You run a French company from London, New York, Dubai or Singapore. Sales invoices go out with 20% French VAT on top, suppliers send you invoices heavy with deductible VAT, and every month the French tax office expects a VAT return called the CA3, filed online and paid on time, even though you never set foot in France. Then life intervenes: the returns pile up unfiled, a VAT credit sits unclaimed, or a reassessment letter arrives at the registered office while you are six time zones away. This guide explains, in English and in order, how French VAT returns work for a foreign-managed company, what late or missing filings really cost, how to recover a VAT refund before the deadline kills it, and how to challenge a VAT reassessment from abroad. It explains every French acronym you will meet: TVA (the French VAT), CA3 (form 3310-CA3-SD, the standard VAT return), SIE (service des impôts des entreprises, the business tax office that handles your file), DGFIP (direction générale des finances publiques, the French tax administration), SIREN (your company’s nine-digit identification number), Kbis (the official identity extract of your company), IS (French corporate tax) and BODACC (the official gazette for company publications). Part I covers the return calendar: the monthly CA3 under the standard regime, the quarterly tolerance for small amounts of VAT, and the simplified regime with its annual return and two instalments. Part II covers the cost of getting it wrong, late interest, surcharges and reassessments, and the exact procedure for answering the tax office, securing your refund and taking the dispute to court without living in France. Each decisive statement cites the statute or decision where you can verify it.

I. Your French VAT returns: the monthly CA3, the quarterly tolerance and the simplified regime

A. The standard regime: file the CA3 every month and pay the VAT with the return

French VAT catches almost everything your company sells. Article 256 of the General Tax Code (Code général des impôts, CGI) provides: “Sont soumises à la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée les livraisons de biens et les prestations de services effectuées à titre onéreux par un assujetti agissant en tant que tel.”, which means that supplies of goods and services made for consideration by a taxable person acting as such are subject to VAT. If your French company sells goods or services in France, it is a taxable person (assujetti), and the VAT it invoices is not its money: it collects the tax for the State and must hand it over with its returns. The standard rate your invoices will almost always carry is 20%. Article 278 of the same Code states it in one sentence: “Le taux normal de la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée est fixé à 20 %.” Reduced rates exist for specific sectors such as food, transport, renovation work and the press, but a foreign-owned consulting, software, trading or holding company will live almost entirely at 20%, and this article assumes that rate unless your activity has been specifically classified otherwise.

Before any return can be filed, the company needs its own French VAT identification number, which is individual and built on the SIREN. Article 286 ter of the General Tax Code provides: “Est identifié par un numéro individuel : 1° Tout assujetti qui effectue des livraisons de biens ou des prestations de services lui ouvrant droit à déduction”. In practice, when your company is registered through the guichet unique (the single online company filing portal run by the INPI, the French intellectual property and business formalities institute) and entered on the Trade and Companies Register, the tax office (SIE) assigns the VAT number automatically and the company receives it with its other identifiers. If you went through setting up a company in France as a foreign founder, this number arrived together with the SIREN and the Kbis. Keep it: every invoice your company issues must show it, every CA3 return is filed under it, and every supplier invoice you want to deduct VAT from must show your supplier’s own number.

The return itself is the CA3, form 3310-CA3-SD. Article 287 of the General Tax Code sets the principle: “Tout redevable de la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée identifié conformément aux dispositions combinées des articles 286 ter et 286 ter A est tenu de remettre au service des impôts dont il dépend et dans le délai fixé par arrêté une déclaration conforme au modèle prescrit par l’administration.” Every identified VAT payer must therefore file the prescribed return with its tax office within the deadline set by regulation. Under the standard regime (régime réel normal), the same article continues: “Les redevables soumis au régime réel normal d’imposition déposent mensuellement la déclaration visée au 1 indiquant, d’une part, le montant total des opérations réalisées, d’autre part, le détail des opérations taxables. La taxe exigible est acquittée tous les mois.” The return is monthly, shows total transactions and taxable transactions in detail, and the VAT due is paid every month. The regulation deadline is precise and unforgiving: according to the official entreprendre.service-public.fr portal, the return must be filed between the 15th and the 24th of the month following the transactions, with the exact day shown in each company’s professional account on impots.gouv.fr. A company run from abroad should therefore organise a monthly routine, usually through its French accountant (expert-comptable), that closes the previous month’s sales and purchases in the first days of the new month and files well before the cut-off, because the online filing system does not accept jet lag as an excuse.

One tolerance softens the monthly rhythm. The same Article 287 adds: “Lorsque la taxe exigible annuellement est inférieure à 4 000 €, ils sont admis à déposer leurs déclarations par trimestre civil.” When the VAT payable for the year is below 4,000 euros, the company may file quarterly instead of monthly. This is a genuine relief for holding companies, dormant companies and businesses with thin French margins, but it is a trap for the unwary: the 4,000-euro test looks at VAT actually payable, not turnover, and a single large quarter can push the company back to monthly filing. The return and the payment travel together in both cases, as the official portal confirms: the company pays the VAT it owes each month or each quarter at the moment it files. Filing and payment are also entirely electronic. Paper returns are gone: returns, payments and refund claims go through the company’s professional account (espace professionnel) on impots.gouv.fr, either entered directly online (the EFI channel) or transmitted by the accountant’s software (the EDI channel). A director living abroad must therefore make sure someone holds valid login credentials and a French bank account capable of SEPA direct debit, because a return filed without the matching payment counts as a late payment.

Foreign founders face one more mechanism that often surprises them: the reverse charge (autoliquidation). When your French company buys services from a supplier established outside France, there is frequently no French VAT on the supplier’s invoice, and your company must account for the VAT itself. Article 283 of the General Tax Code provides the rule for goods and certain services: “est effectuée par un assujetti établi hors de France, la taxe est acquittée par l’acquéreur, le destinataire ou le preneur qui agit en tant qu’assujetti et qui dispose d’un numéro d’identification à la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée en France.” And for services generally, the Code continues: “sont fournies par un assujetti qui n’est pas établi en France, la taxe doit être acquittée par le preneur.” The French customer self-assesses the VAT on its CA3 and, where the purchase relates to taxed activity, deducts the same amount a few lines below, so the operation is often cash-neutral but never declaration-neutral: forgetting the reverse-charge lines is one of the most common reassessment grounds for foreign-owned companies whose real suppliers sit in London, Delaware or Dubai.

B. The simplified regime: one annual return, two instalments and the May deadline

Smaller businesses can escape the monthly treadmill through the simplified VAT regime (régime simplifié d’imposition), which replaces twelve returns with one annual return plus two advance payments. Whether your company qualifies depends on the previous year’s figures. According to the official entreprendre.service-public.fr portal, a company stays under or enters the simplified regime when the VAT it owed for the previous year (year N-1) was below 15,000 euros. If that ceiling is exceeded, the company moves to the standard monthly regime from 1 January of the following year, and if the higher turnover ceilings are exceeded the switch can even apply retroactively to 1 January of the year in which the overrun occurred, with a catch-up CA3 to file. A foreign founder whose French sales take off faster than expected should therefore watch the 15,000-euro marker during the last quarter: crossing it changes next year’s entire filing calendar, and the accountant should flag it before December, not discover it in March.

Under the simplified regime, the rhythm is annual with two instalments (acomptes). Article 287 of the General Tax Code describes the mechanics: the return filed for each financial year determines both the tax due for that period and the instalments for the following period, and “Des acomptes semestriels sont versés en juillet et en décembre. Ils sont égaux, respectivement, à 55 % et 40 % de la taxe due au titre de l’exercice précédent avant déduction de la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée relative aux biens constituant des immobilisations.” Two half-yearly instalments are paid in July and December, equal to 55% and 40% of the previous year’s VAT before deduction of VAT on fixed assets, and any balance is paid when the annual return is filed. The annual return itself has a fixed deadline confirmed by the official portal: a company whose financial year matches the calendar year must file no later than the second working day after 1 May, summarising all taxable transactions of the previous calendar year, and a company whose financial year closes on another date files within three months of closing. For a director living abroad, the practical consequence is a spring deadline that cannot move: the French accountant needs complete purchase and sales records by March at the latest, and documents requested in April usually arrive too late to be processed calmly.

The instalments are not blind: the law lets an honest company adjust them. The same article provides that a taxpayer who considers the instalments already paid equal or exceed the tax that will finally be due may skip further payments by sending the collection office a dated and signed declaration before the next due date, and that a taxpayer who considers the half-year’s tax at least 10% below the corresponding instalment may reduce that instalment accordingly by similar declaration. The official portal illustrates the modulation with a plain example: a company owing 10,000 euros for its second instalment but estimating its real liability at 15,000 euros can ask for the instalment to be increased to avoid a heavy catch-up when the balance falls due. The mirror logic protects cash flow when business slows: overpaying instalments means lending money to the Treasury interest-free for months. Use the modulation in both directions, in writing, before each due date, and keep a copy, because an undocumented short payment looks exactly like a late payment to the computer that calculates interest.

The other half of the simplified regime, and of VAT generally, is deduction: the VAT your company paid on its purchases reduces the VAT it owes on its sales. Article 271 of the General Tax Code states the principle: “La taxe sur la valeur ajoutée qui a grevé les éléments du prix d’une opération imposable est déductible de la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée applicable à cette opération.” VAT that burdened the price components of a taxable transaction is deductible from the VAT on that transaction. The right to deduct arises when the deductible tax becomes chargeable in the hands of the liable person, and it is exercised by crediting it against the VAT due for the month in which the right arose. Three conditions run through every deduction: the supplier’s invoice must be valid and show VAT, the purchase must serve taxed transactions, and the deduction must be claimed on time. Miss any of the three and the VAT becomes a cost. Foreign-managed companies typically fail on the first, accepting foreign-style invoices without a VAT number, a sequential invoice number or the mandatory particulars French auditors expect, and on the third, letting deductible VAT sleep past its deadline, a point to which Part II returns with a recent court decision that every founder should know.

When deductible VAT exceeds collected VAT, the return shows a VAT credit (crédit de TVA), and a credit is money if you claim it correctly. The company has two choices on each return: carry the credit forward to the next return, or ask for a refund. The official entreprendre.service-public.fr portal sets minimum amounts: an annual refund is possible when the credit reaches at least 150 euros, and a half-yearly refund when it reaches at least 760 euros, claimed on the form matching the company’s regime. Start-ups, exporters and companies making large investments are structurally in credit and should organise refund claims as a cash-flow routine rather than a year-end afterthought. But the refund is fenced by a strict time limit confirmed by the courts: input VAT shown on invoices must be declared in the month the invoices are received and no later than 31 December of the second following year, failing which the credit can no longer be credited or refunded. A founder who discovers a shoebox of two-year-old supplier invoices during a visit to Paris should therefore ask the accountant one question first: are we still inside the deadline? If the answer is no, the VAT is lost, and no complaint about distance will reopen it.

II. What late, missing or wrong VAT filings cost and how to challenge the bill from abroad

A. Late interest at 0.20% a month and surcharges of 10%, 40% or 80%

French tax late payment is priced by statute, and the price has two layers that stack: interest for the time the Treasury waited, plus a surcharge (majorations) for the failure itself. The interest layer applies to any tax claim paid late. Article 1727 of the General Tax Code provides: “Toute créance de nature fiscale, dont l’établissement ou le recouvrement incombe aux administrations fiscales, qui n’a pas été acquittée dans le délai légal donne lieu au versement d’un intérêt de retard. A cet intérêt s’ajoutent, le cas échéant, les sanctions prévues au présent code.” Any tax debt not paid by the legal deadline bears late interest, on top of which any applicable penalties are added. The rate is fixed by the same article: “Le taux de l’intérêt de retard est de 0,20 % par mois.” That is 0.20% per month, roughly 2.4% per year, running from the first day of the month after the payment was due until the last day of the month of payment. Interest cannot be negotiated down for convenience, but the article lists cases where it is not due, notably where the taxpayer expressly disclosed the disputed treatment and its legal reasons on the return or in an attached note. A transparent position argued openly on the CA3 therefore costs less than the same position hidden in silence, a detail worth discussing with the accountant before filing an aggressive return.

The surcharge layer is graduated according to behaviour, and this is where a missed CA3 becomes expensive. Article 1728 of the General Tax Code punishes late filing of any return showing assessment or collection items with a surcharge on the duties charged: “a. 10 % en l’absence de mise en demeure ou en cas de dépôt de la déclaration ou de l’acte dans les trente jours suivant la réception d’une mise en demeure d’avoir à le produire dans ce délai ; b. 40 % lorsque la déclaration ou l’acte n’a pas été déposé dans les trente jours suivant la réception d’une mise en demeure d’avoir à le produire dans ce délai ; c. 80 % en cas de découverte d’une activité occulte”, that is 10% with no formal notice or when filed within thirty days of a formal demand, 40% when filed more than thirty days after that demand, and 80% where a hidden activity is discovered. The sequence matters enormously in practice. A company that files spontaneously late pays 10%. A company that files after receiving the tax office’s formal demand (mise en demeure) still pays only 10% if it reacts within thirty days. A company that ignores the demand crosses into 40%, and a company whose French activity the administration discovers by itself, with no returns and no registration, faces 80% plus the regular reassessment procedure. For a director abroad, the lesson is administrative rather than legal: every letter from the SIE must reach someone who reads French, understands the thirty-day clock and acts. Returns not filed, mail not opened and demands not answered are the standard recipe for turning a 10% problem into a 40% one.

The same logic applies to VAT paid late even when the return was filed, and to VAT the company should have self-assessed under reverse charge but did not. Interest runs on the unpaid amount, and where the administration must reassess (redressement), surcharges for deliberate failure (manquement délibéré, 40%) or abuse of law can be added on top of the late-filing scale depending on the findings. Two precautions sharply reduce the bill. First, correct spontaneously before any audit starts: a corrective return (déclaration rectificative) filed on the company’s own initiative normally limits the surcharge to the spontaneous 10% level and stops interest from running further, whereas the same correction imposed through a reassessment after an audit carries the heavier rates. Second, document everything that explains a delay without excusing it: changes of accountant, blocked professional account access after a director’s departure, or a disputed invoice batch. These do not cancel penalties by themselves, but they support a reasoned request for a discretionary reduction (remise gracieuse) of penalties addressed to the tax office, a request the administration examines on the company’s compliance history and good faith. A first incident with an otherwise clean file has a real chance; a third incident with ignored demands has none.

One risk deserves special emphasis because it hits foreign-managed companies hardest: the hidden-activity finding. A company that trades in France, invoices French customers, holds stock or employs staff in France, but never registered for VAT or never filed, can be treated as exercising an undisclosed activity (activité occulte). Beyond the 80% surcharge, that finding extends the administration’s right to look back: reassessment can reach back up to ten years instead of the standard three, and the directors expose themselves to personal tax penalties and, in serious cases, criminal referral. The founders who fall into this trap are usually not fraudsters but businesses that believed their foreign status exempted them: a United Kingdom company selling goods stored in a French warehouse after Brexit, an American software company with a Paris sales team billing through the Delaware parent, or a Gulf group running French operations through an unregistered liaison office. If any of these patterns resembles your situation, registration and voluntary disclosure now will always cost less than discovery later, and the voluntary route keeps the surcharge at the bottom of the scale instead of the top.

B. Answer the reassessment proposal, claim your refund on time and take the dispute to court

Most VAT disputes do not start with a court summons but with a reassessment proposal (proposition de rectification), the letter in which the tax office explains what it intends to charge and why. This document is the single most important paper in the whole procedure, and the law surrounds it with guarantees. Article L57 of the Tax Procedure Book (Livre des procédures fiscales, LPF) provides: “L’administration adresse au contribuable une proposition de rectification qui doit être motivée de manière à lui permettre de formuler ses observations ou de faire connaître son acceptation.” The administration must send a reassessment proposal reasoned well enough for the taxpayer to reply with observations or acceptance. The same article adds a practical lifeline for distance: “Sur demande du contribuable reçue par l’administration avant l’expiration du délai mentionné à l’article L. 11” — on the taxpayer’s request received before the reply deadline expires, “ce délai est prorogé de trente jours.” At the taxpayer’s request received before the reply deadline expires, that deadline is extended by thirty days. A director in another time zone should use this extension systematically: it is granted on simple request, it gives the accountant and counsel time to assemble invoices, contracts and bank statements across borders, and it signals cooperation rather than evasion. Never let the reply deadline pass in silence. An unanswered proposal becomes a final assessment (imposition) that can then only be attacked through the slower claim procedure, while a reasoned reply forces the administration to answer point by point and sometimes to drop the weakest adjustments before assessing.

The reply itself should follow a fixed method. First, separate what is agreed from what is disputed: accepting an arithmetical correction on one month’s CA3 while contesting the principle of a reverse-charge adjustment on another does not weaken the dispute, it focuses it and stops interest on the accepted part. Second, attach proof for every disputed line: supplier invoices showing VAT, contracts showing the place and nature of the services, transport documents for goods, bank statements showing payment, and the corresponding CA3 lines. French VAT litigation is won with paper, and the administration discounts bare assertions. Third, raise the legal arguments the file supports: correct VAT treatment of the transactions, valid deduction with invoices meeting the formal requirements, reverse charge properly self-assessed, transactions outside French territorial scope, or transactions qualifying for an exemption with the required evidence. Fourth, send the reply by a traceable channel, ideally the professional account’s secure messaging (messagerie sécurisée) plus registered letter, and keep the proof of sending. From abroad, appointing a representative in France, usually the accountant or a tax lawyer with a written mandate (mandat), avoids the classic failure of the director who never received the proposal because it sat in an unmonitored mailbox at the registered office. The registered office address (siège social) shown on the Kbis determines which SIE handles the file, and Paris-registered companies deal with the Paris business tax offices, whose correspondence is entirely dematerialised: monitoring the online account is monitoring the case.

Two substantive weapons decide most VAT fights, and both turn on deadlines. The first is the deduction deadline recalled by the Cour de cassation in a recent commercial chamber decision. In Cass. com., 1 October 2025, appeal no. 24-14.456, the Court ruled, visaing the VAT deduction statute: “Vu les articles 271, I du code général des impôts, 208 et 242-0 A à 242-0 G de l’annexe II du même code :” The Court then draws the consequence: “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.” Input VAT on invoices must therefore be declared in the month the invoices are received and no later than 31 December of the second following year, failing which the VAT credit can be neither credited nor refunded, and the Court quashed the Paris appeal judgment that had allowed a late claim: “CASSE ET ANNULE, en toutes ses dispositions, l’arrêt rendu le 27 février 2024, entre les parties, par la cour d’appel de Paris”. For a foreign-managed company, the message is blunt: organise invoice collection so that every supplier invoice reaches the accountant in the month of receipt, chase missing invoices quarterly, and run a year-end check on unclaimed credits before 31 December of the second year. Deduction delayed is deduction destroyed.

The second weapon is the refund claim, which converts a paper credit into cash but obeys its own minimum amounts and forms, recalled in Part I: at least 150 euros for an annual claim and at least 760 euros for a half-yearly claim, on the form matching the company’s regime. Where the administration delays a refund it owes, the company can claim late-payment interest on the same basis the administration charges its own, and persistent silence on a refund claim can be challenged as an implied refusal. Conversely, a refund claimed without supporting invoices, or a credit built on purchases unrelated to taxed activity, invites the audit that reassesses everything else. Claim refunds actively but never artificially: each claim should reconcile with the CA3 lines, the accounting ledger (grand livre) and the bank movements, because the first document an auditor requests after a large refund claim is the file that justifies it.

If the reply to the reassessment proposal fails and the assessment is issued, the dispute moves to the claim stage (réclamation). Article L190 of the Tax Procedure Book opens that door: “Les réclamations relatives aux impôts, contributions, droits, taxes, redevances, soultes et pénalités de toute nature, établis ou recouvrés par les agents de l’administration, relèvent de la juridiction contentieuse lorsqu’elles tendent à obtenir soit la réparation d’erreurs commises dans l’assiette ou le calcul des impositions, soit le bénéfice d’un droit résultant d’une disposition législative ou réglementaire.” Claims seeking correction of assessment or computation errors, or the benefit of a statutory right, belong to the contentious jurisdiction. In practice the company first files an administrative claim with the tax office, setting out the facts, the law and the exact amount contested with supporting documents, and the administration must answer with a reasoned decision. If that decision rejects the claim in whole or in part, or if six months pass without an answer, which counts as an implied rejection, the company can appeal to the administrative court (tribunal administratif) of the place of the tax office. Article R421-1 of the Administrative Justice Code (Code de justice administrative) fixes the court 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.” The court must be seized within two months of notification of the contested decision. That two-month clock is strict, it runs against companies abroad exactly as against companies in Paris, and missing it ends the dispute regardless of the merits. Docket the date the day the rejection arrives, instruct counsel the same week, and remember that the claim and the court appeal can be handled entirely at a distance through a French lawyer, with hearings that counsel attends alone unless the company’s presence is ordered.

Conclusion

A French company run from abroad lives or dies on three VAT disciplines. File the CA3 every month between the 15th and the 24th, or every quarter while the annual VAT stays below 4,000 euros, and pay with the return through the online professional account; where the simplified regime applies, meet the early-May annual deadline and fund the July and December instalments, adjusting them in writing when business moves. Deduct input VAT in the month each invoice arrives, never later than 31 December of the second following year, and convert structural credits into refund claims once the 150-euro and 760-euro thresholds are met. And when the tax office writes, answer the reassessment proposal within the deadline, extended by thirty days on request, separating agreed corrections from disputed ones with full documentary proof, then claim and appeal within the two-month court limit if the dispute survives. Late interest at 0.20% a month and surcharges of 10%, 40% or 80% punish silence far more than error, while a documented, deadline-driven file keeps every remedy open from any time zone. VAT is the tax where distance is no defence but organisation is a complete one.