You created your French company last year from London, New York, Dubai or Singapore. The Kbis extract arrived, the corporate bank account finally opened, the first invoices went out, and everything seemed under control. Then, one autumn morning, your accountant forwards a message you do not understand: your company owes the cotisation fonci\u00e8re des entreprises, the CFE, and the payment deadline is 15 December. No paper letter ever reached you, the amount seems disconnected from your turnover, and you are told that missing the date triggers a 10% surcharge automatically. This is the single most common tax shock foreign owners of French companies report in their second year, and it is only the visible part of a wider first-year legal calendar that also includes corporate income tax advances, VAT returns and the filing of annual accounts at the court registry. This guide explains, in plain English, what your French SAS or SARL really owes in its first years, on which dates, and what a foreign owner can still do from abroad when a deadline has already been missed. Every acronym is explained, every decisive statement is backed by the exact statute or court decision, and every remedy includes the practical step that works when you do not live in France.<\/p>\n
A French SAS (soci\u00e9t\u00e9 par actions simplifi\u00e9e, the flexible joint-stock company most foreign founders choose) and a French SARL (soci\u00e9t\u00e9 \u00e0 responsabilit\u00e9 limit\u00e9e, the limited liability company with stricter statutory rules) are both subject to French corporate income tax, called imp\u00f4t sur les soci\u00e9t\u00e9s and universally abbreviated IS, on the profits they earn in France. The standard rate is settled by statute without ambiguity: Le taux normal de l’imp\u00f4t est fix\u00e9 \u00e0 25 %.<\/a> That single sentence of Article 219 of the French Tax Code (Code g\u00e9n\u00e9ral des imp\u00f4ts, abbreviated CGI) is the starting point of every forecast you should ask your accountant to prepare before you invoice your first French client. Reduced rates exist for narrow categories such as long-term capital gains, but the default assumption for an operating subsidiary is 25% of taxable profit, and any business plan built on a lower figure should be treated with suspicion until a written tax opinion says otherwise.<\/p>\n What surprises foreign owners is not the rate but the payment method. French corporate tax is not paid once a year after the return. It is prepaid in four quarterly instalments, called acomptes, computed from the previous closed financial year. The statute states the rule directly: L’imp\u00f4t sur les soci\u00e9t\u00e9s donne lieu au versement, au comptable public comp\u00e9tent, d’acomptes trimestriels d\u00e9termin\u00e9s \u00e0 partir des r\u00e9sultats du dernier exercice clos.<\/a> And it fixes the calendar with equal precision: Les paiements doivent \u00eatre effectu\u00e9s au plus tard les 15 mars, 15 juin, 15 septembre et 15 d\u00e9cembre de chaque ann\u00e9e.<\/a> In practice, your accountant calculates each instalment from last year’s profit, you pay through the professional tax account (espace professionnel) on impots.gouv.fr, and the balance (solde) is settled when the annual corporate tax return (relev\u00e9 de solde) is filed, normally by the 15th of the fifth month after the financial year-end, which means 15 May for the standard 31 December year-end. There is one piece of good news for newly created companies, written into the same article: Les soci\u00e9t\u00e9s nouvellement cr\u00e9\u00e9es ou nouvellement soumises, de plein droit ou sur option, \u00e0 l’imp\u00f4t sur les soci\u00e9t\u00e9s sont dispens\u00e9es du versement d’acomptes au cours de leur premier exercice d’activit\u00e9 ou de leur premi\u00e8re p\u00e9riode d’imposition arr\u00eat\u00e9e conform\u00e9ment au deuxi\u00e8me alin\u00e9a du I de l’article 209.<\/a> Your first year is therefore acompte-free, but the second year hits with four instalments calculated on the first year’s profit, which is exactly when foreign owners who stopped watching the calendar get caught.<\/p>\n VAT runs on a parallel track that is even less forgiving. Once your company is identified for VAT (the French word is TVA, taxe sur la valeur ajout\u00e9e), it must file periodic returns even in months with no turnover, and the standard regime for an active company is monthly filing. The legal basis is Article 287 of the Tax Code: Tout redevable de la taxe sur la valeur ajout\u00e9e identifi\u00e9 conform\u00e9ment aux dispositions combin\u00e9es des articles 286 ter et 286 ter A est tenu de remettre au service des imp\u00f4ts dont il d\u00e9pend et dans le d\u00e9lai fix\u00e9 par arr\u00eat\u00e9 une d\u00e9claration conforme au mod\u00e8le prescrit par l’administration.<\/a> The same article adds the rhythm: Les redevables soumis au r\u00e9gime r\u00e9el normal d’imposition d\u00e9posent mensuellement la d\u00e9claration vis\u00e9e au 1 indiquant, d’une part, le montant total des op\u00e9rations r\u00e9alis\u00e9es, d’autre part, le d\u00e9tail des op\u00e9rations taxables.<\/a> Companies whose annual VAT payable stays below 4,000 euros may be allowed quarterly filing, but that tolerance is an authorisation, not a right you can assume. The return is the well-known CA3 form, filed and paid online, and a missed or late CA3 already has its own penalty regime, which we described in detail in our guide on missed French VAT returns and how a foreign company fixes them<\/a>. The calendar point that matters here is simple: corporate tax has four fixed dates, VAT has twelve monthly dates (or four quarterly ones if authorised), and none of them waits for you to be in France.<\/p>\n Two further dates complete the first-year picture and both are routinely discovered too late. First, the annual accounts (comptes annuels: balance sheet, profit and loss account and notes) must be approved by the shareholders within six months of the year-end and then filed at the court registry, the greffe du tribunal de commerce, within one month of approval, or two months if filed electronically. Second, the beneficial owners declaration (registre des b\u00e9n\u00e9ficiaires effectifs, the RBE) must be kept current, because banks check it before moving funds, as explained in our guide on blocked beneficial owner filings<\/a>. If you are still at the project stage, start from our complete setting-up guide for foreign founders: bank account, Kbis, VAT and first hire<\/a>, which maps the whole creation sequence from the certificate of capital deposit to the Kbis extract (the Kbis is the official identity card of a French company, issued by the greffe). The calendar below then tells you what happens after the Kbis arrives.<\/p>\n The CFE deserves its own section because it behaves like no tax you know. The cotisation fonci\u00e8re des entreprises is a local business tax due every year by anyone carrying on a habitual self-employed professional activity in France, including companies whose only presence is a small office or even a domiciliation address. The charging provision is Article 1447 of the Tax Code: La cotisation fonci\u00e8re des entreprises est due chaque ann\u00e9e par les personnes physiques ou morales, les entit\u00e9s non dot\u00e9es de la personnalit\u00e9 morale ou les fiduciaires pour leur activit\u00e9 exerc\u00e9e en vertu d’un contrat de fiducie qui exercent \u00e0 titre habituel une activit\u00e9 professionnelle non salari\u00e9e.<\/a> Note the decisive feature: the CFE is not computed on profit or turnover. It is computed on the rental value (valeur locative) of the premises the company uses for its activity, which is why a loss-making startup with a Paris office can owe several thousand euros while a profitable consultancy run from a small room owes the minimum contribution (cotisation minimum) voted by the municipality. The Cour de cassation, the highest French court for civil, commercial and criminal matters, has confirmed this nature in unmistakable terms: La cotisation fonci\u00e8re des entreprises, calcul\u00e9e \u00e0 partir de la valeur locative des biens immobiliers soumis \u00e0 la taxe fonci\u00e8re que les entreprises utilisent pour leur activit\u00e9 professionnelle, constitue, pour les entreprises qui y sont assujetties, une obligation l\u00e9gale et est inh\u00e9rente \u00e0 l’activit\u00e9 poursuivie apr\u00e8s le jugement d’ouverture<\/a> (Commercial Chamber, 24 March 2021, appeal No. 20-13.832). That ruling concerned a company in insolvency proceedings, but its description of the CFE as a legal obligation inherent in pursuing the activity applies to every company: as long as you operate on 1 January, you owe the CFE for the whole year.<\/p>\n Timing is where foreign owners stumble. Two statutory rules combine into a trap. First, liability is assessed on the situation on 1 January: La cotisation fonci\u00e8re des entreprises est due pour l’ann\u00e9e enti\u00e8re par le redevable qui exerce l’activit\u00e9 le 1er janvier.<\/a> Sell the business or close the office in March and you still owe the full year, unless narrow cessation rules apply. Second, the year of creation is exempt: En cas de cr\u00e9ation d’un \u00e9tablissement autre que ceux mentionn\u00e9s au III, la cotisation fonci\u00e8re des entreprises n’est pas due pour l’ann\u00e9e de la cr\u00e9ation.<\/a> Put together, the pattern is mechanical: nothing in year one, then a first bill in year two covering the full year, calculated on premises held at the end of year one. Foreign founders almost always misread the exemption as good news and forget the bill that follows twelve months later. Add three practical aggravating factors. The CFE notice (avis) is no longer sent by post; it is published only in the company’s espace professionnel on impots.gouv.fr, so a founder who never activated that account or whose accountant never forwarded the notice learns about the tax through a reminder or a bank seizure. The payment deadline is 15 December at midnight, and the tax administration states it plainly on its official CFE page, which also explains that the notice must be consulted and paid online in that professional account (how to access and pay your CFE notice<\/a>). And the company must file declaration No. 1447-C with its local business tax office (service des imp\u00f4ts des entreprises, abbreviated SIE) to declare or update the premises; a missing or outdated 1447-C produces a wrong base and a bill that looks arbitrary.<\/p>\n The second late discovery is the annual accounts filing. French commercial companies must keep accounts, draw up annual accounts at year-end, have them approved, and file them at the greffe to be appended to the Trade and Companies Register (registre du commerce et des soci\u00e9t\u00e9s, abbreviated RCS). The filing duty for joint-stock companies is set by Article L.232-23 of the Commercial Code: Toute soci\u00e9t\u00e9 par actions est tenue de d\u00e9poser au greffe du tribunal, pour \u00eatre annex\u00e9s au registre du commerce et des soci\u00e9t\u00e9s, dans le mois suivant l’approbation des comptes annuels par l’assembl\u00e9e g\u00e9n\u00e9rale des actionnaires ou dans les deux mois suivant cette approbation lorsque ce d\u00e9p\u00f4t est effectu\u00e9 par voie \u00e9lectronique<\/a>. SARLs are subject to an equivalent duty under the neighbouring articles L.232-21 to L.232-26. Failure to file is not a theoretical breach. Any interested person, the public prosecutor (procureur de la R\u00e9publique) or the court itself can ask the president of the commercial court to order the legal representative to file, under a daily penalty (astreinte) for each day of delay. A recent illustration comes from the Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal, 7 May 2026, case No. RG 25\/05283 (official text<\/a>): Par ordonnance en date du 16 d\u00e9cembre 2024, le pr\u00e9sident du tribunal de commerce de Manosque a enjoint M. [Y] [N], repr\u00e9sentant l\u00e9gal de la soci\u00e9t\u00e9 R and Cie de proc\u00e9der au d\u00e9p\u00f4t des comptes annuels au 31 d\u00e9cembre 2023 pr\u00e9vus, selon le type de soci\u00e9t\u00e9, aux articles L.232-21 \u00e0 L.232-26 du code de commerce, dans un d\u00e9lai d’un mois \u00e0 compter de la notification de cette injonction, sous peine d’une astreinte de 100 \u20ac par jour de retard.<\/a> The penalty imposed at first instance (5,200 euros liquidated by the court) was overturned on appeal for defective notification, which proves two things at once: the injunction mechanism bites hard, and procedural defences exist for those who raise them properly. Our full guide on missed annual accounts filings and greffe injunctions<\/a> walks through that procedure step by step. For the calendar, remember the chain: approve within six months of year-end, file within one month of approval (two if electronic), and never assume that silence from the greffe means compliance.<\/p>\n Discovering a missed deadline is unpleasant, but the French system rewards fast correction and punishes passivity on a precise timetable. The first reflex is to quantify exactly what is late: which tax, which year, which amount of principal, and whether a formal demand (mise en demeure) has been received. The general late-filing penalty of Article 1728 of the Tax Code escalates with your reaction time: Le d\u00e9faut de production dans les d\u00e9lais prescrits d’une d\u00e9claration ou d’un acte comportant l’indication d’\u00e9l\u00e9ments \u00e0 retenir pour l’assiette ou la liquidation de l’imp\u00f4t entra\u00eene l’application, sur le montant des droits mis \u00e0 la charge du contribuable ou r\u00e9sultant de la d\u00e9claration ou de l’acte d\u00e9pos\u00e9 tardivement, d’une majoration de : a. 10 % en l’absence de mise en demeure ou en cas de d\u00e9p\u00f4t de la d\u00e9claration ou de l’acte dans les trente jours suivant la r\u00e9ception d’une mise en demeure d’avoir \u00e0 le produire dans ce d\u00e9lai<\/a>. The same article raises the surcharge to 40% when the return is still not filed within thirty days of the formal demand, and to 80% where a hidden activity (activit\u00e9 occulte) is found. The message for a foreign owner is therefore numerical: spontaneous correction or correction within thirty days of the demand caps the surcharge at 10% instead of 40%. Late-payment interest (int\u00e9r\u00eat de retard) accrues on top, month by month, so every week of delay has a price even before enforcement starts.<\/p>\n The practical sequence from abroad runs in five steps, and it can be completed without boarding a plane. First, activate or recover access to the company’s espace professionnel on impots.gouv.fr, because every notice, demand and payment runs through it; if you cannot log in, mandate your French accountant (expert-comptable) or your lawyer in writing to access it and forward everything the same day. Second, pay the principal and file the missing return immediately, even if you intend to challenge the amount later, because payment stops interest and demonstrates good faith, and a claim for reduction (r\u00e9clamation) can be filed after payment without losing the right to be refunded. For the CFE specifically, pay online before 15 December midnight where still possible, or as soon as the notice appears; for corporate tax instalments, pay the overdue acompte and ask the accountant to recalculate the remaining ones; for VAT, file the missing CA3 returns in chronological order so the administration’s automated chain of reminders stops. Third, answer any mise en demeure within the thirty-day window by filing, not merely by promising to file, since only the filing date counts. Fourth, if the professional account shows enforcement (avis \u00e0 tiers d\u00e9tenteur, the garnishment notice served on the bank, or opposition), do not ignore it: contact the SIE collection department the same week, because a payment plan (d\u00e9lai de paiement) is far easier to obtain before the funds are seized than after. Fifth, assemble the evidence file that every later remedy will need: Kbis extract, lease or domiciliation contract proving the real premises, the 1447-C declaration and its receipt, the filed returns with their acknowledgements, proof of payment, and the complete correspondence with the SIE. Keep in mind that related blockages often appear together: a company with a missed CFE payment frequently also has an outdated beneficial owners entry that freezes the bank account, and the president’s own social security position may need review under our guide on SAS presidents and URSSAF<\/a> (URSSAF is the body that collects social security contributions, and BODACC is the official bulletin where company filings and court orders are published). Treating the file as a whole, rather than paying one bill in isolation, is what prevents the second shock three months later.<\/p>\n For companies based in Paris and \u00cele-de-France, the Paris region adds its own layer of practical detail. The competent registry is the greffe du tribunal de commerce de Paris for filings, publication runs through the Paris BODACC entries like everywhere else, and the collection office is the Paris business tax department attached to the regional public finances directorate (direction r\u00e9gionale des finances publiques, abbreviated DRFiP, of \u00cele-de-France and Paris). Paris voted minimum CFE bases sit at the high end of the national scale, so a domiciliation-only company with no real office can still receive a first bill that looks disproportionate: that is normally the cotisation minimum, not an error, and the remedy is to verify the base on the notice before contesting. Deadlines, surcharges and online payment are identical nationwide, but physical appointments, bailiff service and court hearings will run in Paris, which makes a Paris-based lawyer or a properly mandated accountant materially faster than managing the file across time zones alone.<\/p>\n Paying first does not mean accepting an incorrect bill, and CFE bills are incorrect more often than the administration admits. The standard errors are a wrong surface area carried over from a previous tenant, premises vacated before 1 January but still taxed for the full year, double taxation after a transfer of activity, a missing creation-year exemption, or the minimum contribution applied where a real base should have been computed. Each of these maps to a statutory argument: the 1 January rule of Article 1478, the creation-year exemption of the same article, and the professional-activity definition of Article 1447. Before writing anything, obtain the detailed assessment (d\u00e9composition de la base) from the SIE, compare it with the lease, the departure inventory (\u00e9tat des lieux de sortie) and the 1447-C, and identify the exact line that is wrong. A challenge that says the amount feels too high goes nowhere; a challenge that says the base includes 80 square metres vacated on 15 December of the previous year, with the inventory attached, gets examined.<\/p>\n The remedies follow a ladder with strict time limits. The softest rung is the request for reduction or relief (demande de d\u00e9gr\u00e8vement, de remise ou de mod\u00e9ration), filed with the SIE, which works best for obvious material errors and for first-time situations where equity supports relief of the surcharge (demande de remise gracieuse des p\u00e9nalit\u00e9s). The formal rung is the contentious claim (r\u00e9clamation contentieuse), addressed to the tax administration within the statutory deadline shown on the notice: as a rule, 31 December of the second year following the year of assessment for local taxes such as the CFE, and the corresponding deadline printed on corporate tax and VAT notices for those taxes. The claim must state the tax, the year, the amount disputed, the legal grounds with the article numbers, and attach every exhibit; an imprecise claim is rejected as inadmissible before its merits are even read. If the administration rejects the claim expressly or stays silent for six months, the dispute moves to the administrative court (tribunal administratif), where the judge re-examines both the facts and the law. Parallel to this, enforcement can be challenged on its own track: a garnishment served for a disputed or time-barred amount can be referred to the enforcement judge, and the insolvency-era case law, including the 24 March 2021 ruling cited above on CFE as an obligation inherent in the activity, shows that courts examine the exact legal nature and date of birth of each tax debt rather than rubber-stamping collection. One caution drawn from real files: never let the annual accounts injunction track and the tax track drift apart. A company fighting its CFE while ignoring a greffe injunction for its accounts accumulates an astreinte that no tax victory will pay, as the Manosque then Aix-en-Provence sequence demonstrates. Where the accounts are also late, file them the same week you file the tax claim, using the accounts-filing remedy guide<\/a>, and where cash is frozen by the bank, combine the tax claim with the unblocking steps in our bank account guide<\/a>. From abroad, all of this is handled by special power of attorney (pouvoir sp\u00e9cial): your lawyer files the claim, follows the six-month silence period, seizes the court if needed, and appears without requiring your presence, while you supply exhibits and sign by qualified electronic signature.<\/p>\n Your French company’s first real test is not its first client but its first full tax calendar: four corporate tax instalments on 15 March, 15 June, 15 September and 15 December from the second year, monthly or quarterly VAT returns without a pause, a first CFE bill in the second autumn payable online by 15 December, and annual accounts approved then filed at the greffe within weeks of approval. Each date carries its own surcharge, from the 10% that applies to a promptly corrected omission to the 40% that punishes thirty days of silence after a formal demand, plus monthly interest and, for accounts, a daily court penalty that can reach thousands of euros. The foreign owner who survives this calendar does three things: activates the espace professionnel on day one and reads every notice, mandates an accountant and, where needed, a lawyer reachable within days rather than weeks, and corrects fast while challenging precisely, with article numbers and exhibits rather than impressions. Handled that way, a missed CFE deadline or a late return becomes an expensive lesson rather than the start of enforcement, and the company returns to what it was created for: doing business in France on a clean legal footing.<\/p>\n A foreign founder dealing with a French CFE bill, a missed tax deadline or a greffe filing gets a telephone consultation within 48 hours with a lawyer of the firm. Call +33 6 46 60 58 22<\/a> or write via our contact page<\/a> with your Kbis extract and the tax notice or court letter you received, and we will tell you what you owe, what to correct first and how fast it can be fixed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" First CFE bill on your French company? A foreign-founder guide to the CFE, corporate tax advances, VAT and annual accounts deadlines, and how to fix a missed deadline from abroad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":251031309,"featured_media":16360,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kj_source_type":"","_kj_official_id":"","_kj_official_url":"","_kj_judilibre_id":"","_kj_jur":"","_kj_lieu":"","_kj_chambre":"","_kj_rg":"","_kj_date":"","activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federated","footnotes":""},"categories":[80314,80313],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2118195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-decryptage","category-doing-business-in-france"],"yoast_head":"\nB. Your first CFE bill and your annual accounts filing: the two obligations foreign owners discover too late<\/h3>\n
II. How a foreign owner fixes a missed French tax or filing deadline from abroad<\/h2>\n
A. Pay, file late and cut the penalty: what to do in the first 30 days after a missed French deadline<\/h3>\n
B. Challenge an unfair CFE or corporate tax bill: reduction request, formal claim and the tax judge<\/h3>\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n
Need a quick opinion on your case<\/h2>\n