You run a French company from London, New York, Dubai or Singapore. Since 1 September 2026, your French subsidiary or société par actions simplifiée (SAS, the flexible limited company most foreign founders choose) can no longer simply email PDF invoices to its French business customers. France has switched on mandatory electronic invoicing between VAT-registered businesses, with a second wave on 1 September 2027, and the tax administration (Direction générale des finances publiques, DGFIP) now receives a live feed of your billing data. A director living abroad who ignores the reform faces rejected VAT deductions, a fine of 50 euros per invoice, and customers who cannot pay an invoice that never arrived through the official circuit. This guide explains, in English and with the exact legal texts, who must do what and by when, which channel to use for each type of sale, how to build a compliant invoicing chain from abroad, and how to challenge a reassessment or a fine without flying to Paris.

I. Who must send electronic invoices in France since 1 September 2026 and what it changes for a company run from abroad

The reform is not a pilot project and it is not optional. It comes from article 26 of Law No. 2022-1157 of 16 August 2022 on the amended finance law for 2022 (law of 16 August 2022), implemented by Decree No. 2022-1299 of 7 October 2022 on the generalisation of electronic invoicing in transactions between persons liable for value added tax (decree of 7 October 2022). The Ministry of the Economy confirms that the reform entered into force on 1 September 2026: La réforme de la facturation électronique entre entreprises est entrée en vigueur le 1er septembre 2026 (ministry page on electronic invoicing). Over ten million businesses are concerned, including every company you run through the French commercial register (Registre du commerce et des sociétés, RCS), identified by its SIREN number and proven by its Kbis certificate issued by the greffe, the court clerk’s office. Your size, your sector and the fact that you live abroad change nothing: if your company is established in France and liable for French VAT, it is inside the reform.

A. All companies receive from 1 September 2026, large companies issue first: the calendar to 1 September 2027

The calendar works in two waves, and the distinction between receiving and issuing is the key to your first decisions. Since 1 September 2026, toutes les entreprises, quelle que soit leur taille, doivent être en mesure de recevoir des factures électroniques: every business, whatever its size, must be able to receive electronic invoices (official calendar of the reform). In practice, your French company must therefore already have a reception solution connected to the national directory (annuaire), the register that identifies every business subject to the obligations and routes invoices to the right platform. A supplier who sends you a compliant electronic invoice must find your company in that directory; if your company is absent or unreachable, invoices get lost and your own VAT deduction is delayed.

The obligation to issue electronic invoices follows your size. Since 1 September 2026, les grandes entreprises et les entreprises de taille intermédiaire doivent émettre l’intégralité de leurs factures au format électronique et transmettre leurs données de e-reporting: large companies and intermediate-sized companies (ETI) must issue all their invoices in electronic format and transmit their e-reporting data (official calendar of the reform). The second wave comes on 1 September 2027: les petites et micro-entreprises doivent être en capacité d’émettre électroniquement leurs factures et de transmettre leurs données de e-reporting (official calendar of the reform). Most foreign-owned French subsidiaries are small or medium-sized, so they usually fall in the 2027 wave for issuing, but they must receive electronically from 2026 and many already face large customers who demand electronic invoices now. Anticipating the 2027 deadline is therefore the commercially sensible course, and it is exactly what your annual legal calendar should record alongside the approval of accounts and tax filings described in our guide to the annual legal calendar of a French company run from abroad.

The legal foundation of the issuing duty sits in the General Tax Code (Code général des impôts, CGI). Article 289 of the CGI states the universal rule: Tout assujetti est tenu de s’assurer qu’une facture est émise, par lui-même, ou en son nom et pour son compte, par son client ou par un tiers (article 289 of the General Tax Code). Article 289 bis adds the electronic form for the transactions covered by the reform, and article 290 organises the parallel data feed: Les assujettis qui sont établis ou ont leur domicile ou leur résidence habituelle en France communiquent à l’administration sous forme électronique, selon des normes de transmission définies par arrêté du ministre chargé du budget, les données relatives aux opérations suivantes (article 290 of the General Tax Code). Commercial law mirrors the duty: Tout achat de produits ou toute prestation de service pour une activité professionnelle fait l’objet d’une facturation. Le vendeur est tenu de délivrer la facture dès la réalisation de la livraison ou de la prestation de services (article L. 441-9 of the Commercial Code). From abroad, the consequence is direct: your company must be registered for VAT with the DGFIP (article 286 of the General Tax Code), a step detailed in our guide to French VAT registration for companies run from abroad, because without a French VAT number there is no compliant invoice and no directory entry.

B. E-invoicing, e-reporting and Chorus Pro: which channel for each sale when you invoice from abroad

Foreign directors constantly confuse three circuits, and using the wrong one is the most frequent source of unpaid invoices. E-invoicing (e-invoicing) covers domestic business-to-business sales between French VAT-registered persons: the invoice travels in a structured format through an approved platform (plateforme agréée) or a dematerialisation operator connected to one, with real-time status tracking and timestamping. E-reporting (e-reporting) covers everything else that the administration still wants to see: sales to private consumers, intra-Community supplies to VAT-registered customers in other EU Member States, exports outside the EU, and payment data. For those flows there is no electronic invoice to the customer, but your company transmits the transaction data to the administration through its platform, under article 290 of the CGI (article 290 of the General Tax Code). Chorus Pro, the State portal, is reserved for invoices addressed to public entities; it does not carry your private B2B invoices (ministry page: Chorus Pro for public-entity invoices).

Concretely, a Paris SAS owned from abroad sorts its sales as follows. Sales to French VAT-registered customers go by e-invoicing in a structured format such as Factur-X, the Franco-German standard that combines a readable PDF with embedded machine-readable data. Sales to a German VAT-registered distributor, to an American client or to French consumers go by e-reporting of the data, with the commercial invoice issued under the usual international rules. Sales to a French municipality or hospital go through Chorus Pro. Each circuit has its own deadlines and its own proof: the platform’s timestamp and delivery statuses for e-invoicing, the transmission receipt for e-reporting, the Chorus Pro deposit number for public contracts. Mixing them up means the customer never legally receives the invoice, the payment clock never starts, and your recovery action for unpaid French invoices starts with an evidential handicap.

One administrative step conditions everything: choosing the platform and joining the directory. The administration publishes the list of approved platforms, and your company selects one that accepts non-resident directors, handles English-language support, connects to your foreign accounting software and covers both e-invoicing and e-reporting. Registration in the directory (annuaire) makes your company addressable: it is the register used to identify the businesses subject to the obligations and to route their invoices (ministry page on the directory). A company run from abroad should mandate this step in writing, keep the platform contract and the directory registration receipt with its corporate records, and designate who inside the company validates invoices before sending, because the director remains liable for what the platform sends in the company’s name.

II. How to make your French company compliant from abroad, what a mistake costs and how to challenge the bill

Compliance from abroad is an organisation question before it is a software question. The director who lives in another country must reproduce at a distance what a Paris-based manager does on site: verify each invoice’s mandatory mentions, send it through the right channel, store it for the tax limitation period, and reconcile the VAT return with the transmitted data. The courts show zero tolerance for approximate invoicing, and two recent decisions set the tone: the Commercial Chamber of the Court of Cassation on 1 October 2025 on VAT deduction deadlines, and the Council of State on 22 July 2025 on wrongly charged VAT and corrective invoices. Both deserve a close reading, because they decide whether your company recovers its VAT or pays twice.

A. The compliant invoice sent from abroad: approved platform, directory, Factur-X and the VAT deduction at stake

A compliant French B2B invoice carries the mentions listed by the tax and commercial rules: names and addresses of the parties, SIREN numbers, VAT numbers, date, sequential number, description and quantity of goods or services, unit prices, applicable VAT rates, totals excluding and including tax, payment deadline, and late-payment penalties rate. The platform adds the structured layer and the official statuses, but it does not cure a wrong mention. That is where the Council of State decision of 22 July 2025, No. 472910, matters for every foreign director (Council of State, 22 July 2025, No. 472910). A services company had invoiced VAT without paying it over to the Treasury, then issued corrective invoices removing the VAT and asked for discharge. The Council recalled the two pillars of the system. First, the deduction rule: Celle qui figure sur les factures établies conformément aux dispositions de l’article 289 et si la taxe pouvait légalement figurer sur lesdites factures, with the deduction barred si les redevables ne sont pas en possession (…) desdites factures, under article 271 of the CGI (article 271 of the General Tax Code). Second, the invoicing trap: Toute personne qui mentionne la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée sur une facture est redevable de la taxe du seul fait de sa facturation, under article 283 of the CGI (article 283 of the General Tax Code). Wrong VAT on the invoice means VAT owed by the mere fact of invoicing, and the customer cannot safely deduct it.

The same decision closes the escape route that many directors imagine. When the risk of lost tax revenue is not fully eliminated, typically because the customer may already have deducted the wrongly mentioned VAT, la régularisation de la taxe indûment facturée est subordonnée, en l’absence de texte en disposant autrement, à la condition que l’émetteur de la facture soit de bonne foi et à celle qu’il corrige l’erreur commise en adressant à son client une facture rectificative (Council of State, 22 July 2025, No. 472910). The company’s appeal was rejected and it paid. For a company run from abroad, the lesson is operational: check the VAT rate before sending, because a corrective invoice sent months later does not automatically erase the debt, and proving good faith from another country, with staff turnover and platform logs scattered across providers, is an uphill evidentiary battle. Keep the contract qualifying the transaction, the delivery proof, the VAT-rate analysis and the platform’s transmission log together, invoice by invoice.

The second discipline is time. In its decision of 1 October 2025, No. 24-14.456, the Commercial Chamber of the Court of Cassation held: Il résulte de la combinaison de ces textes que le client d’un assujetti, lorsque cet assujetti a opté pour le paiement de la TVA d’après les débits, doit déclarer la TVA déductible figurant sur les factures dans le mois de leur réception et au plus tard le 31 décembre de la deuxième année suivante. A défaut de déclaration dans ces délais, le crédit de TVA ne peut donner lieu ni à imputation ni à remboursement (Court of Cassation, Commercial Chamber, 1 October 2025, No. 24-14.456). A company that receives invoices and files them without declaring the deductible VAT in time definitively loses the credit: no set-off, no refund. Applied to your situation, this means the e-invoicing platform is not a mailbox you empty at year-end. Invoices received electronically must flow into monthly VAT control, with a named person responsible for matching platform receipts to the VAT return, especially when the director approves accounts from abroad months later. Our guide to French tax audits run from abroad shows how inspectors exploit exactly these reconciliation gaps during a documentary check.

Finally, store everything in France-accessible form. Commercial law requires each party to keep a copy of every invoice within the time limits set by tax law (article L. 441-9 of the Commercial Code), and the platform’s archive does not replace your company’s own probative storage with guaranteed integrity and readability for the full limitation period. A director abroad should verify that the archiving contract designates the French company as owner of its archives, that exports remain possible if the platform provider changes, and that the statutory auditor (commissaire aux comptes, the external auditor required above certain thresholds) or the accountant can access the archive during the audit of the annual accounts.

B. Fifty euros per invoice, late-payment penalties and how to challenge a reassessment from abroad

The price of non-compliance is written in figures. Article 1737 of the CGI punishes with 15 euros any omission or inaccuracy found in invoices, capped per invoice at one quarter of the invoiced amount, and above all it creates a specific e-invoicing fine: Le non-respect par l’assujetti de l’obligation d’émission d’une facture sous une forme électronique dans les conditions prévues à l’article 289 bis donne lieu à l’application d’une amende de 50 € par facture, sans que le total des amendes appliquées au titre d’une même année civile puisse être supérieur à 15 000 € (article 1737 of the General Tax Code). Fifty euros per invoice, capped at 15,000 euros per calendar year, applies invoice by invoice: a company issuing two hundred non-compliant invoices in 2027 pays 10,000 euros before any VAT reassessment. Platforms that fail their data-transmission duties face their own 50-euro fine per invoice, which your platform contract should pass through or guarantee against.

Alongside tax fines, commercial payment discipline still applies and still starts with the invoice. Article L. 441-10 of the Commercial Code provides that le délai de règlement des sommes dues ne peut dépasser trente jours après la date de réception des marchandises ou d’exécution de la prestation demandée. Le délai convenu entre les parties pour régler les sommes dues ne peut dépasser soixante jours après la date d’émission de la facture (article L. 441-10 of the Commercial Code). In an electronic circuit, the issue date and the reception timestamp are system-generated, which simplifies proof but also removes excuses: the sixty-day ceiling runs from a date the platform certifies. Late-payment penalties and the fixed recovery indemnity then accrue automatically, and your general terms must state the agreed deadline and the penalties rate to let the platform carry them onto the invoice.

If the administration reassesses VAT or imposes the 50-euro fines, the director abroad is not defenceless, but the procedure rewards speed and documents. The Ministry has announced that the start-up phase follows une approche de bienveillance et de tolérance de l’administration à l’égard des entreprises qui rencontrent des difficultés, an approach of goodwill and tolerance toward businesses facing difficulties (ministry page on the reform’s tolerant start-up phase). Tolerance is not amnesty: it benefits the company that shows a platform contract, directory registration, staff training records and a remediation plan, not the company that ignored the reform. On receipt of a proposed reassessment, file a written reply within the stated deadline with the platform logs, the corrective invoices where relevant, and the good-faith evidence the Council of State requires, then lodge a formal tax claim with the DGFIP service that issued the notice, and if rejected, appeal to the administrative court. The claim deadlines run from reception of the notice, so a director abroad must organise immediate forwarding of every tax letter received at the French registered office, ideally through a monitored scan-and-forward routine with the domiciliation agent or accountant, because a missed deadline closes the dispute before it opens.

Three reflexes protect the company while the dispute runs. First, pay what is clearly owed and challenge the rest expressly, to stop late-payment interest on the conceded part. Second, request a payment schedule in writing where cash flow is at stake, documenting the request. Third, never issue backdated or fictitious corrective invoices to manufacture good faith: article 1737 punishes invoices that do not correspond to a real supply with a fine of 50 percent of the invoice amount (article 1737 of the General Tax Code), and a fabricated correction converts a billing dispute into a fraud file. The Vectrance ruling shows that judges examine whether the customer could still use the wrong invoice and whether the issuer genuinely corrected its error; platform timestamps, customer attestations that the corrective invoice was received, and proof that the customer reversed its deduction are the exhibits that win.

Conclusion

Since 1 September 2026, every French company must be able to receive electronic invoices, large and intermediate-sized companies must already issue them with e-reporting, and small companies follow on 1 September 2027. For a business run from abroad, the reform is managed like any French compliance duty: a VAT number in order, an approved platform connected to the directory, correct mentions checked before sending, monthly reconciliation of received invoices with the VAT return, and tax mail forwarded the day it arrives. The texts set the stakes precisely, 50 euros per non-compliant invoice up to 15,000 euros a year, VAT owed by the mere fact of wrong invoicing, and deduction rights lost when declaration deadlines pass. The two 2025 decisions quoted here confirm that judges enforce these rules to the letter while rewarding documented good faith. Put the platform, the directory and the monthly VAT routine in place now, and the reform becomes what it was designed to be: faster payment, cleaner accounts and fewer disputes.