Your French company needs 30,000 euros next week to pay a supplier, cover payroll or top up its cash, and you are sitting in London, Dubai, New York or Singapore wondering whether you can simply wire the money from your personal account. The answer is yes, and thousands of foreign founders do exactly that every year, but the wire itself is only the beginning. Under French law that transfer is a shareholder advance on current account, known as an apport en compte courant d’associé, a genuine loan from you to your company with its own rules on paperwork, interest, repayment and tax. Get the paperwork right and the advance becomes cheap, flexible financing that you can reclaim at any time. Get it wrong and the interest is taxed twice, the repayment gets frozen when the company hits trouble, or the tax office reclassifies your payment as something far more expensive. This guide walks you through the full journey in plain English, with the exact French statutes and court decisions that govern each step, so you can fund your Société par actions simplifiée (SAS, the flexible joint-stock company most foreigners choose) or your Société à responsabilité limitée (SARL, the limited liability company with tighter rules) from abroad without creating a time bomb.

I. Putting Money Into Your French Company Through a Shareholder Current Account

A. Can a foreign owner legally lend money to a French company, and what paperwork does the advance require

French law expressly recognises the practice. The French General Tax Code allows the deduction of “Les intérêts servis aux associés à raison des sommes qu’ils laissent ou mettent à la disposition de la société, en sus de leur part du capital, quelle que soit la forme de la société”, which is the tax-law fingerprint of your wire: sums you leave or make available to the company on top of your share of its capital, whatever the company’s legal form. Read the full provision on the official Légifrance site here: Article 39, 1, 3° of the Code général des impôts (General Tax Code). Neither your foreign residence nor your foreign bank account changes that analysis. What matters is that the advance is documented, recorded and approved as a loan, not confused with a capital contribution or a gift.

Start with a written advance agreement, even if you own one hundred percent of the company. A one-page convention de compte courant (current account agreement) signed before or at the same time as the wire should state the amount, the currency, whether the advance is repayable on demand or locked for a fixed period, the interest rate or its absence, and the repayment mechanics. Sign it electronically, keep the signed copy with the company’s legal records, and label the wire itself clearly, for example “shareholder advance on current account”, so that no one can later argue the money was extra capital, hidden salary or a donation. Your French accountant will book the advance as a liability on the company’s balance sheet, which is exactly where advances on current account belong: as one French court recently recalled, “Les avances en compte courant sont donc enregistrées au passif du bilan de la société” (French court, 16 September 2025, case no. 25/00688). That accounting treatment protects you, because it makes your creditor status visible to banks, auditors and, if things ever go wrong, to the insolvency court.

One direction of travel is strictly forbidden, and foreign owners sometimes discover this the hard way. The company must never lend to you. In a SARL, “A peine de nullité du contrat, il est interdit aux gérants ou associés autres que les personnes morales de contracter, sous quelque forme que ce soit, des emprunts auprès de la société, de se faire consentir par elle un découvert, en compte courant ou autrement, ainsi que de faire cautionner ou avaliser par elle leurs engagements envers les tiers”. Full text: Article L223-21 of the Code de commerce (Commercial Code). In a public limited company the mirror rule provides that “A peine de nullité du contrat, il est interdit aux administrateurs autres que les personnes morales de contracter, sous quelque forme que ce soit, des emprunts auprès de la société, de se faire consentir par elle un découvert, en compte courant ou autrement, ainsi que de faire cautionner ou avaliser par elle leurs engagements envers les tiers”. Full text: Article L225-43 of the Code de commerce. Any such loan is void, meaning legally non-existent, and the ban extends to your spouse, parents, children and any intermediary. Money flows from shareholder to company, never the reverse, unless you want the contract annulled and the auditor to qualify the accounts.

If the lender is not you personally but your foreign parent company, a parallel channel exists for cash moving inside a corporate group. French banking-monopoly rules provide that “Les interdictions définies à l’article L. 511-5 ne font pas obstacle à ce qu’une entreprise, quelle que soit sa nature, puisse” “Procéder à des opérations de trésorerie avec des sociétés ayant avec elle, directement ou indirectement, des liens de capital conférant à l’une des entreprises liées un pouvoir de contrôle effectif sur les autres”. Full text: Article L511-7 of the Code monétaire et financier (Monetary and Financial Code). A foreign holding company that genuinely controls its French subsidiary can therefore organise treasury advances to it. The exemption covers companies linked by control, so document the control chain and keep the treasury agreement at arm’s length, because the tax deductibility of the interest then follows a separate set of rules examined below.

Finally, your advance must survive the related-party procedure, the conventions réglementées regime that polices deals between a company and its own insiders. In a SARL, “Le gérant ou, s’il en existe un, le commissaire aux comptes, présente à l’assemblée ou joint aux documents communiqués aux associés en cas de consultation écrite, un rapport sur les conventions intervenues directement ou par personnes interposées entre la société et l’un de ses gérants ou associés”, and “Le gérant ou l’associé intéressé ne peut prendre part au vote et ses parts ne sont pas prises en compte pour le calcul du quorum et de la majorité”. Full text: Article L223-19 of the Code de commerce. In a SAS, “Le commissaire aux comptes ou, s’il n’en a pas été désigné, le président de la société présente aux associés un rapport sur les conventions intervenues directement ou par personne interposée entre la société et son président, l’un de ses dirigeants, l’un de ses actionnaires disposant d’une fraction des droits de vote supérieure à 10 % ou, s’il s’agit d’une société actionnaire, la société la contrôlant au sens de l’article L. 233-3”, and “Les conventions non approuvées, produisent néanmoins leurs effets, à charge pour la personne intéressée et éventuellement pour le président et les autres dirigeants d’en supporter les conséquences dommageables pour la société”. Full text: Article L227-10 of the Code de commerce. In practice this means a short report, a shareholder vote from which you abstain when you are the interested party, and a mention in the register of decisions if you are the sole shareholder. From abroad you can sign the written consultation and return it by email to the company’s registered office, the siège social, but do it every year the advance remains outstanding, because an undocumented insider loan is the first thing a tax inspector or a bankruptcy judge will attack.

B. Can your French company pay you interest, deduct it from taxable profit, and what does your life abroad change

Yes, your company can pay you interest, and that interest can reduce the company’s taxable profit, but only inside a strict ceiling and only if the company’s share capital is fully paid up. The rule, worth reading in full, states that deductible interest means “Les intérêts servis aux associés à raison des sommes qu’ils laissent ou mettent à la disposition de la société, en sus de leur part du capital, quelle que soit la forme de la société, dans la limite de ceux calculés à un taux égal à la moyenne annuelle des taux effectifs moyens pratiqués par les établissements de crédit et les sociétés de financement pour des prêts à taux variable aux entreprises, d’une durée initiale supérieure à deux ans”, and it adds that “Cette déduction est subordonnée à la condition que le capital ait été entièrement libéré”. Source: Article 39, 1, 3° of the Code général des impôts. Three practical lessons follow for a founder wiring money from abroad.

First, check that the capital is fully liberated before you charge a single euro of interest. Capital is libéré when every shareholder has actually paid in the full amount of the shares subscribed at incorporation, and the Kbis extract, the company’s official identity card issued by the greffe (the registry office of the commercial court) through the INPI single window, the guichet unique, will not tell you that: your accountant’s capital account will. Many foreign founders incorporate a SAS with 1,000 euros of capital, pay in only half at the start, which the law allows, and then advance 50,000 euros from London while charging interest. The interest on those 50,000 euros is then entirely non-deductible until the missing 500 euros of capital are paid in. If your company is still in that situation, complete the liberation first through the procedure our pillar guide describes for getting registered and operational: Setting Up a Company in France as a Foreign Founder: Bank Account, Kbis, VAT and Your First Hire. It costs one wire and saves the whole deduction.

Second, cap the rate at the legal ceiling in force when the financial year closes. The ceiling is a floating average of the effective rates banks charge businesses for variable-rate loans longer than two years, recalculated on a rolling annual basis, so it moves with the credit market and you cannot simply copy last year’s figure. Ask your accountant for the rate applicable to the closing date, write exactly that rate, or a lower one, into the advance agreement, and apply it pro rata to the time the money was actually available to the company. Any excess over the ceiling stays taxable at the company level: it is added back to profit and taxed at the standard impôt sur les sociétés (IS, French corporate income tax) rate. Charging zero interest is always allowed and is often the smartest move for a young company, because it avoids all computation, all withholding questions and all disputes, at the price of leaving money on the table.

Third, understand how your residence abroad affects the interest once it leaves France. Interest paid by a French company to a lender who lives outside France can suffer French withholding tax at source before it reaches your foreign account, and the rate depends on the tax treaty between France and your country of residence, which may reduce it or eliminate it entirely upon presentation of a certificate of tax residence. The mechanics are the same treaty-and-form machinery as for cross-border dividends, which we explain step by step here: How a Foreign Owner Is Taxed on French Dividends: Withholding, Treaties and Refunds From Abroad. Tell your accountant before the first interest payment where you are tax-resident, keep a current residence certificate on file, and never assume the treaty rate applies automatically. And keep interest and dividends conceptually separate: interest rewards your loan and is deductible for the company within the ceiling, while dividends reward your shares, are never deductible, and follow the withholding-and-treaty path of that companion guide. Mixing the two, for example by relabelling a dividend as interest to deduct it, is exactly the kind of reclassification the tax office loves.

Where the lender is your foreign company rather than yourself, a second ceiling can apply on top of the first. Interest on sums made available to a French borrower by an associated company is deductible “Dans la limite de ceux calculés d’après le taux prévu au premier alinéa du 3° du 1 du même article 39 ou, s’ils sont supérieurs, d’après le taux que cette entreprise emprunteuse aurait pu obtenir d’établissements ou d’organismes financiers indépendants dans des conditions analogues”. Source: Article 212, I of the Code général des impôts. In plain terms, intra-group interest must survive comparison with what an independent bank would have charged the French subsidiary in similar circumstances, so keep evidence that the rate is arm’s length: a bank term sheet, a group treasury policy, or at minimum a written memo comparing the rate to market data. That file is your shield if the transfer-pricing team of the tax office ever opens the drawer.

II. Getting Your Money Back From Abroad, Even When the Company Struggles

A. When can you demand repayment from abroad, how does the five-year clock work, and what forces the company to pay

The default rule is remarkably lender-friendly. Where neither the articles of association, the statuts, nor a current account agreement sets a term, your advance is repayable whenever you ask. A French court recently restated the principle in these terms: “En l’absence de précision dans les statuts ou une convention de compte courant, la créance de l’associé à l’égard de la société est remboursable à tout moment”. The same decision adds the striking corollary that “Lorsque l’associé réclame le remboursement de son compte courant, la société ne peut pas le refuser (même en raison de difficultés financières)”, and that “Elle ne peut pas non plus limiter le remboursement au montant que sa trésorerie peut supporter”. Source: judgment of 16 September 2025, case no. 25/00688, full text on the official Cour de cassation portal: Tribunal judiciaire, 16 September 2025, no. 25/00688. Note the two safety valves the court preserves in the same breath: “En revanche, la société peut réclamer des délais de paiement (limités à 2 ans) pour rembourser le compte courant”, and “Une limite est toutefois prévue : la demande de remboursement doit être effectuée de bonne foi et ne doit pas être abusive au détriment de la société”. In practice, then, a demand for immediate repayment of the full balance on the eve of payroll, designed to sink a company you are fighting with, can backfire, while a documented demand followed by reasonable negotiation almost always succeeds.

Before that, anchor the legal nature of your claim, because everything about limitation periods and insolvency ranking flows from it. The same court explains that “Le compte courant d’associé s’analyse en un prêt qui donne à l’associé ou au dirigeant prêteur la qualité de créancier social” (French court, 16 September 2025, case no. 25/00688). You are a creditor like any other, your claim sits among the company’s liabilities, and you enforce it with a creditor’s remedies. The Cour de cassation confirmed the other half of the equation this year: an advance with no agreed term is a loan of undetermined duration, and the limitation clock for suing to recover it starts only when you formally demand payment. Ruling on a disputed 1.6 million euro balance, the court held that “la créance de la société Loma à l’égard de la société Fleur’s Flat n’était pas une créance de compte courant mais une créance rattachée à une participation et donc un prêt à durée indéterminée, et que l’action en remboursement introduite par Mme [Z] [X] le 19 janvier 2016 n’était pas prescrite, le délai de prescription n’ayant commencé à courir qu’à compter de la mise en demeure délivrée le 15 janvier 2016” (Cass. com., 18 June 2025, no. 24-14.829). Source: Cour de cassation, commercial chamber, 18 June 2025, appeal no. 24-14.829, ECLI:FR:CCASS:2025:CO00344. The general civil limitation rule behind that outcome is that “Les actions personnelles ou mobilières se prescrivent par cinq ans à compter du jour où le titulaire d’un droit a connu ou aurait dû connaître les faits lui permettant de l’exercer”. Source: Article 2224 of the Code civil (Civil Code). Concretely, your five years run from the formal demand, the mise en demeure, not from the day you wired the funds, which is why the demand letter is the most important document of the whole process.

From abroad, run the recovery as a disciplined three-step sequence. First, send a written demand for repayment to the siège social by registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt, the lettre recommandée avec accusé de réception, which La Poste delivers internationally and which French courts treat as the gold standard of proof, stating the exact balance from the company accounts, the agreement it rests on, and a payment deadline of fifteen to thirty days. Second, if the deadline passes, have a French lawyer serve a formal mise en demeure and immediately file an injonction de payer, the fast-track payment-order procedure before the commercial court that forces the debtor to pay or object within a short window; the full playbook, written for foreign creditors chasing French debtors, is here: French Customer Won’t Pay Your Invoice? How a Foreign Company Recovers the Debt in France. Third, if the company genuinely cannot pay rather than will not pay, read the next section before seizing anything, because forcing payment from an insolvent company can be unwound and can drag you into the insolvency as a person of interest rather than a simple creditor.

Two drafting choices made today decide how easy step one will be tomorrow. If you want maximum flexibility, write “repayable on demand” into the agreement and keep the five-year clock dormant until you choose to start it with a demand letter. If the company needs stability to borrow from a bank, agree a compte courant bloqué, a locked advance that neither you nor the company can call for, say, three or five years, often in exchange for a higher rate within the tax ceiling. Banks love locked advances because they behave like quasi-equity, and some loan agreements even require the shareholder to lock the advance as a condition of the bank’s own lending. Either choice is valid; what is dangerous is silence, because silence means repayable at any time, including the worst possible time for the company, and that surprise is what turns a friendly founder loan into a shareholder dispute.

B. What happens to your advance if the company enters safeguard, restructuring or liquidation, and how a director-owner can become personally exposed

The day a French court opens sauvegarde (safeguard), redressement judiciaire (court-supervised restructuring) or liquidation judiciaire (court-ordered liquidation), your repayment rights freeze by operation of law. The statute provides that “Le jugement ouvrant la procédure emporte, de plein droit, interdiction de payer toute créance née antérieurement au jugement d’ouverture, à l’exception du paiement par compensation de créances connexes”. Source: Article L622-7 of the Code de commerce. Because your advance was necessarily born before the opening judgment, the company is forbidden from repaying you, even voluntarily, even partially, even though you live abroad and the money feels like yours. Any payment made in breach of the freeze can be unwound, and a director who authorises it faces personal criticism from the court. So the moment you hear that a French insolvency has been opened against your company, stop pressing for a wire and switch to declaration mode.

Declaration is mandatory and time-sensitive. The law states that “A partir de la publication du jugement, tous les créanciers dont la créance est née antérieurement au jugement d’ouverture, à l’exception des salariés, adressent la déclaration de leurs créances au mandataire judiciaire dans des délais fixés par décret en Conseil d’Etat”. Source: Article L622-24 of the Code de commerce. The mandataire judiciaire is the court-appointed insolvency representative who collects and verifies claims, and the opening judgment is published in the BODACC, the Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales, the official gazette where French insolvency notices appear. From abroad, instruct a French lawyer the week the judgment appears: the declaration must state the exact balance, attach the advance agreement, the wire slips and the company accounts showing the liability, and elect domicile in France for service of court documents, because notices will not chase you to your foreign address. Miss the declaration deadline and your claim is shut out of any distribution, which for an unsecured shareholder advance usually means losing everything. Declare on time and you at least sit at the table, generally alongside the ordinary unsecured creditors, with a vote on the restructuring plan and a dividend if the plan or the liquidation produces one.

Paris-based founders should picture the concrete circuit. A company whose siège social is in Paris is handled by the Paris commercial court, filings and claims pass through court-appointed representatives practising in Paris, and every procedural notice lands at the siège social, not at your home abroad. Keep a reliable address for service in France, whether your lawyer’s office, your accountant or a domiciliation company, and check it weekly once difficulties appear. The earlier companion guide on blocked registrations shows how unforgiving French registries and courts are with paperwork served from abroad: Your French Kbis Is Blocked and You Live Abroad: INPI Single Window, Greffe Rejection and How to Get Registered From Abroad. The same discipline applies here, with money rather than registration on the line.

Finally, understand the personal-exposure line if you are both lender and director. As a pure shareholder-lender you risk only the money advanced. But if you are also the président of the SAS, the gérant of the SARL, or a de facto manager giving the orders from abroad, a liquidation that reveals a shortfall can reach your personal assets where management fault contributed to it. The statute warns that “Lorsque la liquidation judiciaire d’une personne morale fait apparaître une insuffisance d’actif, le tribunal peut, en cas de faute de gestion ayant contribué à cette insuffisance d’actif, décider que le montant de cette insuffisance d’actif sera supporté, en tout ou en partie, par tous les dirigeants de droit ou de fait, ou par certains d’entre eux, ayant contribué à la faute de gestion”. Source: Article L651-2 of the Code de commerce. Funding the company with documented shareholder advances is the opposite of management fault: it shows an owner supporting the business. What draws liability is the shadow side, continuing loss-making trading with no prospect, paying yourself back in preference to other creditors, or keeping no accounts that record the advance at all. Keep the loan file clean, stop taking repayments the moment insolvency looks likely, and file for court protection within the legal deadline once the company cannot meet its due debts with available cash, and your advance remains what it should be: a creditor’s claim, not a rod for your own back.

Conclusion

A shareholder advance on current account is the most natural way for a foreign owner to finance a French company: fast, flexible and repayable on demand when the paperwork says so. Make it a real loan with a signed agreement, a recorded balance-sheet liability and a shareholder vote, keep interest inside the statutory ceiling with capital fully paid up, and start the five-year clock with a proper demand letter when you want the money back. Treat the advance with the same seriousness as a bank loan file, because every French authority you may one day face, the tax inspector checking the interest deduction, the commercial court judge freezing payments, the insolvency representative verifying your declaration, will read that file before deciding your fate. Fund boldly, document relentlessly, and declare immediately if protection proceedings open: those three reflexes turn a simple wire from abroad into financing your French company can build on.

Need a quick opinion on your case

You lent money to your French company, or you are about to, and you want the paperwork, the interest and the repayment secured. Call 06 46 60 58 22 for a telephone consultation within 48 hours with a lawyer of the firm, or write via our contact page. Bring your advance agreement, your company accounts and your latest Kbis: we will tell you what is deductible, what is repayable, and what to file first.