You live in London, New York, Dubai or Singapore and you run a company registered in Paris. One morning your French customer asks for your French VAT number before paying your invoice, your foreign supplier bills you with VAT from another country, and a letter from the French tax administration tells you that your VAT refund is refused or that your returns are late. Value added tax (taxe sur la valeur ajoutée, TVA) is the tax that causes the most practical trouble for foreign founders, because it touches every invoice you issue and every invoice you receive, and because mistakes compound month after month. This guide explains, in plain English and with the exact legal texts, how a French company run from abroad gets its French VAT number, who really pays the VAT when the supplier or the customer sits outside France, how input VAT is deducted and refunded, which deadlines destroy a VAT credit for good, and how to react when the administration reassesses you or refuses your refund. Every French acronym is explained, every decisive rule is quoted word for word from the statute or from a published ruling of the Cour de cassation (the French supreme court for civil, commercial and tax matters), and the reasoning follows two recent commercial-chamber rulings, dated 23 November 2022 and 1 October 2025, that show precisely how VAT credits are won and lost.

I. Getting a French VAT number and charging VAT correctly while you live abroad

A. When your French company needs a French VAT number and how it gets one

French VAT applies very broadly. Article 256, I of the French General Tax Code (Code général des impôts, CGI) provides, verbatim: “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.” Supplies of goods and services made for consideration by a taxable person acting as such are subject to VAT. If your Paris-registered société par actions simplifiée (SAS, the flexible joint-stock company most foreign founders choose) or société à responsabilité limitée (SARL, the limited-liability company) sells goods or services in France, it is a taxable person (assujetti) for French VAT even though you, the shareholder or director, live abroad. Residence of the owner changes nothing; the trigger is economic activity carried on by a company established in France. If you are still hesitating between legal forms, our guide to choosing between an SAS, an SARL, a branch and a subsidiary in France compares the vehicles before you register, because the vehicle you pick determines who signs the VAT returns later.

In the standard case, getting the number requires no separate battle. When your company is entered on the National Register of Companies through the single online business registration portal (Guichet unique, operated by the INPI, the national industrial property institute), the INSEE (the national statistics institute) issues the nine-digit SIREN identification number, the commercial court registry (greffe du tribunal de commerce) issues the Kbis certificate (the official company identity certificate that proves the company exists), and the corporate tax office (service des impôts des entreprises, SIE, the local office of the tax administration competent for companies) transmits the intra-Community VAT number automatically. The official Service Public guidance indicates that the SIE sends the number to the business upon registration, and that number must then appear on the company’s commercial and administrative documents, including invoices and VAT returns (see the official Service Public page on the intra-Community VAT number). In practice, founders living abroad usually discover a problem at this stage only when the number is slow to arrive: customers cannot recover VAT without it, and some marketplaces suspend payouts until it is entered. The remedy is operational, not theoretical — chase the SIE through your accountant (expert-comptable) with the SIREN and Kbis in hand, and meanwhile do not invent a number or reuse a foreign one.

The law also imposes a fast declaration duty at the start of activity. Article 286, I of the General Tax Code provides: “Toute personne assujettie à la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée doit : 1° Dans les quinze jours du commencement de ses opérations, souscrire au bureau désigné par un arrêté une déclaration conforme au modèle fourni par l’administration.” Every person liable for VAT must, within fifteen days of starting operations, file a declaration in the form supplied by the administration. For a company created through the Guichet unique, that declaration is normally absorbed into the initial registration file, but the fifteen-day rule still matters whenever the situation changes afterwards: a new activity, a new establishment, or the first taxable operation of a company that was dormant. From abroad, the safest reflex is to treat every operational change as a filing event and to confirm with the SIE that the file is updated, because an outdated activity code or address is the classic trigger for the first round of questions from the administration.

A different situation arises when the company itself is foreign, with no establishment in France, but carries out operations on French territory. The English-language guidance of the French tax administration (impots.gouv.fr, Doing business in France) states the rule in one sentence: if your company does not have a permanent establishment in France and carries out at least one of the listed operations requiring customs registration or VAT returns, then it must register for VAT in France. The listed operations include intra-Community acquisitions made in France, transfers of stock treated as intra-Community supplies, invoicing in France for services supplied to private individuals or to businesses not identified for VAT in France, intra-Community supplies dispatched from France, exports from France, letting of an unfurnished commercial building subject to French VAT, reverse-charged VAT on imports, reverse-charged VAT in construction subcontracting (bâtiment et travaux publics, BTP), and distance sales of goods from another Member State to private individuals in France (see the official impots.gouv.fr page for foreign businesses). If you run a branch (succursale) or simply send staff, store stock or invoice French customers from a foreign entity, walk through that list operation by operation with your adviser before assuming that no French VAT number is needed.

Small businesses should also check whether they can stay outside VAT altogether. Article 293 B of the General Tax Code grants a small-business exemption (franchise en base, meaning relief from charging and paying VAT while turnover stays below statutory ceilings): “Pour leurs livraisons de biens et leurs prestations de services, les assujettis établis en France bénéficient d’une franchise qui les dispense du paiement de la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée lorsqu’ils n’ont pas réalisé en France un chiffre d’affaires, évalué dans les conditions prévues à l’article 293 D, excédant les plafonds suivants : (En euros.) Année d’évaluation Chiffre d’affaires national total Chiffre d’affaires national afférent aux prestations de services autres que les ventes à consommer sur place et les prestations d’hébergement Année civile précédente 85 000 37 500 Année en cours 93 500 41 250” In substance, a business established in France escapes VAT while its French turnover stays below 85,000 euros for goods (93,500 in the current year) and 37,500 euros for most services (41,250 in the current year). Two warnings matter for foreign founders. First, a company under this exemption must not charge VAT and therefore cannot recover input VAT either, which can be expensive if the company invests heavily before selling. Second, such companies do not automatically receive an intra-Community VAT number, as the same official Service Public page confirms — so a founder who plans to buy from suppliers in other Member States or to sell across borders should think twice before electing, or remaining under, the exemption. The exemption suits a small service company billing French clients modest amounts; it is usually a trap for a capital-intensive or cross-border business.

B. Who actually pays the VAT when the supplier or the customer sits outside France

Once the company exists and is identified, the next question is where each transaction is taxed. For services between businesses, the European rule applied in France looks at the customer, not the supplier. Article 259, 1° of the General Tax Code provides: “Le lieu des prestations de services est situé en France : 1° Lorsque le preneur est un assujetti agissant en tant que tel et qu’il a en France : a) Le siège de son activité économique, sauf lorsqu’il dispose d’un établissement stable non situé en France auquel les services sont fournis ; b) Ou un établissement stable auquel les services sont fournis ; c) Ou, à défaut du a ou du b, son domicile ou sa résidence habituelle” The place of a supply of services is in France where the customer is a taxable person acting as such and has in France the seat of its economic activity, an establishment receiving the services, or failing that, its domicile or usual residence. Concretely, when your French SAS buys consulting, software development or marketing from a supplier in London, New York or Casablanca, the service is treated as located in France because your company, the customer, is established in France. The mirror image also holds: when your French company sells services to a business customer established in another country, the service is generally located in that customer’s country, and French VAT is not charged — but the invoice must be correct, the customer’s foreign VAT number must be checked, and the transaction must be reported, or the administration will treat the sale as domestic.

Where the supplier is established outside France and the transaction is located in France, the customer pays the tax instead of the supplier. This is the reverse charge (autoliquidation), the mechanism foreign founders misunderstand most often. Article 283, 1 of the General Tax Code provides: “lorsqu’une livraison de biens ou une prestation de services mentionnée à l’ article 259 A 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.” In other words, where a supply of the kind described in Article 259 A is made by a taxable person established outside France, the VAT is paid by the buyer or customer acting as a taxable person holding a French VAT identification number, and the amount due is identified on the return described in Article 287. And the next paragraph covers services of the kind described in Article 259, 1°: where they “sont fournies par un assujetti qui n’est pas établi en France, la taxe doit être acquittée par le preneur”. In practice this means your French company self-assesses French VAT on the foreign supplier’s invoice — declaring output VAT and, where the expense is deductible, the matching input VAT on the same return, so the operation is often cash-neutral — instead of paying foreign VAT to the supplier. The most expensive classic error is to pay VAT charged by a foreign supplier and then ask the French administration to refund it: France will not refund another country’s tax, and the foreign supplier should not have charged it on a business-to-business cross-border supply in the first place.

For goods moving between Member States of the European Union, the parallel rule taxes the buyer. Article 283, 2 bis of the General Tax Code provides, for taxable intra-Community acquisitions of goods covered by Article 258 C, that “la taxe doit être acquittée par l’acquéreur”: the tax must be paid by the buyer. When your French company buys equipment in Germany or stock in Italy and has it delivered to France, your company declares the French VAT on arrival through its own return; the seller issues its invoice without charging VAT, showing both VAT numbers. Founders sometimes confuse this with imports from outside the Union (the United States, the United Kingdom since Brexit, the United Arab Emirates, China), where VAT is due at customs unless the authorised reverse charge on import applies — one of the operations listed on the impots.gouv.fr foreign-business page. Keep the two circuits strictly separate in your accounting: intra-Union acquisitions on one side, imports from third countries on the other, because the supporting documents and the boxes on the return are different.

Every one of these operations must be invoiced correctly, because the invoice is the document the administration reads first during any control. Article 289, I, 1 of the General Tax Code provides: “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 : a. Pour les livraisons de biens ou les prestations de services qu’il effectue pour un autre assujetti, ou pour une personne morale non assujettie, et qui ne sont pas exonérées en application des articles 261 à 261 E” Every taxable person must ensure that an invoice is issued, by itself or in its name and on its behalf by its customer or a third party, for supplies of goods or services to another taxable person or to a non-taxable legal person that are not exempt. Cross-border invoices must additionally show both parties’ VAT numbers and, for a reverse-charged transaction, the words indicating that the customer accounts for the tax (“autoliquidation”), so that the customer’s return and the supplier’s invoice tell the same story. Since September 2026, domestic business-to-business invoices must also travel through the electronic invoicing circuit, as explained in our guide to the French e-invoicing obligation for foreign-held companies — a second reason to keep invoicing data clean, because the administration now receives transaction data without asking.

II. Deducting input VAT, getting a refund and fighting back when the administration says no

A. How input VAT deduction and refunds work, and the deadlines that destroy them

The core economic promise of VAT is that a business does not bear the tax on its own purchases: it deducts the VAT paid upstream from the VAT collected downstream and pays only the difference. Article 271, I of the General Tax Code states the principle in three sentences that every founder should know by heart. First: “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 has burdened the price components of a taxable transaction is deductible from the VAT applicable to that transaction. Second: “Le droit à déduction prend naissance lorsque la taxe déductible devient exigible chez le redevable.” The right to deduct arises when the deductible tax becomes chargeable in the hands of the person liable. Third: “La déduction de la taxe ayant grevé les biens et les services est opérée par imputation sur la taxe due par le redevable au titre du mois pendant lequel le droit à déduction a pris naissance.” Deduction of the tax burdening goods and services is made by crediting it against the tax due from the person liable for the month in which the right to deduct arose. When deductible VAT exceeds collected VAT — typical for a young company that equips an office, funds development or reverse-charges foreign services before billing its first clients — the surplus becomes a VAT credit (crédit de TVA) carried forward to the following returns, and that credit can be refunded under conditions set by regulation.

The Cour de cassation confirmed that an uncredited deductible VAT balance can indeed be claimed back from the State. In a commercial-chamber ruling of 23 November 2022, appeal No. 21-13.613, the Court restated the statute word for word: “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, et la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée déductible dont l’imputation n’a pu être opérée peut faire l’objet d’un remboursement dans les conditions, selon les modalités et dans les limites fixées par décret en Conseil d’Etat.” Deductible VAT whose crediting could not be made may be refunded under the conditions, arrangements and limits set by decree in Council of State. The dispute itself is instructive for founders: a VAT credit relating to invoices received years earlier had been paid late by a court-appointed liquidator, and the refund request came long after the events — the Court recognised the principle of the refund while the litigation turned on who was at fault for the delay. The lesson for a healthy company run from abroad is direct: a VAT credit is a genuine receivable against the Treasury, but it behaves like a perishable asset, and the administration will examine the dates on the invoices, the dates of payment and the dates of the returns before paying anything.

The perishability point was driven home three years later in the sequel to the same dispute. In a commercial-chamber ruling of 1 October 2025, appeal No. 24-14.456, decided on remand after the 2022 cassation, the Court examined a refund request declared inadmissible as time-barred and restated the combined effect of the governing texts — “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” — in a holding every foreign founder should print and keep: “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.” Where a supplier has elected to pay VAT on a debit basis, the customer must declare the deductible VAT shown on the invoices within the month of their receipt and no later than 31 December of the second following year; failing declaration within those time limits, the VAT credit can give rise neither to crediting nor to refund. Read that last sentence twice: missed deadlines do not merely postpone the refund, they extinguish it. A founder living abroad who lets invoices pile up undeclared — because the French accountant was changed, because the shoebox of receipts never crossed the border, because nobody watched the calendar — can lose real money permanently, and no argument about good faith reopens a deadline the Court describes in such absolute terms.

Translate these rulings into four operating rules for a company managed from another country. First, every supplier invoice showing VAT must be transmitted to the French accounting function immediately on receipt, with proof of the receipt date, because declaration time limits run from receipt. Second, deductible VAT must actually be entered on a return within the applicable period; keeping invoices in a drawer is not declaring. Third, refund requests for a credit balance must be filed through the return on time, with the bank details (relevé d’identité bancaire, RIB) of the company account on file, because the administration pays only to the declared account and any mismatch blocks payment. Fourth, when the company pays suppliers late — common for startups managing cash — the deduction timetable follows the statute and the supplier’s own VAT method (debit-based or cash-based), not the company’s convenience, so late payment can shift or cap what is recoverable. These are bookkeeping disciplines, not legal theories, and distance makes each of them harder: the founder who organises a monthly closing routine with the accountant, with scanned invoices flowing the same week they arrive, protects a cash asset that the careless founder quietly forfeits.

B. Filing returns from abroad, surviving penalties and challenging a reassessment or a refused refund

VAT lives on a monthly heartbeat that distance must not interrupt. Article 287, 1 of the General Tax Code provides: “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 person liable for VAT identified under the combined provisions of Articles 286 ter and 286 ter A must file with its tax office, within the time limit set by order, a return in the form prescribed by the administration. The standard regime is monthly: “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.” Taxpayers under the standard real-taxation regime file the return monthly, showing total operations and the detail of taxable operations, and the tax due is paid every month. A lighter rhythm exists for small amounts of tax: “Lorsque la taxe exigible annuellement est inférieure à 4 000 €, ils sont admis à déposer leurs déclarations par trimestre civil.” Where the annual tax due is below 4,000 euros, returns may be filed quarterly. And a simplified annual regime with instalments exists for the smallest businesses. Returns are filed online through the company’s professional tax account (compte professionnel on impots.gouv.fr), which means a founder abroad needs working credentials, a reachable one-time-password channel, and an appointed person able to file if the founder is travelling. Practical tip from repeated files: test the professional account access before the first deadline rather than during it, because locked accounts and expired passwords are discovered at midnight on the filing day.

Late or missing returns trigger automatic financial penalties that escalate fast. Article 1728, 1 of the General Tax Code provides: “Le défaut de production dans les délais prescrits d’une déclaration ou d’un acte comportant l’indication d’éléments à retenir pour l’assiette ou la liquidation de l’impôt entraîne l’application, sur le montant des droits mis à la charge du contribuable ou résultant de la déclaration ou de l’acte déposé tardivement, d’une majoration de : 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” Failure to file a return on time triggers a surcharge on the tax due: 10 percent with no formal notice, or where the return is filed within thirty days of receiving a formal demand, and 40 percent where it is still not filed thirty days after that demand. The surcharge applies to the tax itself, on top of late-payment interest, so a few months of neglected returns can add a heavy layer to the underlying VAT. From abroad, formal demands sent to the French registered office must actually reach someone: uncollected mail at a domiciliation address does not stop the thirty-day clock, and the 10-to-40 escalation runs while the founder believes nothing is happening. Keep the registered-office mail monitored weekly and the SIE’s letters answered within days, not months.

When the dispute is already open — a reassessment (redressement) adjusting the VAT, a refund refused as the administration did in the cases behind the two rulings discussed above, or an input-VAT deduction disallowed for missing invoices — react in writing and within the time limits printed on the notice itself. Every French tax notice states the available remedies, the competent authority or court, and the deadline, and those stated deadlines are as strict as the declaration deadlines examined above. The practical sequence that succeeds is always the same: first, reconstruct the complete documentary record (contracts, invoices with VAT numbers, proof of payment, returns as filed, correspondence with the SIE); second, file the formal written challenge with the office that issued the decision, setting out each disputed amount with its legal basis rather than general complaints; third, if the administration maintains its position, bring the case before the competent court, knowing that VAT disputes genuinely travel all the way to the Cour de cassation, as the 2022 and 2025 rulings prove — both reached the supreme court on questions of VAT credits and limitation periods. Throughout, keep proof of every filing date, because limitation and forfeiture arguments decide as many VAT cases as the substantive merits. And keep the rest of the company’s legal calendar in order at the same time: our guide to the French company’s annual legal calendar from abroad lists the parallel deadlines for accounts, meetings and filings that a founder must track alongside VAT.

Conclusion

Value added tax rewards the organised foreign founder and punishes the distant one. Get the French VAT number at registration and verify that the SIE has transmitted it; confirm whether the small-business exemption helps or harms the business model before relying on it; apply the reverse charge whenever a transaction is located in France but the supplier is not, and invoice cross-border supplies with both VAT numbers and the correct tax wording; transmit every supplier invoice to the accounting function on receipt and declare deductible VAT within the statutory periods, because an undeclared credit can be extinguished permanently, as the Cour de cassation restated in October 2025; file the monthly or quarterly return through the professional account without fail; monitor the registered office mail so that a formal demand never ages into a 40 percent surcharge unnoticed; and challenge any reassessment or refused refund in writing, with documents and within the deadlines printed on the notice, up to the courts if needed. Run through that checklist once, organise it as a monthly routine with the accountant, and VAT becomes what it should be for a healthy business: a neutral pass-through tax rather than a slow leak of cash and penalties.