You registered your SAS or SARL in France, opened the bank account, received the Kbis (the company’s official registration extract), and the first financial year closed on 31 December. Nothing visibly happened. No letter arrived, no portal flashed red, and the accountant is somewhere between two time zones. In France, that silence is misleading. The closing of the first financial year starts three separate legal clocks at once: the shareholders must approve the annual accounts, the approved accounts must be filed with the commercial court registry, and a corporate tax return must be transmitted to the tax administration. Each clock has its own deadline, its own authority watching it, and its own sanction when it runs out. Foreign founders regularly discover all three only when the bank freezes a file for missing public accounts, when a customer sues to force publication, or when a penalty notice lands from the tax office.<\/p>\n
This guide is written for a foreign owner who runs a French company from abroad, in English, with every French term explained. It sets out the approval and filing calendar that applies from the first closing, what exactly goes into the filing file, and the confidentiality choices most founders never hear about. It then walks through what concretely happens when a filing is missed \u2014 registrar’s alert, court injunction with a daily penalty, criminal fine, prevention inquiry, tax surcharges \u2014 and finishes with a recovery plan that regularises the situation and protects the next financial year. All statutory references below are quoted word for word from the official texts in force on 9 September 2026, with their L\u00e9gifrance links, and the court decision cited is linked to its official Cour de cassation record.<\/p>\n
The first duty is internal: someone must draw up the accounts. Article L. 232-1 of the Commercial Code, the version in force since 3 May 2025, provides: A la cl\u00f4ture de chaque exercice le conseil d’administration, le directoire ou les g\u00e9rants dressent l’inventaire, les comptes annuels conform\u00e9ment aux dispositions de la section 2 du chapitre III du titre II du livre Ier et \u00e9tablissent un rapport de gestion \u00e9crit<\/a>. In plain English, at the close of each financial year the managers must prepare the inventory, the annual accounts (balance sheet, profit and loss account, and notes) and a written management report. One relief is built into the same article: Sont dispens\u00e9es de l’obligation d’\u00e9tablir un rapport de gestion les soci\u00e9t\u00e9s commerciales qui sont des microentreprises ou des petites entreprises au sens de l’article L. 230-1<\/a>, which exempts micro and small companies from the management report. Most foreign founders’ first-year entities fall in that exemption, but the accounts themselves are never optional.<\/p>\n Preparation is not approval. In a SARL (soci\u00e9t\u00e9 \u00e0 responsabilit\u00e9 limit\u00e9e, the French limited liability company) or its single-member form the EURL, article L. 223-26 of the Commercial Code fixes the deadline by law: Le rapport de gestion, l’inventaire et les comptes annuels \u00e9tablis par les g\u00e9rants, sont soumis \u00e0 l’approbation des associ\u00e9s r\u00e9unis en assembl\u00e9e, dans le d\u00e9lai de six mois \u00e0 compter de la cl\u00f4ture de l’exercice sous r\u00e9serve de prolongation de ce d\u00e9lai par d\u00e9cision de justice<\/a>. Six months from closing, extendable only by court order. For a 31 December closing, the approval meeting must happen by 30 June. The same article adds real teeth for blocked situations: le minist\u00e8re public ou toute personne int\u00e9ress\u00e9e peut saisir le pr\u00e9sident du tribunal comp\u00e9tent statuant en r\u00e9f\u00e9r\u00e9 afin d’enjoindre, le cas \u00e9ch\u00e9ant sous astreinte, aux g\u00e9rants de convoquer cette assembl\u00e9e ou de d\u00e9signer un mandataire pour y proc\u00e9der<\/a>. Any interested person \u2014 including a co-shareholder stuck abroad while the local manager does nothing \u2014 can obtain a summary order compelling the meeting, backed by a daily financial penalty, or the appointment of an agent to hold it.<\/p>\n The SAS (soci\u00e9t\u00e9 par actions simplifi\u00e9e, the flexible share company most foreign groups choose) works differently. No statute fixes its approval deadline: the bylaws decide, and the official administration portal confirms that in practice a six-month deadline is most often used. There is a structural reason why six months is the sane maximum even in an SAS: dividends. Under article L. 232-12 of the Commercial Code, Apr\u00e8s approbation des comptes annuels et constatation de l’existence de sommes distribuables, l’assembl\u00e9e g\u00e9n\u00e9rale d\u00e9termine la part attribu\u00e9e aux associ\u00e9s sous forme de dividendes<\/a> \u2014 no approved accounts, no lawful dividend distribution. And article L. 232-13 caps the payment mechanics: Toutefois, la mise en paiement des dividendes doit avoir lieu dans un d\u00e9lai maximal de neuf mois apr\u00e8s la cl\u00f4ture de l’exercice. La prolongation de ce d\u00e9lai peut \u00eatre accord\u00e9e par d\u00e9cision de justice<\/a>. Approval late in the autumn therefore squeezes the nine-month payment window, and any dividend paid without approved accounts showing distributable sums is exposed as a fictitious dividend, which article L. 232-12 brands in one sentence: Tout dividende distribu\u00e9 en violation des r\u00e8gles ci-dessus \u00e9nonc\u00e9es est un dividende fictif<\/a>, recoverable from the shareholder who received it.<\/p>\n One governance point changes the whole timeline for a growing entity: the statutory auditor, the commissaire aux comptes (CAC). For a SARL, article L. 223-35 of the Commercial Code makes the appointment mandatory above decree-fixed levels for two of three criteria: Sont tenues de d\u00e9signer un commissaire aux comptes au moins les soci\u00e9t\u00e9s \u00e0 responsabilit\u00e9 limit\u00e9e qui d\u00e9passent \u00e0 la cl\u00f4ture d’un exercice social des chiffres fix\u00e9s par d\u00e9cret pour deux des crit\u00e8res suivants : le total de leur bilan, le montant hors taxes de leur chiffre d’affaires ou le nombre moyen de leurs salari\u00e9s au cours d’un exercice<\/a>. If the CAC exists, the accounts must be handed to them well before the meeting so their report can be appended to the file \u2014 which means the practical approval deadline moves forward by several weeks. A foreign owner who crosses the thresholds without noticing inherits a double breach: no auditor appointed, and accounts approved without the required report, an approval decision exposed to annulment.<\/p>\n For the single-shareholder forms \u2014 SASU and EURL \u2014 approval is a written sole-shareholder decision rather than a physical meeting, which a founder abroad can sign electronically. The decision still covers the same ground: approval of the accounts, allocation of the result, and discharge wording as the bylaws require. Keep the signed decision with its date: it is the document that starts the filing clock described next.<\/p>\n Approval triggers the second clock: filing with the greffe, the registry of the commercial court, so the accounts are annexed to the registre du commerce et des soci\u00e9t\u00e9s (RCS), the companies register. For soci\u00e9t\u00e9s par actions \u2014 the SA and the SAS\/SASU \u2014 article L. 232-23 of the Commercial Code states: 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>. One month on paper, two months if filed electronically. The official administration page on filing annual accounts restates the same one-month and two-month deadlines for the SARL and EURL, so in practice every commercial company lives on the same rhythm: approve by end of June for a calendar-year closing, then file by the end of July on paper or the end of August online.<\/p>\n The filing file contains the approved annual accounts, the management report where one is required, the CAC report where an auditor exists, the proposed allocation of the result and the allocation resolution actually voted. Article L. 232-23 also covers the refusal scenario: En cas de refus d’approbation des comptes annuels, une copie de la d\u00e9lib\u00e9ration de l’assembl\u00e9e est d\u00e9pos\u00e9e dans le m\u00eame d\u00e9lai<\/a> \u2014 even a refusal to approve must be filed, so deadlock is public too.<\/p>\n Since 1 January 2023, every business formality in France goes through the guichet unique, the one-stop portal for company formalities run under the INPI (the national industrial property institute), and the registry filing is made online through the guichet des formalit\u00e9s des entreprises<\/a>, by the manager or a mandated person such as the accountant or a lawyer. Filing online is therefore both the default channel and the one that buys the second month. A modest registry fee applies; the accountant who prepared the accounts can normally file in the company’s name with a simple mandate, which is the standard setup for an owner who is not in France.<\/p>\n Publication is the part foreign founders underestimate: filed accounts are public, purchasable by anyone from the registry and reused by commercial databases. French law gives small entities calibrated opt-outs, and article L. 232-25 of the Commercial Code details them. Micro-companies \u2014 as a guide, the administration page sets the micro thresholds at a balance sheet total up to 450,000 euros, turnover up to 900,000 euros and up to 10 employees \u2014 peuvent d\u00e9clarer que les comptes annuels qu’elles d\u00e9posent ne seront pas rendus publics<\/a>: full confidentiality, declared at filing. Small companies peuvent demander que le compte de r\u00e9sultat ne soit pas rendu public<\/a>: the profit and loss account stays out of public view while the balance sheet and notes remain published. Medium-sized companies can publish only a simplified presentation of the balance sheet and notes. Two limits matter for group structures: Les soci\u00e9t\u00e9s appartenant \u00e0 un groupe, au sens de l’article L. 233-16, ne peuvent faire usage de cette facult\u00e9<\/a> \u2014 subsidiaries of a consolidated group cannot opt out \u2014 and confidentiality never hides the accounts from the State: Les autorit\u00e9s judiciaires, les autorit\u00e9s administratives… ainsi que la Banque de France… ont toutefois acc\u00e8s \u00e0 l’int\u00e9gralit\u00e9 des comptes<\/a>. The declaration must be attached at the moment of filing; it cannot be added retroactively, so the choice is made once, on filing day.<\/p>\n Running in parallel with the registry filing is the third clock: the corporate tax return, the liasse fiscale built around form 2065, which carries the same accounting data to the tax administration. Article 223 of the Code g\u00e9n\u00e9ral des imp\u00f4ts fixes the deadline: la d\u00e9claration du b\u00e9n\u00e9fice ou du d\u00e9ficit est faite dans les trois mois de la cl\u00f4ture de l’exercice. Si l’exercice est clos le 31 d\u00e9cembre ou si aucun exercice n’est clos au cours d’une ann\u00e9e, la d\u00e9claration est \u00e0 d\u00e9poser au plus tard le deuxi\u00e8me jour ouvr\u00e9 suivant le 1er mai<\/a>. Three months after closing, and for a 31 December closing no later than the second working day following 1 May \u2014 transmitted electronically through the EDI gateway, generally by the accountant. This return is earlier than the approval meeting: the tax office receives the numbers before the shareholders approve them, which is normal and expected. Our guide on French corporate tax for foreign owners<\/a> details the tax side, and the broader setup sequence \u2014 bank account, Kbis, VAT \u2014 is covered in our formation guide for foreign founders<\/a>.<\/p>\n Missing the filing is not a passive omission; it starts an enforcement chain written into the Commercial Code. The first link is the registrar. Article L. 232-24 provides: Le greffier, lorsqu’il constate l’inex\u00e9cution du d\u00e9p\u00f4t pr\u00e9vu au I des articles L. 232-21 \u00e0 L. 232-23, informe le pr\u00e9sident du tribunal de commerce pour qu’il puisse faire application de l’article L. 123-5-2 ou du II de l’article L. 611-2 ainsi que le repr\u00e9sentant de l’Etat dans le d\u00e9partement<\/a>. The registrar who notices the missing filing alerts the president of the commercial court and the State representative. No one needs to denounce you: the registry flags it mechanically.<\/p>\n The second link is the injunction. Under article L. 611-2, II of the Commercial Code, Lorsque les dirigeants d’une soci\u00e9t\u00e9 commerciale ne proc\u00e8dent pas au d\u00e9p\u00f4t des comptes annuels dans les d\u00e9lais pr\u00e9vus par les textes applicables, le pr\u00e9sident du tribunal peut, le cas \u00e9ch\u00e9ant sur demande du pr\u00e9sident d’un des observatoires mentionn\u00e9s \u00e0 l’article L. 910-1 A, leur adresser une injonction de le faire \u00e0 bref d\u00e9lai sous astreinte<\/a> \u2014 an order to file within a short time under an astreinte, a sum payable per day of delay. And if the injunction fails, the same paragraph lets the court president treat the silence as a warning sign and summon the directors for an examination of the company’s situation under the prevention procedure. Alongside it, article L. 123-5-1 opens the same weapon to private parties: A la demande de tout int\u00e9ress\u00e9 ou du minist\u00e8re public, le pr\u00e9sident du tribunal, statuant en r\u00e9f\u00e9r\u00e9, peut enjoindre sous astreinte au dirigeant de toute personne morale de proc\u00e9der au d\u00e9p\u00f4t des pi\u00e8ces et actes au registre du commerce et des soci\u00e9t\u00e9s auquel celle-ci est tenue par des dispositions l\u00e9gislatives ou r\u00e9glementaires<\/a>, with the option of appointing an agent to perform the formality instead.<\/p>\n The Court of Cassation showed how far this goes in a decision of 3 March 2021, number 19-10.086, published in the Bulletin: the official record of the Copirel ruling<\/a>. A single-member SAS supplying furniture had filed no accounts at all for eight financial years, 2008 to 2015. Two customer companies \u2014 not shareholders, not the administration, just trading partners who wanted to see the numbers \u2014 sued in summary proceedings and obtained an order compelling publication under a provisional penalty of 500 euros per day of delay. The Court of Cassation confirmed that the private action was admissible next to the special statutory actions, and on the limitation defence it approved the lower court’s reasoning verbatim: il y avait lieu de lui enjoindre de le faire pour les exercices clos le 31 d\u00e9cembre des ann\u00e9es 2008 \u00e0 2015 afin de mettre un terme au trouble manifestement illicite r\u00e9sultant de l’absence de transparence, sans que puisse \u00eatre oppos\u00e9e la prescription all\u00e9gu\u00e9e<\/a>. Translation: filing was ordered for every missing year, back to 2008, to end the manifestly unlawful disturbance caused by the absence of transparency, and the passage of time was no defence. For a foreign owner, the practical reading is blunt: any interested third party \u2014 a customer, a supplier, an employee, a lender \u2014 can force publication through a fast summary procedure, and years of silence accumulate rather than expire.<\/p>\n On top of the civil chain sits a criminal exposure: the official administration page on filing annual accounts states that a manager who does not file faces a criminal fine of 1,500 euros, raised to 3,000 euros on repeat, with prosecution possible for one year from the date the accounts should have been filed. It is a modest fine, rarely the real problem, but it creates a record, and it is personal to the manager \u2014 not to the company \u2014 which matters for a foreign director who travels to France.<\/p>\n The tax clock has its own sanctions. A late corporate tax return triggers article 1728 of the Code g\u00e9n\u00e9ral des imp\u00f4ts: 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 ; b. 40 % lorsque la d\u00e9claration ou l’acte n’a pas \u00e9t\u00e9 d\u00e9pos\u00e9 dans les trente jours suivant la r\u00e9ception d’une mise en demeure<\/a>. Ten per cent surcharge on the tax due for a late return, forty per cent once a formal notice has been ignored for thirty days, plus late-payment interest. A founder who fixes the registry filing but forgets the tax return still bleeds.<\/p>\n Finally, the commercial consequences arrive before any court does. Banks re-papering their files ask for the latest filed accounts; a file showing nothing published for the last financial year is the classic trigger for the compliance blockage we describe in our guide on bank freezes and registry blockages<\/a>. Buyers, landlords and factoring companies read the registry too: an empty filing history reads as distress or opacity, and under article L. 611-2 the court president can treat it exactly that way and open a prevention examination. The sanction chain is therefore not a remote theoretical risk; it starts with an automated registry flag and ends, at worst, with a judge looking into the company’s finances.<\/p>\n The recovery sequence is short, but the order matters. First, close the approval gap. If the accounts were never approved, hold the approval decision now: for a SASU or EURL the sole shareholder signs the written decision; for a multi-shareholder SARL or SAS the manager convenes the meeting under the bylaws, or any shareholder uses the r\u00e9f\u00e9r\u00e9 route of article L. 223-26 against a passive manager. If no accounts exist at all, have the accountant reconstruct the financial year from the bank statements and invoices \u2014 the Copirel ruling shows the court will order filing even eight years back, so reconstruction is unavoidable either way, and doing it voluntarily is cheaper than doing it under astreinte.<\/p>\n Second, file immediately, electronically, through the company formalities portal. Once the deadline is missed, the two-month electronic window no longer matters; speed matters, because every day of delay is a day the registrar’s alert can turn into an injunction. Make the confidentiality decision at this exact moment if the company qualifies and is not part of a consolidated group: attach the confidentiality declaration for a micro-company, or request non-publication of the profit and loss account for a small company. Filed accounts remain retroactively visible otherwise, and the Copirel case is a reminder that third parties care about what is on the register.<\/p>\n Third, answer the letters. If the registrar or the court president has already sent a reminder or an injunction, reply in writing with the filing receipt; if an injunction under astreinte has been issued, comply within the time it fixes, because the astreinte is liquidated \u2014 converted into money actually owed \u2014 when the order is ignored, and the judge can adjust but rarely erases it. If a prevention summons arrives, treat it as the opportunity it partly is: the procedure is confidential, aimed at avoiding insolvency proceedings, and arriving with freshly filed accounts and a credible cash-flow view usually closes it quickly.<\/p>\n Fourth, settle the tax side in parallel: transmit the late 2065 return, budget the ten per cent surcharge of article 1728 if no notice has yet been served, and file within thirty days of any formal notice to stay out of the forty per cent bracket. Where the delay has a genuine cause \u2014 an accountant’s failure, a postbox abroad, an ill director \u2014 a motivated request for remission of the surcharge can be addressed to the tax office with the filing evidence attached; it is discretionary, but silence guarantees the surcharge.<\/p>\n Fifth, rebuild the calendar so the miss never repeats. For a 31 December closing, the working spine is: accounts closed and handed to the accountant in January; draft accounts to the statutory auditor, if one is required, in spring; tax return transmitted by the second working day following 1 May; approval meeting or sole-shareholder decision by 30 June; registry filing by 31 July on paper or 31 August online; dividends, if any, paid within nine months of closing. Write these five dates into the bylaws compliance file and into the manager’s diary with sixty-day alerts, and give the accountant a standing mandate to file \u2014 the standing mandate is the single most effective fix for an owner who does not live in France, because none of the five steps physically requires the owner’s presence.<\/p>\n Two situations call for counsel rather than an accountant alone. The first is deadlock: a co-shareholder or local manager who refuses to approve or convene, where the r\u00e9f\u00e9r\u00e9 injunction and the court-appointed agent of articles L. 223-26 and L. 123-5-1 are the working tools. The second is accumulation: several missing financial years, an injunction already issued, or a prevention summons pending, where the order in which steps are taken \u2014 and what is said to the court \u2014 conditions both the astreinte and the prevention outcome. Those are litigable situations with a judge at the end of the chain, and they are handled like litigation from day one.<\/p>\n A French company’s annual accounts are governed by a simple spine \u2014 approve within six months, file within one or two, report to the tax office within three \u2014 and by an enforcement chain that starts automatically at the registry when the spine is not followed. The foreign owner’s failure mode is almost never bad faith; it is distance, a silent accountant and the false comfort of an uneventful first year. The fixes are equally unglamorous: approve on time, file electronically with the right confidentiality choice, answer every registry letter, and keep a standing mandate with someone on the ground. Done once and calendared, the whole discipline costs a fraction of a single astreinte \u2014 and it keeps the company’s public face, its bank file and its dividend capacity intact.<\/p>\n Missed a filing deadline, received an injunction or a prevention summons, or stuck in an approval deadlock with a co-shareholder? Get a phone consultation within 48 hours with a lawyer from our firm. Call +33 6 46 60 58 22<\/a> or write through our contact page<\/a>. We assist foreign companies in Paris and across Ile-de-France, in English, from the first accounts to the courtroom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Approve within six months, file at the greffe within one (two electronically), report to the tax office within three: the French annual accounts calendar for foreign owners, the sanctions chain when a filing is missed, and the exact recovery plan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":251031309,"featured_media":16304,"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-2118527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-decryptage","category-doing-business-in-france"],"yoast_head":"\nB. File at the greffe within one month \u2014 two if you file electronically \u2014 and choose your level of public disclosure<\/h3>\n
II. What actually happens when the filing deadline is missed \u2014 and the way back<\/h2>\n
A. The sanction chain: registrar’s alert, injunction under daily penalty, criminal fine, prevention inquiry and tax surcharges<\/h3>\n
B. Recovering from a missed filing: regularise fast, disclose deliberately, and rebuild the calendar<\/h3>\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n
Need a quick opinion on your case<\/h2>\n