on the supplier’s invoices, “il ne peut pas se prévaloir d’un droit à déduction de la taxe acquittée à tort.” The customer must then claim the tax back from the supplier, not from the French Treasury. The decision is Conseil d’État, 15 November 2019, n° 420251. A French company that puts 20 % on an invoice that should have been reverse-charged does not do its customer a favour. It creates a tax the customer cannot deduct and a repayment claim against the French company.

Invoices have their own clock. Article 289 of the CGI, at I, 3, provides that for supplies exempt under article 262 ter I and for services where the customer is liable under article 196 of Directive 2006/112/CE, “la facture est émise au plus tard le 15 du mois suivant celui au cours duquel s’est produit le fait générateur.” The article is article 289 of the CGI. Waiting three months for VIES to “sort itself out” while goods have already left France is how a company accumulates a file of late invoices, a missing recapitulatif statement, and a later invalidation under article L. 10 BA. The right to deduct on the other side of the invoice is itself framed by article 271 of the CGI: “La taxe sur la valeur ajoutée qui a grevé les éléments du prix d’une opération imposable est déductible de la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée applicable à cette opération.” The official page is article 271 of the CGI. Deduction follows a tax that was legally due. A homemade zero rate, or a homemade 20 %, both miss that legal due.

Checking the customer’s number on VIES is necessary. It is not sufficient. The Cour administrative d’appel de Marseille, in its judgment of 29 September 2020, n° 19MA00607, upheld a challenge to intra-community exemptions where the supplier, the SARL BC France, had, “en se bornant à vérifier la validité des numéros de taxe sur la valeur ajoutée intracommunautaires de ses clients, de surcroit postérieurement à l’émission des premières factures en ce qui concerne les sociétés CDI Tecnology et Venom Distribuzione” (CAA Marseille, 29 September 2020, n° 19MA00607). The court held that the company “ne peut être regardée comme ayant pris toute mesure raisonnable en son pouvoir pour s’assurer de ce que les livraisons qu’elle effectuait, destinées à ses clientes italiennes, ne la conduisaient pas à participer à une fraude.” (CAA Marseille, 29 September 2020, n° 19MA00607). A foreign-owned French company that only screenshots VIES after shipment, and ignores empty warehouses, unpaid carriers or a customer with a fictional seat, will lose the exemption even if every number was once green. VIES is a condition. It is not a shield.

II. How to restore a blocked VIES number and keep invoicing without a French tax reassessment

A. What to send the SIE, the 30-day trap, and how to contest an unlawful invalidation

The first practical move is to separate three situations that customers mix up. The first is delay: the SIE has not yet issued or pushed the number, typical in the weeks after the Kbis. The second is a request for complementary information under article L. 10 BA I, with a thirty-day answer period. The third is a notified invalidation. Only the third is a decision you contest as such. The first two are cured by producing the file the SIE actually asked for, not by arguing with the customer about VIES.

Entreprendre Service-Public lists the restoration cases in language that tracks the statute: the number is restored without delay when the company has regularised the information transmitted, has regularised a pattern of inaccurate filings, no longer obstructs a tax audit or a right of inquiry, or has sent observations that justify restoration. That public summary is useful as a checklist. The binding list remains article L. 10 BA. Paragraph V of that article is the one foreign groups underestimate. Paragraph V provides: “Lorsqu’il existe des indices concordants indiquant que ce numéro est utilisé par un opérateur identifié qui savait ou ne pouvait ignorer être impliqué dans une fraude visant à ne pas reverser la taxe due en France ou dans l’Union européenne, il peut être invalidé dans la base de données des assujettis établis dans les Etats membres par l’administration :” (article L. 10 BA of the LPF). The invalidation may follow if, within thirty days, there is no answer to a request to regularise “D’une défaillance déclarative en matière de taxe sur la valeur ajoutée à l’échéance de l’obligation, nonobstant la réalisation d’acquisitions intracommunautaires ou d’importations ;” or “Ou du défaut de dépôt de l’état récapitulatif des clients relatif à des livraisons intracommunautaires dans les conditions prévues à l’article 289 B du code général des impôts ;” (article L. 10 BA of the LPF). A missed CA3 and a missed recapitulatif statement are therefore not only surcharge territory. They are VIES-killers. The same paragraph shortens the clock to fifteen days where inaccurate information has been repeated in the recapitulatif statement, in the VAT returns or in commercial documents, and has reduced the tax due. A European fraud signal under Regulation 904/2010 can even make the invalidation immediate.

Paragraph VI goes further: the number may be invalidated where the operator “a fait obstacle au déroulement des opérations de contrôle fiscal, au sens de l’article L. 74, ou à l’exercice du droit d’enquête prévu à l’article L. 80 F, nonobstant la réalisation d’importations, d’acquisitions ou de livraisons intracommunautaires, il peut être invalidé immédiatement.” (article L. 10 BA of the LPF). A foreign director who tells the SIE that nobody in France can open the books this quarter is writing the invalidation letter. The answer is to appoint a tax representative or an accountant with a mandate, a French address that is actually read, and a named person who answers the SIE within the statutory time. Distance is not a defence under article L. 10 BA.

Not every freeze is lawful. In the Versailles case already cited, the DNEF (direction nationale des enquêtes fiscales, the national tax investigation directorate) had suspended CGD Auto’s intra-community identification because an audit suggested abusive use of the VAT margin scheme on second-hand cars. The administrative court of appeal held that identification is a formal requirement “destinée à faciliter et garantir les transactions commerciales entre entreprises de l’Union européenne, de sorte qu’un assujetti ne saurait être empêché d’exercer son activité, son droit à déduction ou son droit à l’exonération de la TVA au titre d’une livraison intracommunautaire, au motif qu’il n’aurait pas été identifié à la TVA.” (CAA Versailles, 23 November 2021, n° 19VE03276). The court then drew the operational line: the number “ne saurait être suspendu, ni invalidé, au motif que le contrôle a révélé, à l’occasion des opérations économiques réalisées par l’assujetti conformément aux données communiquées pour son identification, une utilisation abusive du régime de la TVA sur la marge constitutive d’une fraude.” (CAA Versailles, 23 November 2021, n° 19VE03276). Fraud on the margin scheme, if proven, is a reassessment and, where the conditions are met, a penalty. It is not, by itself, a lawful ground to black out the number on VIES. That distinction is the core of a useful contestation: accept the audit, refuse the extra-legal freeze.

The file to send the SIE is therefore short and factual. A copy of the Kbis and of the SIREN notice. The VAT returns already filed (CA3) and proof of electronic filing. The recapitulatif statements under article 289 B, or a dated explanation of why none was due. Contracts, invoices and transport documents that show real economic activity, which is what article L. 10 BA I asks for by reference to article 256 A of the CGI. If the SIE asked complementary questions, answer them point by point inside the thirty days, in French, with exhibits numbered. If the thirty days have already run, still answer, and ask in the same letter for restoration under the Service-Public restoration cases and under paragraph III of article L. 10 BA, which requires the administration to notify its decision to accept, reject or invalidate “dans un délai d’un mois à compter de la réception des informations demandées.” (article L. 10 BA of the LPF). Silence after that month is itself a fact to record.

Where the registered office is in Paris or elsewhere in Île-de-France, the competent SIE is the one of that registered office, not the foreign parent’s tax office. Litigation against an invalidation decision goes to the tribunal administratif of the company’s seat (in Paris, the Tribunal administratif de Paris). The Versailles judgment shows that incompetence of the signatory and error of law on the grounds of invalidation are live arguments. They are not arguments to put in a customer email. They belong in a recours (administrative appeal) prepared as litigation, with the decision, the envelope, and the evidence that the company still carries on an economic activity.

Penalties on the underlying VAT remain a separate track. Article 1729 of the CGI provides that inaccuracies or omissions in a return “entraînent l’application d’une majoration de :” “a. 40 % en cas de manquement délibéré ;” and 80 % in listed cases of abuse of law or fraudulent manoeuvres. The official page is article 1729 of the CGI. Restoring VIES does not wipe a 40 % surcharge if the CA3 was deliberately wrong. Conversely, a 40 % debate does not authorise the SIE to keep the number invalid once the L. 10 BA conditions for restoration are met. Keep the two procedures in two folders.

B. What to do with live EU orders while the number is down

The commercial temptation is to keep shipping and to “regularise the invoices later”. That is how BC France lost the exemption: volume, repetition, and due diligence that started after the first invoices. The legally usable options are narrower, and they depend on whether the supply is goods or services, and on whether the customer is itself a taxable person in another Member State.

If the number has never been issued, do not print a guessed FR number. Do not describe the supply as exempt under article 262 ter. Either postpone the taxable event (no shipment, no transfer of the power to dispose of the goods) until the SIE has issued the number and VIES confirms it, or invoice with French VAT if the supply is actually located in France and no exemption yet applies. The second route is painful for the customer, but it is honest, and article 271 then gives that customer a deduction if the tax was legally due. Reissue a credit note and a new intra-community invoice only after VIES is valid, with a cross-reference to the original invoice as article 289 I, 5 requires for any document that amends an invoice.

If the number existed and has been invalidated, stop using the intra-community exemption on new shipments until restoration. Continuing to zero-rate while VIES is red is the fact pattern article 262 ter now punishes twice: the exemption “ne s’applique pas” without a proper recapitulatif statement, and article L. 10 BA V treats a missing recapitulatif statement as a ground for keeping the number invalid. The recapitulatif statement of article 289 B must show, for goods, the supplier’s identification number, each customer’s VAT number in the Member State of arrival, and the monthly totals. You cannot file a truthful statement with a number the European database has marked invalid. Filing a false one is worse.

Talk to the customer in the language of their own compliance team. Send them a dated screenshot of VIES, the SIREN, the Kbis, and a one-page letter that the SIE file is open and that invoices will be reissued. Many EU buyers will accept a short hold. Almost none will accept a zero-rated invoice they cannot defend in their own audit. If they insist on paying, take the payment as a deposit against a future correctly drawn invoice, and say so in writing. Do not let the payment look like settlement of an exempt supply that the statute does not currently exempt.

On the customer’s number, reverse the lesson of Marseille. Check VIES before the order is accepted, not after the truck has left. Keep the screenshot with date and time in the sales file. Check again if the relationship is recurring. Add ordinary commercial diligence: does the buyer have a plausible seat, a warehouse, a carrier that is paid, a person who answers? Article 262 ter itself now says: “L’exonération ne s’applique pas lorsqu’il est démontré que le fournisseur savait ou ne pouvait ignorer que le destinataire présumé de l’expédition ou du transport n’avait pas d’activité réelle.” (article 262 ter of the CGI). A foreign founder who only looks at VIES, and never at the customer, is the person that sentence was written for.

For services billed from the French company to a business in another Member State, the invoice must still go out by the 15th of the following month under article 289 I, 3, and it must show the reverse-charge mention when article 283 puts the tax on the customer. If your own number is invalid, the customer cannot complete that reverse charge cleanly. The practical fix is the same: hold the service or bill it under a regime that does not depend on a live VIES identity, then reissue. Do not invent a hybrid invoice “VAT 0 %, pending VIES”. That document is a gift to the next auditor.

Once restoration comes through, rebuild the chain in order. Confirm VIES in several Member State databases if a particular customer still sees a red flag, because national caches sometimes lag. File the CA3 for the periods that stayed open, including any regularisation of tax that should have been charged. File the recapitulatif statement under article 289 B for the months in which exempt goods actually moved after restoration, not for the months in which you correctly held the goods. Reissue invoices within the article 289 timetable as amended documents. Tell the bank and the accountant. If a CA3 was already missed, treat that as a separate regularisation, because the missed return is both a surcharge file and, under article L. 10 BA V, a reason the number was taken down in the first place.

Two profiles should not handle this as an accounting-only incident. The first is a company whose number was invalidated with an express fraud wording, a DNEF visit, or a European signal under Regulation 904/2010: restoration then sits next to a criminal-risk audit, and the order of letters matters. The second is a non-EU parent that invoices France without a French company and whose number died because the fiscal representative lapsed. That is not a VIES refresh. It is a representation failure under article L. 10 BA IV, 5° and article 289 A. In both profiles, the customer email is the symptom. The file to open is the tax file.

Conclusion

VIES is the public face of a French legal status. Article 286 ter identifies the taxable person; article L. 10 BA lets the SIE refuse or withdraw that identity; article 262 ter and article 283 then decide whether EU customers can exempt or reverse-charge. A foreign owner who treats an “invalid” screen as a portal delay will keep shipping, miss the recapitulatif statement, miss the CA3, and hand the SIE the very grounds paragraph V of article L. 10 BA needs to keep the number black. The working sequence is the opposite: identify which of the three situations you are in, answer the SIE inside thirty days with proof of real activity, contest an invalidation that uses fraud-on-the-merits as a substitute for the statutory grounds, as the Versailles court required, and stop drawing exempt invoices until VIES is actually green. Checking the customer’s number remains mandatory, and, as the Marseille court said of BC France, it is not enough. The number on your own Kbis has to be valid too — and visible in the only database your EU buyer is allowed to trust.

Need a quick opinion on your case

VIES showing your French number as invalid, an SIE letter you have not answered, or EU invoices blocked this week? Get a phone consultation within 48 hours with a lawyer from our firm. Call +33 6 46 60 58 22 or write through our contact page. We assist foreign companies in Paris and across Île-de-France, in English, from the first VAT number to the contestation of an unlawful invalidation.