You created or joined a French company a few years ago, life then took you abroad, and today you want out: you want to sell your shares, recover your money and close this chapter cleanly. From another country, the questions pile up fast. Can you sell to anyone you choose, or can your co-shareholders veto the buyer? Who sets the price when the other side says your shares are worth almost nothing? What tax and registration duties apply, where do you file when you no longer live in France, and what happens if the company simply blocks your exit? This guide answers each of these questions in order, for the two company forms foreign founders meet most often: the SAS (société par actions simplifiée, the flexible joint-stock company) and the SARL (société à responsabilité limitée, the limited liability company with parts sociales instead of shares). You will find the exact procedure for getting the buyer approved, the method courts use to fix the price when parties disagree, the registration duties with their rates and calculation, and the remedies available when the sale is blocked or when hidden debts surface after signing. If you are still at the stage of structuring your presence in France, our overview of setting up a company in France as a foreign founder explains the bank account, the Kbis company identity certificate, VAT and the first hire.

I. Can I Sell My Shares in My French Company While Living Abroad?

Yes. Living abroad does not take away your right to sell your shares or parts sociales. You sign, you notify, you file and you pay tax from wherever you live, using a signed deed, a representative if needed and online filing portals. But the sale is not a purely private deal between you and the buyer: French company law gives your co-shareholders, and sometimes the company itself, a say in who joins them. The first reflex before promising anything to a buyer is therefore to read your statuts, the articles of association, and to identify which approval rules apply to your company form.

A. Do My Co-Shareholders Have to Approve the Buyer of My Shares?

In an SARL, approval is the default rule imposed by statute. The law provides that « Les parts sociales ne peuvent être cédées à des tiers étrangers à la société qu’avec le consentement de la majorité des associés représentant au moins la moitié des parts sociales, à moins que les statuts prévoient une majorité plus forte. » (Article L223-14 of the Commercial Code). In plain terms, selling to an outsider requires the consent of a majority of shareholders holding at least half of the parts sociales, and your articles can only make this threshold stricter, never lighter. Sales between existing shareholders, and in most cases sales to a spouse or close family member, escape this requirement, but any sale to a genuine third party must go through it.

The procedure is formal and deadline-driven. When the company has more than one shareholder, you must notify the planned sale to the company and to each shareholder individually. If the company says nothing for three months starting from the last of these notifications, consent is deemed granted: silence means yes. This three-month clock is your best protection against a co-shareholder who stalls without daring to refuse openly, so notify properly and keep proof of every notification. From abroad, send each notification by registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt (lettre recommandée avec accusé de réception) or through a French commissaire de justice (the enforcement officer formerly called huissier), and keep copies with dates, because the starting point of every deadline depends on them.

One trap catches recent shareholders: the two-year holding condition. Apart from inheritance, liquidation of matrimonial property or gifts to a spouse, parent or child, « l’associé cédant ne peut se prévaloir des dispositions des troisième et cinquième alinéas ci-dessus s’il ne détient ses parts depuis au moins deux ans » (same Article L223-14). If you received your parts sociales less than two years ago and the company refuses your buyer, you cannot force the buyout mechanism described below. Check the date on your share transfer deed or subscription before launching the procedure.

In a SAS, the logic is reversed: nothing applies unless your articles say so. The statute simply states that « Les statuts peuvent soumettre toute cession d’actions à l’agrément préalable de la société. » (Article L227-14 of the Commercial Code). Approval (agrément) exists only if the founders wrote it into the articles, with the procedure, the voting majority and the consequences of a refusal freely defined. That freedom is double-edged: well-drafted articles organise a clean exit, while articles copied from a template may say nothing, leaving you to negotiate from scratch, or may contain a refusal without any buyout obligation. Read the transfer clauses line by line: approval clause, inalienability clause (inaliénabilité), pre-emption right (préemption), forced-sale and exclusion clauses all shape your room to sell.

The sanction for ignoring these clauses is severe and identical in spirit across company forms. In a SAS, « Toute cession effectuée en violation des clauses statutaires est nulle. » (Article L227-15 of the Commercial Code), and the same nullity applies to listed-type companies whose shares are not traded on a regulated market: « Toute cession effectuée en violation d’une clause d’agrément figurant dans les statuts est nulle. » (Article L228-23 of the Commercial Code), which also confirms that « la cession d’actions ou de valeurs mobilières donnant accès au capital, à quelque titre que ce soit, peut être soumise à l’agrément de la société par une clause des statuts » in such companies. A sale signed behind the company’s back can therefore be cancelled in court, with the price to be returned and damages possible. Never sign before confirming in writing that the approval step is either unnecessary or completed. The English-language guide of the public service for business owners describes the same sequence for an SARL: certain transfers require the shareholders’ agreement first, and where the partners refuse the proposed buyer they must acquire the shares within three months of the refusal (see the service-public.fr guide on selling SARL shares and its companion guide on selling SAS shares).

Finally, remember that your articles may also force you to sell in situations you did not anticipate. The law allows articles of a SAS to organise forced transfers: « Dans les conditions qu’ils déterminent, les statuts peuvent prévoir qu’un associé peut être tenu de céder ses actions. » (Article L227-16 of the Commercial Code). Exclusion clauses, leaver clauses for departing managers and buy-or-sell mechanisms (clause américaine) can oblige you to transfer your shares at a price and on terms you did not choose. Map every clause that mentions transfers before you contact any buyer.

B. How Is the Sale Price Fixed When Nobody Agrees?

The price is where most exits from abroad get stuck. You value the company on its growth, the remaining shareholders value it on its last balance sheet, and the buyer values it on its risks. French law offers a clear ladder: agreement first, contractual formula second, independent expert last. The public business guide summarises it well: the seller and buyer agree on the price, that price must be fixed or determinable at the time of transfer, and the deed may set criteria or a calculation method applied later, for example from the accounts or from an agreed formula (see the service-public.fr guide on selling SARL shares). In practice, insert the method into the deed itself: multiple of average operating profit over three years, net asset value adjusted for identified risks, or a fixed price plus an earn-out (complément de prix) tied to future revenue. A price that is neither fixed nor determinable from the deed invites litigation, so write the formula as carefully as the number.

When no agreement is possible, the court-appointed expert takes over. The central provision states that « la valeur de ces droits est déterminée, en cas de contestation, par un expert désigné, soit par les parties, soit à défaut d’accord entre elles, par jugement du président du tribunal judiciaire ou du tribunal de commerce compétent, statuant selon la procédure accélérée au fond et sans recours possible » (Article 1843-4 of the Civil Code). Three points matter for a seller living abroad. First, the expert is bound by any valuation rules your articles or shareholder agreement already contain: the statute says the expert applies existing contractual valuation methods where they exist, so a formula you signed years ago can decide the outcome. Second, in an SARL, the cost of this expertise falls on the company, since « Les frais d’expertise sont à la charge de la société. » (Article L223-14 of the Commercial Code). Third, in a SAS, the same expert mechanism applies by default whenever the company enforces an approval, exclusion or forced-transfer clause without the articles specifying how the price is set: « ce prix est fixé par accord entre les parties ou, à défaut, déterminé dans les conditions prévues à l’article 1843-4 du code civil » (Article L227-18 of the Commercial Code).

The courts apply this expert procedure strictly, and two recent rulings of the commercial chamber of the Court of Cassation (Cour de cassation, the highest French civil court) show how. In a 2021 case about a SAS whose articles forced a departing manager to resell his shares, the Court recalled that « Il résulte de cet article que, dans les cas où les statuts prévoient la cession des droits sociaux d’un associé ou le rachat de ces droits par la société sans que leur valeur soit ni déterminée ni déterminable » the value must be set by an expert, and it quashed the appeal ruling that had blocked the expert’s appointment (Cass. com., 17 March 2021, No. 19-14.679). The facts are typical of founder disputes: « le capital de la SAS Quimeo était détenu par M. S…, à concurrence de 57 %, et par M. C…, à concurrence de 43 % », and the departing 43% holder had to fight through several rounds simply to obtain an expert valuation. Lesson one: if your articles impose a buyback without a workable price, the expert route is your right, and a court that denies it commits an error the Court of Cassation will overturn.

Lesson two concerns appeals: do not waste months challenging the appointment itself. In a 2023 ruling, the Court held that « Il résulte de l’article 1843-4 du code civil applicable en Polynésie française que la décision par laquelle le président du tribunal procède à la désignation d’un expert chargé de déterminer la valeur de droits sociaux est sans recours possible. » (Cass. com., 15 February 2023, No. 21-18.548), adding that this absence of appeal covers cassation review like any other remedy. Translated into strategy: once the president of the court appoints the expert, the appointment stands, and your energy belongs in the valuation debate itself — contradictory expert proceedings, your own accountant’s report, and documented answers to the expert’s questions, all of which you can handle from abroad through a representative.

One last pricing tool deserves attention before signing: the asset-and-liability guarantee (garantie d’actif et de passif). Because the expert values the company on the basis of its accounts, and accounts can hide tax reassessments, social-security claims from URSSAF (the body collecting employers’ social contributions) or pending lawsuits, buyers routinely demand a contractual guarantee under which you refund hidden debts discovered after the sale, usually backed by holding back part of the price with an escrow agent (séquestre). Accept such clauses only with a capped amount, a limited duration and a clear disclosure schedule listing every risk you already revealed: what is disclosed is no longer guaranteed. The transfer deed « may contain additional guarantees », as the public guide notes (see the service-public.fr guide on selling SARL shares), so negotiate them as real clauses, not boilerplate.

II. How Do I Make the Share Sale Final, Pay the Right Tax and Unblock a Refusal?

Agreeing with the buyer is only half the journey. A share sale in France becomes fully effective and opposable to third parties through written form, notification to the company, registration of the deed with the tax office and payment of registration duties, plus updating the company’s registers. Each step has a deadline, a cost and a competent office, and missing one can delay your funds or expose you to penalties. The good news is that nearly everything can be done from abroad, increasingly online.

A. What Paperwork, Registration and Tax Apply After I Sign the Sale?

Start with a proper written deed (acte de cession). It identifies the parties, the exact number of shares or parts sociales sold, the price or the formula, the approval obtained, the guarantees and the payment terms. It can be signed by hand or electronically, and electronic signature from abroad is fully workable with a qualified provider. Then make the sale opposable to the company: notify the transfer to the company and record it in the company’s share movement register (registre des mouvements de titres) and individual shareholder accounts. Without this step, the company can lawfully keep treating you as the shareholder, keep convening you and keep paying dividends to you instead of the buyer. Ask for written confirmation that the registers were updated.

Next, register the deed with the tax administration. The rule is strict: « Doivent être enregistrés dans le délai d’un mois à compter de leur date » the deeds transferring company shares, including « Les actes portant cession d’actions, de parts de fondateurs ou de parts bénéficiaires ou cession de parts sociales dans les sociétés dont le capital n’est pas divisé en actions » (Article 635 of the General Tax Code, Code général des impôts, abbreviated CGI). You have one month from the signing date to present the deed to the business tax office (SIE, service des impôts des entreprises) of the relevant jurisdiction or to file online. Late registration triggers late-payment interest and penalties, so calendar this deadline the day you sign. If you are an individual non-resident seller and the sale is not recorded in a formal deed signed before a notary or between the parties, the tax administration now allows these sales with no signed deed to be reported online on impots.gouv.fr (see the impots.gouv.fr page for non-residents declaring a sale of company shares and the general impots.gouv.fr guide on sales of company shares).

Registration duties (droits d’enregistrement) are calculated on the sale price, and the rate depends on what you sell (Article 726 of the General Tax Code). For shares of a SAS or any joint-stock company whose shares are not traded on a regulated market, the duty is 0.1% of the price. For parts sociales of companies whose capital is not divided into shares, typically an SARL, the rate is 3%, but with a valuable allowance: « il est appliqué sur la valeur de chaque part sociale un abattement égal au rapport entre la somme de 23 000 € et le nombre total de parts sociales de la société ». Take a concrete example: you sell 100 parts sociales of an SARL with 500 parts in total for 100,000 euros. The allowance per part is 23,000 divided by 500, or 46 euros, giving a total allowance of 4,600 euros; the 3% duty applies to 95,400 euros, or 2,862 euros. If the company is property-heavy (à prépondérance immobilière, meaning its assets consist mainly of French real estate), the rate jumps to 5% with no allowance, so verify the balance sheet before budgeting. Note also that sales signed abroad are caught: when transfers of shares of companies seated in France are executed by a deed signed in another country, they remain subject to French registration duty, with only a possible credit for foreign registration taxes actually paid.

Do not confuse registration duty with capital gains tax on the profit you personally make. As a non-resident seller, your capital gain may be taxable in France, in your country of residence, or relieved under a tax treaty, depending on the treaty, the size of your stake and the nature of the company’s assets. No article of this guide can replace checking the applicable treaty and filing the right return in the right country, but two reflexes are mandatory: disclose the sale to your tax adviser before signing so the price clause can allocate who bears any withholding, and keep the registered deed, the proof of registration and the proof of payment, because both tax administrations may ask for them years later.

Finally, update the company’s public footprint where required. In an SARL, good news: a change of shareholders alone does not update the Kbis, because shareholders are not listed on that certificate (see the service-public.fr guide on selling SARL shares). If the sale is combined with a change of manager (gérant), an address move or articles amendments, those changes must be filed through the Guichet unique (the single online filing portal at formalites.entreprises.gouv.fr, operated under the responsibility of the INPI, the Institut national de la propriété industrielle) with the clerk’s office of the commercial court (greffe du tribunal de commerce), and published where required in the BODACC (the Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales, the official gazette for company notices). Insist on receiving the updated Kbis when a filing was needed: as long as your name appears where it should not, creditors and administrations keep knocking on your door.

B. What Can I Do When the Company Blocks My Sale or the Buyer Discovers Hidden Debts?

The nightmare scenario is a silent or hostile company: no answer to your notifications, or a blunt refusal of your buyer, while you live thousands of kilometres away. In an SARL, the statute organises your way out. Once the company refuses your buyer, « les associés sont tenus, dans le délai de trois mois à compter de ce refus, d’acquérir ou de faire acquérir les parts à un prix fixé dans les conditions prévues à l’article 1843-4 du code civil, sauf si le cédant renonce à la cession de ses parts » (Article L223-14 of the Commercial Code). The shareholders must buy or find a buyer within three months at the expert-fixed price if you disagree on it, unless you withdraw. Alternatively, with your consent, the company can reduce its capital and buy back your parts itself within the same period. If paying at once is genuinely impossible, a court can grant the company a payment period of up to two years: « Un délai de paiement qui ne saurait excéder deux ans peut, sur justification, être accordé à la société par décision de justice. » And if none of these solutions happens in time, the sanction is radical: « Si, à l’expiration du délai imparti, aucune des solutions prévues aux troisième et quatrième alinéas ci-dessus n’est intervenue, l’associé peut réaliser la cession initialement prévue. » Your blocked sale goes through with your original buyer. Send the refusal’s date by writing, count three months precisely, and on expiry notify the company that you are proceeding: the initiative must come from you.

In a SAS, there is no statutory buyback safety net, so your leverage comes entirely from the articles. Well-drafted articles mirror the SARL mechanism with a buyback or capital-reduction clause; poor articles say only that transfers need approval, and a refusal then leaves you a shareholder against your will, with negotiation or court action as the only exits. This is why reviewing the articles before marketing your shares matters more in a SAS than anywhere else. If the articles organise a price but no method, the expert of Article 1843-4 fills the gap (Article L227-18 of the Commercial Code). If a transfer was carried out in breach of the articles, the nullity sanction (« Toute cession effectuée en violation des clauses statutaires est nulle », Article L227-15) can be invoked before the commercial court to cancel it. And where the articles force a shareholder to sell, for instance through an exclusion clause (Article L227-16 allows the articles to force a shareholder to sell, Article L227-16 of the Commercial Code), the same court controls that the procedure and the price were respected.

The mirror-image crisis is the buyer who, after signing, discovers hidden debts: a URSSAF reassessment, an undisclosed lawsuit, a tax audit starting on years you managed. If you are the seller, your shield is the disclosure schedule attached to the asset-and-liability guarantee: everything listed and handed over before signing cannot be claimed back. Cap the guarantee in amount and time, typically twelve to thirty-six months, exclude what the buyer knew or should have found in a proper audit, and channel claims through a written notice procedure with a minimum threshold so that every invoice does not reopen the war. If you are the buyer discovering the hole, act fast: notify the seller in the contractual form and time limits, quantify with your accountant, and secure the escrowed balance before it is released. Miss a contractual notification deadline and even a genuine hidden debt can become irrecoverable.

When fraud is suspected, French law offers court remedies beyond the contract: a sale obtained by deceit can be annulled and damages awarded, and criminal complaints are possible where company assets were misused. These paths require solid evidence, not suspicion: keep every pre-sale document, every email about the accounts, and the audit reports. For shareholders based in Paris and the Île-de-France region, two practical points help. First, the expert is appointed by the president of the competent court sitting in accelerated proceedings on the merits: for a company seated in Paris, that means the Tribunal judiciaire de Paris or the Tribunal de commerce de Paris, both reachable through a Paris-based representative without you flying in. Second, corporate filings and registrations linked to the sale go through the greffe du tribunal de commerce de Paris via the Guichet unique, and the competent business tax office follows the company’s seat. Localise each step to the company’s seat, not to your home address abroad, and every deadline will run from the right starting point.

Conclusion

Selling your shares from abroad follows a fixed order: read the articles first, notify the planned sale with proof, obtain or deem the approval, fix the price by agreement, formula or court-appointed expert, sign a complete deed with capped guarantees, register it within one month, pay the 0.1%, 3% or 5% duty and update the company registers. When the company blocks you, the SARL gives you a three-month buyout clock ending in a right to sell to your original buyer, while the SAS sends you back to your articles and, failing that, to the court. Prepare the two documents that decide most disputes before they start: a notification file with dates and receipts, and a valuation file with accounts, method and expert correspondence. With those in hand, distance stops being a weakness, and your exit becomes a procedure you control instead of a negotiation you endure.