You are British, you work for yourself, and you want to settle in France after Brexit. Perhaps you are a designer with clients in London, a consultant who can work from anywhere, a translator, a photographer, a plumber planning to serve expatriates in the Dordogne, or a therapist opening a practice in Paris. Since 1 January 2021, British citizens have been third-country nationals in the eyes of French immigration law. The rights of the Withdrawal Agreement only protect those who were already lawfully living in France before that date, as the British government itself recalls in its official guidance for people living in France. Everyone else must use the ordinary immigration routes, and for a self-employed person that route is the long-stay entrepreneur visa followed by the temporary residence card marked entrepreneur/profession libérale. This article explains, step by step, how that route works: which visa to request, which card to apply for, how to register the business, how the micro-enterprise tax regime and social charges operate, and above all what to do when the prefecture refuses the card or orders you to leave France. Each decisive point is anchored in the exact legal text or court decision, quoted word for word, so that you can act on solid ground rather than on rumour.

I. How can a British citizen enter France as a self-employed worker and obtain the entrepreneur residence card?

France does not have a single freelance visa handed over on arrival. The system works in two stages: first a long-stay visa obtained before you travel, then a residence card applied for once you are in France. Both stages test the same two things, namely whether your activity is economically viable and whether it gives you sufficient means to live on. Understanding this logic from the start shapes every document you prepare.

A. Which long-stay visa and which entrepreneur/profession libérale residence card do British freelancers need after Brexit?

As a British citizen you need a visa to enter France for a long stay, and that visa must match the activity you intend to carry on. The French government operates a visa wizard on the France-Visas portal that directs each applicant to the correct category, and applications in the United Kingdom are lodged through the appointed visa service provider. For a self-employed project the relevant category is the long-stay visa for an entrepreneur or liberal profession. The British government’s own guidance for nationals living in France confirms the method: check which visa or residence permit you need on France-Visas, use the visa wizard, and once you arrive apply for a residence permit or validate your long-stay visa through the official arrival procedure. The same guidance recalls that only people living in France legally since before 1 January 2021 keep rights under the Withdrawal Agreement, which means that a British freelancer arriving now must satisfy the ordinary third-country requirements in full.

French law states the entry rule plainly. Article L311-1 of the Code de l’entree et du sejour des etrangers et du droit d’asile lists what every foreigner must hold to enter France, and its third paragraph provides: 3° Des documents nécessaires à l’exercice d’une activité professionnelle s’il se propose d’en exercer une. In other words, the border and the consulate are entitled to check that your professional papers exist before you even start. For a freelancer that means evidence of the planned independent activity, proof of qualifications or experience, and material showing how the business will support you.

Once in France, the card you apply for is the temporary residence card marked entrepreneur/profession libérale. Its legal basis is Article L421-5 of the same code, which reads: L’étranger qui exerce une activité non salariée, économiquement viable et dont il tire des moyens d’existence suffisants, dans le respect de la législation en vigueur, se voit délivrer une carte de séjour temporaire portant la mention ” entrepreneur/ profession libérale ” d’une durée maximale d’un an. Three conditions therefore decide everything: a non-salaried activity, economic viability, and sufficient means of existence, all within the law. The card lasts one year at most and must be renewed, and it does not authorise salaried work. The administrative court of appeal of Toulouse states this boundary expressly: Cette carte de séjour qui n’autorise pas son titulaire à exercer une activité professionnelle salariée en France, est subordonnée, notamment, à la viabilité économique de l’activité envisagée. A British freelancer who takes a salaried job on the side while holding this card is therefore working outside the scope of the permit, with all the risks that entails.

The official service-public.fr information page for this card translates the statute into practical tests. Your activity must be economically viable, it must provide you with sufficient livelihoods, and it must match your qualifications or professional experience. The same page gives the figures the prefecture works with: you must show evidence that the activity can generate income of at least 1,867.02 euros a month, and when the card is issued you must pay 350 euros, made up of a 50 euro stamp duty and a 300 euro tax. Renewal is applied for at the prefecture or sub-prefecture of your home, within the two months before the card expires. These amounts and time limits can move with inflation and reforms, so you should always recheck the current service-public.fr page before filing, but the structure of the test does not change: viability, resources, qualifications.

In practice the prefecture examines your file the way a bank examines a loan application, except that it is your right to stay that is at stake. It wants a coherent business plan with figures, evidence of funds to survive the start-up period, diplomas or references proving you can do the job, and, where the activity is already running, accounts and tax notices showing real income. A vague project description with no numbers is routinely refused, and as the court cases examined below show, even a detailed business plan can be judged insufficient if nothing outside your own forecasts supports it.

B. How do you register your freelance business in France: single window, URSSAF and professional rules?

Immigration permission and business registration are two separate gates, and you must pass both. The residence card requires a lawful activity, and a lawful independent activity requires registration. Article R421-7 of the immigration code makes the link explicit: Les dispositions de l’article L. 421-5 sont applicables à l’étranger dont l’activité non salariée nécessite une immatriculation soit au Registre national des entreprises en tant qu’entreprise du secteur des métiers et de l’artisanat ou au Registre du commerce et des sociétés, soit à l’Union de recouvrement des cotisations de sécurité sociale et d’allocations familiales (URSSAF). In plain terms, depending on what you do, you must be registered either with the Registre national des entreprises, which is the national business register covering crafts and Trades, or with the Registre du commerce et des sociétés, which is the trade and companies register for commercial activities, or with URSSAF, which is the body that collects social contributions and family allowance contributions and with which liberal professions register. A British applicant who cannot show the right registration will fail the lawful activity condition of Article L421-5.

Registration itself is done through the Guichet unique, the single online window for business formalities, and the official URSSAF portal for the self-employed explains that creating a micro-enterprise online is entirely free, requires no capital contribution, and takes only a few minutes. The mapping is simple: craftspeople and liberal professions are entered on the Registre national des entreprises, while traders are entered both on the Registre du commerce et des sociétés and on the Registre national des entreprises, and registration is free in each case except for commercial agents who pay a small fee for a special register. Once registered you receive a SIRET number, which is the identifier of your business establishment, and you can trade lawfully, invoice clients, and declare your turnover.

Most British freelancers register as a micro-entrepreneur, a word that means exactly the same as auto-entrepreneur: it is not a company but a simplified regime for a sole trader, that is a person working in their own name. The regime is simple because tax and social charges are computed as a percentage of the turnover actually received, with no accounts to certify and no corporate machinery. That simplicity is also its limit: the regime suits services and small-scale trading, it does not suit activities that need heavy investment, employees, or the protection of a company structure, and company formation itself is a different matter outside this article. Choosing the micro-enterprise is therefore a strategic decision, not an automatic reflex, and it should be reviewed once the turnover grows or the risks change.

Some activities add a third gate: professional regulation. Medical professions, lawyers, architects, accountants, and many others are regulated, which means a British qualification must be recognised and registration with the relevant French professional body is required before lawful practice. An application for an entrepreneur card to practise a regulated profession without recognition of qualifications will fail the lawful activity test. If your profession is regulated, start the recognition procedure early, because it often takes longer than the visa timetable, and keep every letter from the professional body for the prefecture file.

The courts apply these registration and viability rules strictly, and two recent appeal decisions illustrate exactly where files fail. In a judgment of 16 September 2025, the administrative court of appeal of Toulouse dealt with a first admission to the entrepreneur card for a consultancy project for tourist businesses. The court recalled the governing principle in these terms: Dès lors que l’étranger est lui-même le créateur de l’activité, il lui appartient de présenter à l’appui de sa demande les justificatifs permettant d’évaluer la viabilité économique de son activité ou entreprise, que celle-ci soit encore au stade de projet ou déjà créée. The applicant produced a detailed business plan showing a forecast annual net result of 37,607 euros, but the court found that figure came from her own forecasts alone, validated by no accountant, no potential investor, no commercial partner and no bank. Worse, the 3,670 euros she had declared for income tax were salaries, which by definition did not come from her non-salaried liberal activity. The court therefore held that she could not be regarded as proving the economic viability of the planned activity, and it rejected the challenge to the prefecture’s refusal. The lesson for a British freelancer is direct: a business plan alone proves nothing unless outside evidence supports it, and salaried income does not count as freelance income.

II. How are British freelancers taxed and charged social contributions in France, and what can you do if the prefecture refuses your papers?

Once registered and resident, you enter the French tax and social system, and the bills arrive on a rhythm you must learn quickly. French tax residence makes you declarable in France on your worldwide income, with the France-United Kingdom double tax treaty then allocating taxing rights between the two countries so the same income is not taxed twice. In practice you still declare everything in France and claim the treaty relief, which is why keeping British and French tax papers side by side from year one matters. The paragraphs below explain the core French mechanisms; the treaty position of each type of income should then be checked line by line on the actual return.

A. How is your freelance income taxed and what social charges do you pay as a micro-entrepreneur?

Income tax depends on the legal category of your profits. Trading and craft services fall under BIC, which stands for bénéfices industriels et commerciaux, meaning industrial and commercial profits, while consultancy, creative, and liberal work generally falls under BNC, which stands for bénéfices non commerciaux, meaning non-commercial profits. Each category has a micro regime with a turnover ceiling and a flat-rate allowance for expenses, so that no detailed accounts are needed below the ceiling.

For non-commercial profits, Article 102 ter of the Code général des impôts, the French tax code, provides: Le bénéfice imposable des contribuables qui perçoivent des revenus non commerciaux dont le montant hors taxes de l’année civile précédente ou de la pénultième année, ajusté s’il y a lieu au prorata du temps d’activité au cours de l’année de référence, n’excède pas 83 600 € est égal au montant brut des recettes annuelles diminué d’un abattement forfaitaire de 34 %. Cet abattement ne peut être inférieur à 305 €. In other words, below 83,600 euros of annual receipts excluding tax, your taxable profit is your gross receipts minus 34 per cent, with a minimum allowance of 305 euros. For commercial profits, Article 50-0 of the same code sets the micro-BIC regime, stating that it covers businesses whose turnover excluding tax does not exceed, for the previous or penultimate year: 1° 203 100 € s’il s’agit d’entreprises dont le commerce principal est de vendre des marchandises, objets, fournitures et denrées à emporter ou à consommer sur place ou de fournir le logement, à l’exclusion de la location directe ou indirecte de locaux d’habitation meublés ou destinés à être loués meublés. Services have their own lower ceilings stated in the same article, which you must check in the current version of the text before relying on them. The official URSSAF portal summarises the allowances applied to turnover to compute professional income: 71 per cent for sales of goods, 50 per cent for commercial and craft services, and 34 per cent for services and liberal professions taxed as BNC. Above the ceilings you leave the micro regime for the standard real-profit assessment, which is more demanding in accounting terms.

Two options can then change the amount and timing of what you pay. First, the versement libératoire, which is an optional flat-rate discharge payment of income tax: instead of paying income tax later through the yearly return, you pay it at the same time as your social contributions, month by month or quarter by quarter, at a rate that depends on the activity. The URSSAF portal explains that the option can be taken when joining the scheme or within the three months after the start of activity by writing to your URSSAF office, and that it is subject to household income conditions. It suits modest, regular earnings; it can be a poor choice if your household income is already high or if your earnings spike, because the payment is final. Second, the VAT franchise: Article 293 B of the tax code provides that Pour leurs livraisons de biens et leurs prestations de services, les assujettis établis en France bénéficient d’une franchise qui les dispense du paiement de la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée lorsqu’ils n’ont pas réalisé en France un chiffre d’affaires, évalué dans les conditions prévues à l’article 293 D, excédant les plafonds suivants, and the article then lists the ceilings, which in the current version stand at 85,000 euros for sales and 37,500 euros for services other than catering and accommodation for the previous year, with higher figures for the current year. Below the ceiling you invoice without VAT and file no VAT returns; above it you must register for VAT, obtain an intra-Community VAT number from the business tax office, charge VAT, and reclaim VAT on business purchases. Crossing the threshold by accident and continuing to invoice without VAT is one of the most common and costly mistakes of new micro-enterprises.

Social charges work on a parallel track. Article L613-7 of the Code de la sécurité sociale, the social security code, provides that Les cotisations et les contributions de sécurité sociale dont sont redevables les travailleurs indépendants mentionnés au II du présent article bénéficiant des régimes définis aux articles 50-0 et 102 ter du code général des impôts sont calculées mensuellement ou trimestriellement, en appliquant au montant de leur chiffre d’affaires ou de leurs recettes effectivement réalisés le mois ou le trimestre précédent un taux global fixé par décret pour chaque catégorie d’activité mentionnée aux mêmes articles. You therefore declare the turnover actually received each month or quarter and pay a single overall percentage that covers the social contributions. The official URSSAF portal gives the current rates by sector: 12.3 per cent for purchase and resale of goods, 25.6 per cent for other BNC services, 23.2 per cent for regulated liberal professions covered by CIPAV, which is the pension fund for certain liberal professions, and 6 per cent for classified tourist furnished lettings. These rates move over time, and the portal itself notes staged increases, so the figure to use is always the one shown for the period you declare. Declaration and payment are made online to URSSAF, and late or missing declarations trigger penalties and estimated assessments that are far harder to contest than a correct filing made on time.

One structural warning matters more than any rate. French law presumes that a registered independent worker is not an employee of the client, but that presumption can be destroyed. In a published Bulletin judgment of 28 November 2019, appeal number 18-15.333, the second civil chamber of the Court of Cassation held: cette présomption légale de non-salariat qui bénéficie aux personnes sous le statut d’auto-entrepreneur peut être détruite s’il est établi qu’elles fournissent directement ou par une personne interposée des prestations au donneur d’ordre dans des conditions qui les placent dans un lien de subordination juridique permanente à l’égard de celui-ci. In that case the URSSAF reassessment of a transport business using a registered driver was upheld. For a British freelancer the message is concrete: if a single London or Paris client fixes your hours, controls how you work, provides all your tools, and forbids you from working for others, the authorities can reclassify the relationship as employment, with backdated contributions and penalties. Keep several clients where possible, use your own equipment, set your own schedule, and keep contracts that describe a result to be delivered rather than obedience to orders.

B. What happens if the prefecture refuses your residence card or orders you to leave France?

A refusal of the entrepreneur card is never a dead end without consequences: it often arrives together with an obligation to leave French territory, known by its initials OQTF, which is the administrative order to leave France. Article L611-1 of the immigration code lists the cases in which the administration may make such an order, and its third paragraph covers exactly this situation: 3° L’étranger s’est vu refuser la délivrance d’un titre de séjour, le renouvellement du titre de séjour, du document provisoire délivré à l’occasion d’une demande de titre de séjour ou de l’autorisation provisoire de séjour qui lui avait été délivré ou s’est vu retirer un de ces documents. A British freelancer refused a first card or a renewal can therefore receive, in the same decision, a refusal plus an order to leave, typically with thirty days to depart voluntarily. The refusal must still be lawful, and an unlawful refusal poisons the removal order that flows from it.

The Lyon case shows how renewal refusals are judged. On 17 October 2024 the administrative court of appeal of Lyon, case number 23LY02014, ruled on a Russian national who had entered France in 2018 on an entrepreneur visa, held a one-year entrepreneur card, and was refused renewal by the prefect of Côte-d’Or in December 2022, with a thirty-day order to leave. The court examined his actual means. It noted: Si M. B… justifie, au titre de l’année 2022, d’un chiffre d’affaires brut de 20 918 euros, et de cotisations d’un montant de 2 738 euros, il ne produit toutefois, pas davantage en appel que devant les premiers juges, d’élément relatif aux dépenses professionnelles générées. Because he produced nothing on his professional expenses, the court continued: Rien au dossier ne permet d’établir que les revenus que M. B… tire de son activité lui auraient assuré, à la date de la décision contestée, des moyens suffisants d’existence. The court added that half of the year’s turnover had been made in the final quarter, including an invoice issued after the date of the contested order, which could not retrospectively prove sufficient means at the decision date. The refusal was upheld, and the removal order fell with it only in the sense that the court held: Il résulte de ce que précède que M. B… n’est pas fondé à soutenir que l’obligation de quitter le territoire français serait illégale par voie de conséquence de l’illégalité du refus de titre de séjour. The logic cuts both ways and helps British applicants: destroy the refusal and the attached removal order falls as its consequence; fail against the refusal and the removal order stands.

When you receive a refusal, three levels of challenge exist and they can be combined. First, the informal and hierarchical appeals: you may ask the prefect to reconsider, which is called a recours gracieux, and you may appeal to the Minister of the Interior, which is called a recours hiérarchique. These cost nothing, keep dialogue open, and allow you to add the missing evidence, but they do not suspend the time limit for court action, so they must never be used alone. Second, the court challenge for excess of power before the administrative tribunal, which asks the judge to annul the refusal and, by consequence, the attached removal order. Article R421-1 of the Code de justice administrative, the administrative justice code, sets the deadline: La juridiction ne peut être saisie que par voie de recours formé contre une décision, et ce, dans les deux mois à partir de la notification ou de la publication de la décision attaquée. Two months from notification is short, and for removal orders specific shorter time limits can apply, so the decision must be shown to a lawyer within days, not weeks. Third, where departure is imminent or the business would collapse before judgment, emergency interim proceedings allow you to ask the urgent-applications judge to suspend the decision. Article L521-1 of the administrative justice code provides: Quand une décision administrative, même de rejet, fait l’objet d’une requête en annulation ou en réformation, le juge des référés, saisi d’une demande en ce sens, peut ordonner la suspension de l’exécution de cette décision, ou de certains de ses effets, lorsque l’urgence le justifie et qu’il est fait état d’un moyen propre à créer, en l’état de l’instruction, un doute sérieux quant à la légalité de la décision. Urgency plus a serious doubt about legality is therefore the combination that freezes a removal order while the main case is heard.

The file you build decides the outcome more than any speech in court. For an entrepreneur refusal, assemble proof of viability and means as the courts measure them: dated contracts and order books rather than hopes, bank statements showing reserves, complete accounts distinguishing gross turnover from net income after professional expenses, tax notices and URSSAF statements proving declared activity, qualification certificates and client references, and any outside validation such as an accountant’s letter or a bank’s financing offer. Answer precisely the ground stated in the refusal: if the prefecture says the means are insufficient, prove net means month by month; if it says the business is not viable, bring forward contracts and pipeline; if it doubts the reality of the activity, show invoices, payments received, and premises or tools. Never manufacture an invoice after the decision and pretend it proves the earlier situation, because the Lyon judgment shows that later documents are discounted. And never let a deadline pass while waiting for a friendly reply from the administration: file the court challenge protectively within the time limit even while settlement talks continue.

Conclusion

A British freelancer can build a lawful life in France after Brexit, but the path is narrower than it was before 2021 and it rewards preparation. Enter on the correct long-stay entrepreneur visa, apply for the one-year entrepreneur/profession libérale card with a file that proves viability, sufficient means and matching qualifications, register through the single window with the right body, and run the micro-enterprise with clean monthly or quarterly declarations for tax and URSSAF. Treat the prefecture’s economic test as seriously as a business plan for investors, because the courts do: forecasts without outside support fail, salaried earnings do not count as freelance income, and turnover without proof of expenses does not prove sufficient means. If a refusal arrives, read it as a legal document from day one, identify whether it carries an order to leave, gather the exact missing evidence, and challenge it through reconsideration, ministerial appeal and the administrative court within the time limits, asking the urgent-applications judge to suspend removal where needed. Handled this way, most difficulties of the British self-employed in France are not questions of luck but questions of proof, and proof is something a well-advised freelancer can control.

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