You live in London, New York, Dubai or Singapore, and your French company has just started invoicing. A customer asks for your French VAT number, your accountant mentions a CA3 return, and a supplier tells you that reverse charge applies. You have never dealt with the French tax administration, you have no office in France, and every letter arrives in French. This guide explains, in English and in practical order, when a foreign-owned business needs a French VAT number, when it may invoice without VAT under the small-business exemption, how registration works from abroad through the single online portal and the foreign-companies tax office near Paris, and how the monthly or quarterly CA3 return, the reverse charge and late-payment interest operate. Every French acronym is explained, every decisive rule is quoted from the French Tax Code, and each step can be completed without flying to France.

I. When does your French business need a French VAT number?

A. Taxable sales in France and your intra-EU VAT number

French VAT is called TVA, short for taxe sur la valeur ajoutée. The basic rule sits in Article 256 of the CGI, the CGI being the Code général des impôts, the French Tax Code: “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.” In plain English, supplies of goods and services made for payment by a taxable person acting as such are subject to VAT. An assujetti is simply a taxable person, a business within the scope of VAT. If your French company sells goods or provides services in France for a price, it starts from the position of being a taxable person, and VAT enters the picture immediately.

The place where the sale is taxed decides whether France claims the VAT. For services sold to another business, the rule is in Article 259 of the CGI: “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 preneur is the customer receiving the service, and an établissement stable is a fixed establishment, a branch-like presence with sufficient human and technical resources. Concretely, when your French company bills a business customer established in France, the service is located in France and French VAT rules apply. When it bills a business customer established in another European Union country, the service is generally located in that other country, and the reverse charge described in Part II applies instead. Services to private individuals follow different location rules, often tied to where the supplier or the customer is established depending on the nature of the service, so each consumer-facing offer must be checked individually.

Goods follow their physical movement. A French company that sells goods delivered in France charges French VAT. A company that buys goods in another European Union Member State and brings them to France makes what the Code calls an acquisition intracommunautaire, an intra-EU acquisition. Article 256 bis of the CGI provides: “Sont également soumises à la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée les acquisitions intracommunautaires de biens meubles corporels effectuées à titre onéreux par un assujetti agissant en tant que tel ou par une personne morale non assujettie lorsque le vendeur est un assujetti agissant en tant que tel et qui ne bénéficie pas dans son Etat du régime particulier de franchise des petites entreprises.” Mirror-image, a French company that ships goods from France to a business customer in another Member State makes an intra-EU supply, which is generally exempt in France while the customer self-assesses the VAT in the country of arrival. This is why a French VAT number matters even before the first euro of French VAT is collected: without it, your supplier cannot treat the sale as an intra-EU supply, your customer cannot apply reverse charge, and your company cannot deduct the VAT it pays on its own purchases. The right to deduct input VAT is the financial core of the system, and it starts with identification.

Identification means the numéro de TVA intracommunautaire, the intra-EU VAT number, an individual number built on the French prefix FR followed by two check digits and the nine digits of the SIREN. The SIREN is the nine-digit business identification number issued to every company registered in France, while the SIRET adds five digits identifying each establishment. Article 286 ter of the CGI states: “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”. Any taxable person carrying out transactions that open the right to deduct must be identified by an individual number. For a company created in France, the number is issued automatically by the tax administration after registration, and the official service-public.fr guide to the intra-EU VAT number explains how to request and use it. For a foreign company with no establishment in France, registration is a separate step handled by the foreign-companies tax office, as explained in Part II.

The French tax administration sets the trigger for foreign businesses on impots.gouv.fr, the official portal of the French tax authority: a company with no permanent establishment in France must register for French VAT as soon as it carries out a transaction that requires customs registration or the filing of VAT returns, with the page distinguishing registrations used only for customs purposes from registrations that carry full return obligations. The page then distinguishes two levels. Registration solely for customs purposes covers cases such as intra-EU acquisitions made in France or stock transfers between Member States, where the VAT number is used and trade-in-goods declarations are filed but no VAT return is due. Registration with full return obligations covers invoicing French-VAT transactions to customers who are not VAT-identified in France, intra-EU supplies from France, exports from France, and distance selling to French consumers above the applicable threshold. A foreign founder should therefore map every planned flow, goods and services, business and consumer customers, before deciding which registration the company needs.

The legal form chosen for the French presence changes the VAT analysis. A subsidiary, filiale, is a French company in its own right, with its own VAT number, while a branch, succursale, is an establishment of the foreign company registered in France and generally receives its own VAT identification for its French transactions. The comparison of vehicles is explained in our guide to choosing between an SAS, an SARL, a branch and a subsidiary in France from abroad, which covers the company-law side of the decision; the VAT consequences described here apply on top of that choice. A pure foreign seller with no French establishment follows the non-established route instead. In all three cases, the moment taxable transactions begin in France, the VAT number must already be available, because invoices issued without a valid number cannot carry VAT and cannot support the customer’s deduction.

Practical checkpoints follow from these rules. First, list every sale the company will make in the next twelve months and locate each one under Article 256, Article 256 bis or Article 259. Second, confirm whether each business customer holds a valid VAT number in its own country, since reverse charge and intra-EU exemptions depend on it. Third, check whether any consumer sales from another country into France cross the distance-selling threshold, in which case French VAT becomes due and registration or the EU One-Stop Shop scheme must be organised. Fourth, calendar the date of the first taxable transaction, because the registration file should be lodged before that date rather than after the first invoice. These four checks take an afternoon with the contracts and the business plan on the table, and they determine everything that follows.

B. The small-business exemption that lets you invoice without VAT

Small businesses established in France may benefit from the franchise en base de TVA, the small-business VAT exemption, which releases them from charging VAT while depriving them of the right to deduct it. Article 293 B of the CGI provides: “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”. Two features of this sentence deserve attention. The exemption covers both supplies of goods and services, and it is reserved to taxable persons established in France, assujettis établis en France. A foreign company that is not established in France and only holds a French VAT number for specific transactions cannot claim the French small-business exemption for those transactions. The exemption belongs to genuinely French-established small businesses, typically the newly created SAS or SARL of a foreign founder once it has its French registered office.

The exemption depends on turnover thresholds, calibrated separately for goods and services. The current text of Article 293 B sets the previous-calendar-year ceilings at 85,000 euros of total national turnover and 37,500 euros for services other than sit-down sales and accommodation, with current-year tolerance ceilings of 93,500 euros and 41,250 euros. The official service-public.fr guide to the small-business VAT exemption details how these ceilings are computed and updated. The mechanism works in two stages. Below the previous-year ceiling, the company stays exempt for the whole current year. If turnover exceeds the previous-year ceiling but remains within the current-year tolerance ceiling, the exemption continues for that year and ends on the following 1 January. If turnover exceeds the current-year tolerance ceiling, the company becomes liable for VAT from the first day of the month in which the overrun occurred, and must regularise its invoicing immediately. A fast-growing start-up should therefore monitor turnover monthly rather than discovering the overrun at year-end.

An exempt company invoices without VAT and must show a specific statement on each invoice referring to the exemption, so that customers understand why no VAT appears and do not attempt to deduct any. It files no CA3 VAT return for its exempt transactions, which lightens administration considerably for a founder managing the company from abroad. The price of this simplicity is the loss of deduction: VAT paid to suppliers, on rent, equipment, subcontractors and professional fees, becomes a final cost instead of a recoverable amount. For a service company with few purchases, the exemption is usually advantageous. For a company investing heavily in equipment, stock or French subcontractors, paying VAT and deducting input VAT often costs less overall. The calculation should be made with forecast figures before the first invoice, because the choice shapes pricing: an exempt company quotes a price with no VAT added, while a liable company adds VAT that business customers recover but private consumers bear.

Leaving the exemption happens in three ways. Turnover can exceed the ceilings, as described above. The company can outgrow the profile of a small business and prefer deduction. Or the nature of its transactions can require VAT identification anyway, for example intra-EU acquisitions above the applicable threshold or an election to be taxed on specific transactions. Once liable, the company charges VAT on its sales, recovers VAT on its purchases, and enters the filing rhythm of the CA3 return described in Part II. The transition month demands care: quotes issued while exempt, deposits received, invoices straddling the change of regime, and the timing rule of Article 269 of the CGI, under which “Le fait générateur de la taxe se produit : a) Au moment où la livraison, l’acquisition intracommunautaire du bien ou la prestation de services est effectué”, meaning the chargeable event occurs when the supply is carried out, all interact to fix which invoices carry VAT and which do not.

Foreign founders sometimes assume that staying below the thresholds in their home country protects them in France. It does not. The French ceilings measure turnover realised in France under French rules, and a company established in France is assessed on its French activity. Conversely, a foreign company that remains established abroad and sells into France cannot shelter behind the French exemption for the transactions that make it liable here. The correct question is always where the business is established and where each transaction is located, not the size of the group worldwide. When in doubt, the file submitted to the tax office should describe the activity precisely and let the administration confirm the regime, rather than assuming the exemption applies by default.

II. How do you register, file and pay French VAT from abroad?

A. Registering through the Guichet unique and the Noisy-le-Grand tax office

Creating a company in France begins on the Guichet unique, the single online company-filing portal operated at formalites.entreprises.gouv.fr under the responsibility of the INPI, the Institut national de la propriété industrielle, the French intellectual-property and business-registries office. The founder files one electronic formality that travels to every administration concerned: the RNE, the Registre national des entreprises, the national business register, records the company; the RCS, the Registre du commerce et des sociétés, the trade and companies register kept by the greffe, the registry of the commercial court, registers commercial companies; INSEE, the national statistics institute, issues the SIREN and SIRET numbers; and the tax administration activates the tax accounts, including VAT. The Kbis, the official company identity certificate issued by the greffe, proves the company’s existence to banks, suppliers and customers. When the file declares a VAT-liable activity, the SIE, the Service des impôts des entreprises, the local corporate tax office of the registered office, issues the intra-EU VAT number. A founder living abroad completes the same portal with an electronic signature, and the Kbis arrives without travelling, provided the file is complete and consistent.

Consistency is where foreign files most often stall. The company name, the foreign parent’s identity, the share capital, the registered office address in France, the identity of the legal representative, the director, and the declared activity must match across the articles of association, the proof of address, the identity documents and the portal fields. Our guide to fixing a rejected Guichet unique filing from abroad walks through the most frequent rejection reasons and the corrections that unblock the Kbis. Domiciliation deserves a word: a French company must have a French registered office, siège social, which may be a commercial lease, a domiciliation contract with an authorised provider, or the director’s French home under conditions. A foreign address alone does not make a French company. Once the Kbis is issued, publicity follows in the BODACC, the Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales, the official gazette of company notices, and the VAT number follows from the SIE.

A foreign company that keeps no establishment in France follows a different door. It does not register with the RCS and does not receive a Kbis; it registers for VAT directly with the SIEE, the Service des impôts des entreprises étrangères, the foreign-companies tax office attached to the DINR, the Direction des impôts des non-résidents, the non-residents tax directorate. The competent office sits in the Paris region, in the département of Seine-Saint-Denis east of the capital: Service des Impôts des Entreprises Etrangères (SIEE), 10 rue du Centre, TSA 20011, 93465 Noisy-le-Grand Cedex. This Île-de-France detail matters for a founder organising correspondence from abroad: there is exactly one competent office for this route, no choice of city, and files, mandates and returns must be directed there rather than to a local SIE. The official impots.gouv.fr page on foreign-company VAT registration confirms the address, the EE0 registration form and the distinction between companies that need a tax representative and those that may simply appoint an agent.

The representative question turns on where the foreign company is established. Article 289 A of the CGI provides: “Lorsqu’une personne non établie dans l’Union européenne est redevable de la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée ou doit accomplir des obligations déclaratives, elle est tenue de faire accréditer auprès du service des impôts un représentant assujetti établi en France qui s’engage à remplir les formalités incombant à cette personne et, en cas d’opérations imposables, à acquitter la taxe à sa place.” A business established outside the European Union that owes French VAT or must complete French filing obligations must have an accredited tax representative established in France, who completes the formalities and pays the tax in its place. The text then carves out businesses established in non-EU countries bound to France by a mutual-assistance instrument comparable to the EU directives, a list published by the administration that notably includes the United Kingdom, Switzerland-class partners, the United States, Japan and many others: those businesses may appoint a simpler VAT agent, mandataire fiscal, instead of a full representative. A company established in another EU Member State needs no representative at all and registers directly. Choosing the wrong representative is one of the costliest mistakes, because the representative is jointly liable for the tax, and its fees differ sharply from a simple filing agent.

The registration file itself typically combines proof of the company’s existence abroad, an extract from its home-country company register with a certified translation where required, the articles of association, identification of the legal representative, the mandate given to the representative or agent, a precise description of the transactions planned in France with their expected start date, and the home-country VAT number where one exists. Customs activity adds a layer: a company that imports goods into France needs an EORI number, the Economic Operators Registration and Identification number used by EU customs, and should decide whether to elect for import VAT reverse charge, autoliquidation à l’importation, which avoids advancing VAT at the border. The file should be lodged before the first taxable transaction, because the VAT number is needed on the first invoice and in the first customs declaration. Processing takes weeks rather than days, so the registration calendar should be built backwards from the commercial launch date.

B. Filing the CA3, using reverse charge and avoiding penalties

Once identified, a VAT-liable company declares and pays through the CA3, the standard French VAT return, filed electronically on the professional account at impots.gouv.fr. Article 287 of the CGI 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 VAT debtor identified under the combined provisions must file a return in the prescribed form with its tax office within the deadline set by regulation. The same article fixes the standard rhythm: “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.” Businesses under the standard actual-taxation regime file monthly, reporting total transactions and the detail of taxable ones, and pay the VAT due each month. Businesses with modest VAT payable may be allowed to file quarterly, and the smallest fall under the simplified annual regime with half-yearly instalments, acomptes. The applicable rhythm is confirmed when the VAT account opens and reassessed as turnover evolves; a founder should never assume a quarterly rhythm without written confirmation, because a missed monthly deadline immediately creates arrears.

Each CA3 balances two columns. Output VAT, TVA collectée, is the tax charged on sales. Input VAT, TVA déductible, is the tax paid on business purchases, deductible only with valid invoices showing the supplier’s VAT number, the customer’s identity, the price and the tax. The company pays the difference when output exceeds input and carries forward or claims a refund when input exceeds output. Deduction requires strict invoice discipline: a missing VAT number, a wrong customer name or a cash receipt without the mandatory statements can cost the deduction on audit. Invoices issued by the company must show its own intra-EU VAT number, the customer’s VAT number for intra-EU supplies and reverse-charge services, the taxable base, the rate and the amount per line, and the payment terms. The e-invoicing reform now rolling out adds structured electronic formats to these substantive rules, and our guide to mandatory e-invoicing for foreign-owned French companies explains the timetable and the portal choice.

Reverse charge, autoliquidation, is the mechanism by which the customer rather than the supplier accounts for the VAT. In its cross-border form, Article 283 of the CGI provides, for supplies made by a business not established in 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.” When a supply covered by the provision is made by a business not established in France, the tax is paid by the buyer or customer acting as a taxable person holding a French VAT number. Combined with the place-of-supply rule of Article 259, this produces the everyday result for business-to-business services between Member States: the foreign supplier invoices without VAT with both VAT numbers shown, and the French customer declares the French VAT as output and deducts it as input on the same CA3, a neutral operation when the customer fully deducts. Specific sectors such as construction subcontracting and certain goods apply domestic reverse charge with their own formalities, so each contract should state expressly who accounts for the VAT rather than leaving the invoice to imply it.

Intra-EU trade adds statements beyond the CA3. Supplies of goods shipped to another Member State and acquisitions arriving from one must be reported so that the administrations can cross-check the mirror flows, and goods movements feed the EU trade-statistics reporting. The impots.gouv.fr registration page confirms that even customs-only registrations involve the use of the VAT number and the filing of trade-in-goods declarations. A company that starts moving stock across borders should therefore organise three layers from day one: the CA3 for the tax, the recapitulative statements for intra-EU supplies and acquisitions, and the goods-movement data for statistics and customs. One missing layer does not cancel the others, and auditors cross-reference them.

Deadlines are unforgiving because VAT is a self-assessed tax paid spontaneously. The CA3 calendar meshes with the company’s broader compliance diary, alongside corporate income-tax instalments, social declarations and the annual cycle of approving and filing accounts; our annual legal calendar for French companies managed from abroad assembles those dates in one place. Late payment of VAT triggers Article 1727 of the CGI: “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.” Any tax debt not paid within the legal deadline bears late-payment interest, on top of any penalties the Code attaches to late filing, omitted returns or inaccurate declarations. Interest runs by the month, penalties scale with the gravity of the breach, from simple delay to failure to file, and repeated default draws closer scrutiny of the deduction claims. A founder abroad should therefore set up SEPA direct debit, prélèvement SEPA, from a reachable account, calendar each deadline in the company’s time zone with a safety margin, and keep a complete invoice file, because the two defences that work on audit are paying on time and proving every figure with documents.

When cash is tight, the order of priorities matters. VAT collected from customers is never the company’s money: it is held for the Treasury from the invoice date, and using it as working capital converts a temporary squeeze into a tax offence with interest and penalties. Payroll and VAT come before discretionary spending, and a skipped CA3 is worse than a paid-late CA3, because non-filing blocks refunds, freezes the limitation clock on the administration’s side in the worst cases, and signals disorganisation. If an error is found, a corrective return filed spontaneously costs far less than the same correction imposed after an audit notice. These reflexes, set up in the first quarter of activity, decide whether VAT remains a neutral pass-through or becomes the company’s most expensive creditor.

Conclusion

A foreign founder does not need to fear French VAT, but must respect its sequence. First, locate each planned sale under the Code: taxable supplies in France under Article 256, intra-EU acquisitions under Article 256 bis, services located by Article 259, and the identification duty of Article 286 ter. Second, test the small-business exemption of Article 293 B where the company is genuinely established in France, weighing the relief from invoicing and filing against the loss of deduction. Third, register before the first transaction, through the Guichet unique and the SIE for a French company, or directly with the SIEE in Noisy-le-Grand for a foreign company without establishment, appointing the representative or agent that Article 289 A requires for the company’s country. Fourth, file the CA3 of Article 287 on its monthly or confirmed quarterly rhythm, operate reverse charge under Article 283 wherever the customer self-assesses, keep the invoice evidence that supports every deduction, and pay before the deadline so that the late-payment interest of Article 1727 never starts running. Done in this order, VAT becomes what it should be for a healthy business: a neutral tax that passes through the company while the founder, wherever in the world, stays in control of the calendar.