You formed your company in France from abroad, you received the Kbis (the official company identity certificate issued by the greffe, the registry of the commercial court), and you opened a French business bank account. Then comes the next administrative shock: a letter or an email mentioning a French VAT number, a first CA3 return to file, and deadlines you never saw in your home country. Many foreign founders discover the French value added tax system only when a penalty notice arrives. This guide explains, in practical order, how a company run from outside France gets its French VAT number, when the first CA3 return is due, how the tax is paid from abroad, what late filing really costs, and how a reassessment can be challenged without boarding a plane. Every rule below is drawn from the French Tax Code (Code général des impôts, CGI) as in force on 14 October 2026, from official guidance published by the French tax administration and the public service portal, and from two recent rulings of the Commercial Chamber of the Court of Cassation (Cour de cassation).
If you are still at the incorporation stage, read first our complete walkthrough on setting up your French company from abroad: bank account, Kbis extract, VAT and first hire, which covers the bank account, the Kbis and the first recruitment steps that come before the VAT questions addressed here.
I. Do You Need a French VAT Number When You Run Your Company From Abroad?
A. Which sales make your French company liable for French VAT?
French VAT (TVA, taxe sur la valeur ajoutée) does not depend on where you live. It depends on what your company sells, to whom, and where the transaction is deemed to take place. The scope rule is set by Article 256 of the CGI: “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 consideration by a taxable person acting as such fall within French VAT. A French SAS (société par actions simplifiée, the flexible joint-stock company most foreign founders choose) or a French SARL (société à responsabilité limitée, the limited liability company) that invoices customers is, by default, a taxable person (assujetti) for VAT purposes. Your residence in London, New York, Dubai or Singapore changes nothing about that analysis: the company is French, established in France, and its French sales are French taxable transactions.
The honest question most founders ask at this point is whether a small starting turnover lets them ignore VAT altogether. France offers a small-business exemption called the franchise en base de TVA, and Article 293 B of the CGI states that “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” above the statutory ceilings. As verified on 14 October 2026, those ceilings are 85,000 euros of national turnover for the previous calendar year for sales of goods (93,500 euros for the current year) and 37,500 euros for most services (41,250 euros for the current year). Below those ceilings, the company does not charge VAT to its customers, does not file VAT returns, and cannot recover input VAT on its own purchases. That sounds attractive for a testing phase, and it often is, but three traps await foreign founders who choose it without advice.
First, the exemption is invisible on paper but visible in prices: a company under franchise en base cannot recover the 20 percent VAT buried in its French expenses, rent, equipment and subcontracting, which becomes a pure cost. Second, the exemption collapses the moment the company makes an intra-EU purchase of goods, known in French as an AIC (acquisition intracommunautaire). The public service portal for businesses states the consequence bluntly: an AIC triggers the obligation to move into the standard real VAT regime, and goods bought in another Member State for use or consumption in France fall within French VAT. A founder who buys stock from Germany or office equipment from Italy for use in France is therefore pulled into full VAT registration whether the turnover ceilings are met or not. Third, many foreign clients and suppliers simply refuse to work with a French company that has no VAT number, because their own accounting systems require one for cross-border invoicing.
A separate situation must be distinguished, because the tax administration handles it differently. If your business has no French company at all and no stable establishment in France, but you carry out isolated taxable operations on French territory, you may need a French VAT registration without incorporating. The tax administration summarises the test as follows: a business with no stable establishment in France that carries out any of the listed operations requiring customs registration or VAT returns must register for French VAT. That route, handled by the dedicated foreign-business tax office, is outside this article, which assumes you already own a French company with a French SIREN (the nine-digit national business identifier) and a Kbis. If you hesitated between a branch (succursale) and a subsidiary, the VAT answer usually favours the subsidiary: a French subsidiary is a fully French taxable person with straightforward registration, while a branch of a foreign company raises permanent-establishment questions that complicate every return.
B. Where and how is your French VAT number issued?
Good news first: in the standard case, you do not file a separate VAT application. Since the single-window reform, registration of a new company runs through the guichet unique (the INPI one-stop electronic filing window), and the declaration of commencement of activity that Article 286 of the CGI still requires, “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”, is now routed through that window at incorporation. The tax office competent for your file is the SIE (Service des impôts des entreprises, the local corporate tax office) of the place where your siège social (registered office) sits. Founders who domiciled their company in Paris therefore depend on a Paris SIE, and correspondence, including any request for additional documents, comes from that office. Practical tip from daily files: designate, from day one, a reliable channel for receiving French administrative mail at the registered office, whether a domiciliation company that scans envelopes or an accountant with a mandate, because SIE letters set deadlines that run from receipt.
Once the file is complete, the SIE attributes an individual VAT identification number under Article 286 ter of the CGI, which provides that “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”. The French intra-EU VAT number takes the familiar form FR followed by two check digits and the nine-digit SIREN, for example FRXX 123456789. Attribution itself involves no government charge: the tax administration confirms that obtaining an intra-EU VAT number involves no government charge, so any intermediary invoice that presents it as a paid government fee deserves scrutiny. The delay between incorporation and attribution is commonly a few weeks; if two months pass with no number while you already invoice, do not wait passively. Ask your accountant to query the SIE, because every invoice you issue in the meantime creates documentation problems that are examined below.
Two administrative reflexes save months of trouble. First, open the company’s espace professionnel (professional online account) on impots.gouv.fr as soon as the SIREN exists, and enrol for electronic filing and payment of VAT. French VAT returns and payments are filed online, and paper filings by a company are simply not the normal channel anymore. Second, keep the incorporation file consistent: the activity description (objet social), the start date of activity, and the VAT option declared at the guichet unique must match what the SIE holds. A company whose declared start date is wrong receives returns for the wrong periods, misses them, and discovers the error through a penalty notice. Correcting the start date afterwards is possible but always slower than declaring it correctly at the outset.
II. How Do You File, Pay and Defend French VAT From Abroad?
A. When is your first CA3 due and what must it contain?
The ordinary French VAT return is the form called CA3, and the rhythm is set by Article 287 of the CGI: “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.” Monthly filing is therefore the default under the standard real regime (régime réel normal). The same article offers a quarterly breather: “lorsque la taxe exigible annuellement est inférieure à 4 000 €, ils sont admis à déposer leurs déclarations par trimestre civil.” In practice, a new company usually starts on monthly CA3 returns and moves to quarterly returns once its annual VAT bill stays durably below 4,000 euros. The return states total turnover, taxable turnover broken down by rate, deductible input VAT, and the net amount payable or the refundable credit, and payment accompanies the return on the same online deadline. A smaller company may alternatively fall under the simplified real regime (régime réel simplifié), with instalments in July and December and one annual return, but any cross-border goods purchase pushes it back to the normal regime, as explained above, so most foreign-owned trading companies end up on monthly or quarterly CA3.
Three cross-border mechanisms dominate the daily life of a foreign-run French company and each has its own reflex. First, purchases of goods from another EU Member State (the AIC) are declared on the CA3 as both output VAT and, simultaneously, deductible input VAT: economically neutral when the company has full deduction rights, but strictly declarable, and severely penalised if omitted. Second, services received from suppliers established outside France trigger the reverse charge (autoliquidation), and Article 283 of the CGI provides that “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”, with the amount identified on the Article 287 return. Concretely, when your French SAS pays a British, American or even German service provider, it is your French company that accounts for the French VAT on its own CA3, not the supplier. Founders who book foreign supplier invoices as if they were French ones systematically under-declare, and the correction arrives with interest and surcharges.
Third, every sale your company makes must be supported by a proper invoice, because deduction rights live or die on paperwork. Article 289 of the CGI lays down the principle: “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” for supplies to another taxable person. From abroad, impose a strict invoicing discipline on whoever issues invoices in the company’s name: consecutive numbering without gaps, the company’s full name, address and VAT number, the customer’s VAT number for intra-EU supplies, unit prices excluding tax, the applicable rate and amount of VAT, and totals excluding and including tax. A company whose invoices lack the VAT number during the weeks before attribution should regularise the numbering and the mentions as soon as the number arrives, and keep a dated record of the correction. Tax auditors examining a foreign-run company always ask the same first questions: who issues the invoices, from which software, under whose control, and where are the supporting contracts. A founder who answers precisely keeps the audit short; a founder who discovers the question during the audit pays for the extra months.
Founders who import goods from outside the European Union face one more layer. Import VAT is generally reverse-charged onto the importer’s own return when the importer holds a French VAT number and has opted into the mechanism, which means the cash is not advanced at the border. The Court of Cassation illustrated who ultimately bears the risk when intermediaries fail: in a 24 January 2024 ruling on import VAT, the Commercial Chamber held that “Il s’ensuit que le défaut d’exercice de la faculté prévue à l’article 114, 1 ter, du code des douanes ne peut constituer une faute de nature à engager la responsabilité de l’administration des douanes” (Court of Cassation, Commercial Chamber, 24 January 2024, appeal No. 22-13.103, published in the Bulletin). Translation: customs had only a power, not a duty, to demand a guarantee from the defaulting broker, so the importer could not shift its unpaid import VAT onto the administration. For a foreign founder, the lesson is blunt: choose your customs broker (commissionnaire en douane) and your importer-of-record setup as carefully as your bank, verify that import VAT actually reaches the administration, and reconcile every import declaration with your CA3, because the debt stays yours if the intermediary collapses.
B. What do late filing and wrong figures cost, and how do you challenge a reassessment?
French VAT penalties follow a ladder, and each rung is mechanical. Start with interest: Article 1727 of the CGI provides that “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”. Late payment therefore always costs interest on top of any surcharge, currently 0.20 percent per month. Next, late filing of the return itself triggers Article 1728: “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”. Ten percent applies if you file spontaneously late or within thirty days of a formal demand (mise en demeure); forty percent applies beyond that thirty-day grace period; eighty percent is reserved for concealed activity (activité occulte), which a foreign-run company with a real office, real staff and real filings should never approach. Finally, wrong figures inside a filed return fall under Article 1729, which targets “Les inexactitudes ou les omissions relevées dans une déclaration ou un acte comportant l’indication d’éléments à retenir pour l’assiette ou la liquidation de l’impôt”, with standard surcharges of forty percent for deliberate failure and eighty percent for fraud or abuse of rights, reduced to specific lower rates for simple good-faith errors in defined cases.
Two features of the French procedure matter enormously when you live abroad. First, the thirty-day window after a mise en demeure is the cheapest rescue tool in the system: a founder who files within thirty days of receiving the demand caps the surcharge at ten percent instead of forty. That is why the mail-handling organisation described in Part I is not administrative trivia but direct financial protection. A demand that sits unopened in a Paris letterbox while you are in another country quietly converts a ten-percent problem into a forty-percent one. Second, interest for late payment can be neutralised in one specific situation worth knowing: a taxpayer who expressly discloses, on the return itself or an attached note, the legal or factual reasons for its position may escape late-payment interest on the disputed items if the administration later disagrees. That disclosure reflex, drafted with an accountant, is standard practice for genuinely debatable reverse-charge or territoriality positions.
If the administration notifies a reassessment (redressement) through a rectification proposal (proposition de rectification), the reply deadline, normally thirty days extendable on request, must be treated as sacred, and the reply should be written, reasoned and sent by a traceable channel. After the assessment is collected through a collection notice (avis de mise en recouvrement), the company can file a prior administrative claim (réclamation préalable) and then appeal to the tax judge. A very recent Court of Cassation decision protects taxpayers who moved too fast: “Il en résulte que l’irrecevabilité d’une réclamation formée avant l’envoi d’un avis de mise en recouvrement peut être régularisée si les impositions litigieuses sont mises en recouvrement avant que le juge de l’impôt statue sur cette contestation” (Court of Cassation, Commercial Chamber, 28 May 2026, appeal No. 25-15.132, published in the Bulletin). In other words, a claim filed prematurely, before the collection notice, is not definitively lost: it can be regularised if the tax is formally collected before the judge rules on the merits. For a founder managing the dispute by email from another continent, that flexibility is valuable, but it does not replace the golden rule of French tax litigation: never let a deadline expire hoping for informality, because the administration’s timetable does not pause for travel, time zones or unanswered mail.
One final cost warning specific to foreign-run companies: persistent VAT non-compliance poisons everything around it. A company with unfiled CA3 returns will struggle to obtain tax compliance certificates (attestations de régularité fiscale) required in public procurement and in many private tenders, will face systematic questions at the next bank review, and will find any future request for a VAT refund examined with suspicion. Conversely, a company whose returns are filed on time, whose reverse-charge lines reconcile with its supplier ledger, and whose invoices carry correct VAT numbers sails through routine controls. The French VAT system rewards boring regularity and punishes silence; from abroad, boring regularity is a matter of organisation, mandates and calendars, not of physical presence.
Conclusion
A French company run from abroad needs a French VAT number as soon as it makes taxable supplies in France, unless it genuinely stays within the small-business franchise and away from intra-EU purchases. The number is issued at no government charge by the corporate tax office of the registered office once the single-window file is complete; monthly CA3 filing is the default, quarterly filing becomes available below 4,000 euros of annual VAT; reverse charge puts the VAT on foreign services onto your own return; and late filing costs ten percent within thirty days of a formal demand, forty percent beyond, plus monthly interest. Keep a reliable mail channel at the registered office, open the professional online account early, reconcile imports and intra-EU purchases every month, and answer any rectification proposal within its deadline. Companies that follow that discipline, like the founders who first secured their French bank account and Kbis before their first VAT period, turn VAT from a recurring crisis into a routine. The rest discover, expensively, that French tax deadlines run just as fast abroad as in Paris.