You formed your French company from abroad, received the Kbis (the official registration certificate that proves your company exists), opened the bank account, and started invoicing. Then the first year-end arrives, and with it a pile of letters you did not expect: the accountant asks for an annual general meeting, the greffe (the clerk’s office of the commercial court that keeps the company register) expects filed accounts, the tax office (Service des imp\u00f4ts des entreprises, known as the SIE) wants the corporate tax return, URSSAF (the social-security collection agency for employers) wants monthly payroll reports, and the beneficial-owners register (registre des b\u00e9n\u00e9ficiaires effectifs, or RBE) needs its declaration. Miss one of these steps and the consequences follow quickly in France: a court injunction to file, daily penalty payments, late interest on every tax debt, and a bank that freezes the account until the paperwork is in order.<\/p>\n
This guide gives you, in English, the full legal calendar of a French company owned from abroad: what you must approve and file after year-end and by when, what you must declare and pay during the year, and how you fix a missed deadline without travelling to France. It covers the SARL (soci\u00e9t\u00e9 \u00e0 responsabilit\u00e9 limit\u00e9e, the limited-liability company run by a g\u00e9rant), the SAS (soci\u00e9t\u00e9 par actions simplifi\u00e9e, the flexible company run by a pr\u00e9sident), and the single-shareholder versions EURL and SASU. If you have not yet chosen your vehicle, start with our step-by-step guide to setting up a company in France as a foreign founder<\/a>, then use this calendar to run it. Dates below use the classic 31 December year-end; if your financial year closes on another date, shift every deadline by the same number of months.<\/p>\n Everything starts at closing. Once the financial year ends, the manager must draw up the inventory, the annual accounts and a written management report. The Commercial Code states it plainly: \u00ab 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. \u00bb<\/a> In practice your French accountant prepares the balance sheet, the profit-and-loss statement and the notes (the annexe), and you, as the foreign owner, check that the figures match the bank statements and the invoices you actually issued. Do not sign off blindly: the accounts you approve determine the taxable profit, the distributable dividend and the story your balance sheet tells the bank.<\/p>\n The central deadline is the same for almost every company: the accounts must be approved within six months of year-end, so by 30 June for a 31 December closing. In a SARL, the rule reads: \u00ab 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. \u00bb<\/a> If the meeting is not held in time, the public prosecutor or any interested person can ask the president of the competent court, ruling in summary proceedings, to order the managers to convene the meeting, if necessary under a daily penalty. That sounds theoretical until a minority shareholder, a divorcing spouse or an unpaid supplier uses it. The documents, the text of the proposed resolutions and, where applicable, the statutory auditor’s report must be sent to the shareholders before the meeting, so plan for translation time when the shareholders live abroad and read English better than French.<\/p>\n In a soci\u00e9t\u00e9 anonyme the same six-month logic applies to the ordinary general meeting: \u00ab L’assembl\u00e9e g\u00e9n\u00e9rale ordinaire est r\u00e9unie au moins une fois par an, dans les six mois de la cl\u00f4ture de l’exercice, sous r\u00e9serve de prolongation de ce d\u00e9lai par d\u00e9cision de justice. \u00bb<\/a> Most foreign-owned small companies are SAS rather than SA, and the SAS follows its own articles of association for collective decisions, with one hard core the statutes cannot remove: decisions on the annual accounts and profits must be taken collectively by the shareholders. For the one-person SASU, the sole shareholder approves the accounts, and the Code adds: \u00ab L’associ\u00e9 unique approuve les comptes, apr\u00e8s rapport du commissaire aux comptes s’il en existe un, dans le d\u00e9lai de six mois \u00e0 compter de la cl\u00f4ture de l’exercice. \u00bb<\/a> The sole shareholder cannot delegate this power, and the decisions must be recorded in a register. If you are the only shareholder and also the pr\u00e9sident living in London, New York or Dubai, no travel is needed: you sign the written decision, file it in the company register, and the six-month deadline is met.<\/p>\n When several shareholders are scattered across countries, check what your statutes allow. Many SAS statutes and an increasing number of SARL statutes permit video-conference meetings and written consultation, which lets a foreign owner hold the meeting from abroad without a flight to Paris. If your statutes are silent or require physical presence, amend them before year-end rather than improvising an invalid meeting: a resolution adopted in breach of the convening rules can be annulled, and an annulled approval means the filing deadline described below never validly started. When the accounts are simply not ready \u2014 the accountant is late, an audit point is disputed, a foreign subsidiary’s figures have not arrived \u2014 do not let the six months expire silently. Both the SARL and the SA provisions quoted above allow an extension by court decision (prolongation par d\u00e9cision de justice): your lawyer files a short request to the president of the commercial court before the deadline, usually obtaining several extra months. The Paris practice is routine and quick when the request is filed early; filed late, it looks like an excuse and may be refused.<\/p>\n The same meeting decides what happens to the profit. Once the accounts are approved and distributable sums exist, the shareholders vote the dividend: \u00ab 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. \u00bb<\/a> Foreign parents often prefer to leave the profit in the French company to fund growth, which is perfectly lawful through allocation to reserves or retained earnings (report \u00e0 nouveau). But if dividends flow to a non-resident parent, French withholding tax and the applicable tax treaty enter the picture, a topic our guide to French corporate tax for foreign owners<\/a> explains in detail. Record the allocation precisely in the minutes: the greffe will ask for the resolution on the use of profits at the filing stage, and a vague minute is the most common reason filings bounce back to foreign owners.<\/p>\n Approval is only half the job. The accounts must then be filed with the greffe for publication, and the clock for this second step starts on the day of the approval meeting, not on year-end. The rule for companies limited by shares provides: \u00ab 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 \u00bb<\/a>, together with the annual accounts, the management report, the auditor’s report where one exists, and the approved resolution on the use of profits. SARL companies follow the same filing logic through the single-window company formalities portal (guichet unique) operated by the INPI (Institut national de la propri\u00e9t\u00e9 industrielle, the French intellectual-property and business-formalities office). For a 31 December year-end with approval in June, electronic filing \u2014 the normal route for a foreign owner \u2014 is therefore due by the end of August. Our detailed walkthrough of when the first annual accounts of a French company are due<\/a> covers the special case of the first, often longer, financial year.<\/p>\n File the complete pack, not a selection. The greffe expects the signed balance sheet, profit-and-loss account and notes, the management report where required, the auditor’s report if the company has one, and the minutes or an extract showing the approval vote and the exact allocation of profits. Small companies may file under a confidentiality option that keeps the profit-and-loss account out of public view, or a simplified presentation depending on size thresholds your accountant will confirm. Filing is done online through the guichet unique, which forwards to the greffe of the company’s registered office (si\u00e8ge); the greffe of the Paris commercial court, now the tribunal des activit\u00e9s \u00e9conomiques de Paris, publishes practical checklists each year, confirming the six-month meeting rule, the one-month paper deadline and the two-month electronic deadline. Keep the filing receipt: banks, landlords and major customers increasingly ask for proof that the accounts were actually filed before renewing credit lines or leases.<\/p>\n When nothing is filed, the system does not wait. The president of the commercial court can send the manager an injunction to file within one month, at the request of the public prosecutor or any interested person \u2014 and in practice the greffe’s monitoring software triggers these letters automatically a few months after the missed deadline. If the company still does not comply, the court can attach a daily penalty payment (astreinte) for each day of delay, then order the company to pay the accumulated sum. A foreign director who ignored the French letter because it looked like routine mail discovers the problem when the company’s bank, reviewing its file, notices the accounts were never published and freezes new financing until the BODACC (Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales, the official gazette where filings are announced) shows the company in order. Single-shareholder companies get one narrow relief confirmed by both the statute and the Paris greffe: when the sole shareholder personally runs the company as pr\u00e9sident or g\u00e9rant, depositing the signed inventory and accounts stands in for the approval decision, so no separate minutes need be filed. Everyone else must produce the meeting paper trail.<\/p>\n A late filing can still be regularised. File the missing accounts through the guichet unique as soon as the accountant finalises them, answer any injunction letter within the one-month window it sets, and ask the court to lift or moderate the daily penalty once the filing is complete \u2014 judges respond far better to a company that filed late than to one that argues. Document every step in English and French for the group file abroad: the filing receipt, the BODACC notice, the reply to the injunction. These three papers close the incident and restore the company’s public record, which is what lenders and partners check.<\/p>\n Corporate income tax (imp\u00f4t sur les soci\u00e9t\u00e9s, known as IS) runs on its own calendar, separate from the accounts approval. Companies liable for IS must file the tax return for their business profits, and the Code sets the headline deadline: \u00ab 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. \u00bb<\/a> In practice the return (form 2065-SD and its appendices) is filed electronically through the company’s impots.gouv.fr professional account at the start of May, while the tax itself is paid in instalments during the year with a final balance once the return fixes the exact profit. A foreign shareholder who confuses the two calendars \u2014 approving accounts in June but forgetting the May tax return \u2014 collects the classic double penalty: late interest plus a surcharge on the unpaid balance. Give your accountant access to the impots.gouv.fr professional space early, because activating it from abroad with a foreign phone number is the step that always takes longer than expected.<\/p>\n Value-added tax (taxe sur la valeur ajout\u00e9e, TVA \u2014 the French VAT) is the monthly discipline most foreign owners underestimate. Every VAT-registered business must report to its SIE, since \u00ab 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. \u00bb<\/a> Under the standard real regime (r\u00e9gime r\u00e9el normal), the CA3 return is filed and the VAT due is paid every month, with a quarterly option where the annual VAT bill stays below 4,000 euros. The return lists total transactions and taxable ones in detail, and it is also the document through which you reclaim input VAT on French expenses. A foreign e-commerce business selling to French consumers without any French company still has VAT duties \u2014 distance-sale thresholds, the EU One-Stop Shop, or a French registration \u2014 so align the VAT position before the first shipment, not after the SIE asks questions. Keep the French VAT number active and consistent with the VIES European database, because customers check it before paying large invoices.<\/p>\n From the first hire, social charges join the calendar. Every employer of salaried staff must send the monthly online payroll return, the d\u00e9claration sociale nominative (DSN), since the law provides: \u00ab une d\u00e9claration sociale nominative \u00e9tablissant pour chacun des salari\u00e9s ou assimil\u00e9s le lieu d’activit\u00e9 et les caract\u00e9ristiques de l’emploi et du contrat de travail, les montants des r\u00e9mun\u00e9rations, des cotisations et contributions sociales et la dur\u00e9e de travail retenus ou \u00e9tablis pour la paie de chaque mois \u00bb<\/a>, addressed each month to the URSSAF network and related bodies. The DSN carries, employee by employee, the workplace, the contract terms, the pay, the contributions and the working time for the month, plus every hiring, suspension or departure. It is due each month by the date shown on the net-entreprises portal, and the associated contributions are paid alongside it. One missed DSN triggers an automatic reminder, then an estimate (taxation d’office) that is always higher than the real amount \u2014 so foreign founders who run payroll through a French provider should still diarise the deadline and check each month that the provider actually filed.<\/p>\n Two annual items complete the picture. The local business tax, the cotisation fonci\u00e8re des entreprises (CFE, charged on the premises the company occupies), starts with a declaration: \u00ab Les contribuables doivent d\u00e9clarer les \u00e9l\u00e9ments servant \u00e0 l’\u00e9tablissement de la cotisation fonci\u00e8re des entreprises l’ann\u00e9e pr\u00e9c\u00e9dant celle de l’imposition au plus tard le deuxi\u00e8me jour ouvr\u00e9 suivant le 1er mai \u00bb<\/a>, with a provisional declaration before 1 January where premises were created or changed during the year. The CFE bill then arrives in autumn and is paid by the date printed on the notice; a company that moved offices mid-year and forgot the declaration often pays on the wrong premises for years. Finally, the beneficial-owners declaration (RBE) identifies the humans who ultimately control the company: companies \u00ab d\u00e9clarent au registre du commerce et des soci\u00e9t\u00e9s, par l’interm\u00e9diaire de l’organisme mentionn\u00e9 au deuxi\u00e8me alin\u00e9a de l’article L. 123-33 du code de commerce, les informations relatives aux b\u00e9n\u00e9ficiaires effectifs \u00bb<\/a>, covering identity details, home address and the nature of control. File it through the guichet unique when the company is formed and update it every time the ownership chain changes \u2014 a capital increase subscribed from abroad, a new holding company above the French vehicle, a shareholder’s move. Banks now check the RBE before releasing funds, and an outdated declaration is a standard reason for a frozen account, as our guide on fixing a missed beneficial-owners filing from abroad<\/a> explains.<\/p>\n When a deadline is already missed, work in this order: stop the bleeding, regularise, then contest what can fairly be reduced. First, calendar the exact expiry from the letter you received \u2014 an injunction gives one month, a tax reassessment proposal gives thirty days to reply, a penalty notice sets its own payment date \u2014 and reply inside it, even briefly, because silence converts a reducible surcharge into a final one. Second, file or pay what is missing through the proper channel: accounts through the guichet unique to the greffe, tax returns and payments through the impots.gouv.fr professional account to the SIE, payroll through the DSN portal, the RBE through the company formalities route. A file completed late almost always costs less than a file left open, since every French penalty regime rewards the taxpayer who comes forward.<\/p>\n Understand what lateness costs so you can decide what to challenge. Any tax debt not paid by the legal deadline bears late interest by operation of law: \u00ab Toute cr\u00e9ance de nature fiscale, dont l’\u00e9tablissement ou le recouvrement incombe aux administrations fiscales, qui n’a pas \u00e9t\u00e9 acquitt\u00e9e dans le d\u00e9lai l\u00e9gal donne lieu au versement d’un int\u00e9r\u00eat de retard. \u00bb<\/a> Surcharges for late filing or late payment are added on top, at rates that escalate where the administration had to intervene first. The practical consequence for a foreign owner is that a six-month delay on a significant IS balance or a year of unfiled CA3 returns produces a bill far larger than the original tax \u2014 which is precisely why the fastest return on a lawyer’s first hour is often a payment plan (d\u00e9lai de paiement) negotiated with the SIE while the contestation runs its course, stopping enforcement without conceding the merits.<\/p>\n Contestation follows a fixed path. Against a tax surcharge or reassessment, file a formal claim (r\u00e9clamation contentieuse) with the SIE that issued it, setting out the facts in English-backed evidence and the legal argument in French, within the claim deadline on the notice; if the administration rejects it expressly or stays silent, appeal to the administrative court. Against a greffe injunction or a daily penalty, write to the president of the commercial court showing the filing is now complete and asking for discharge or moderation of the penalty, attaching the filing receipt and the BODACC notice. Against a URSSAF estimate after a missed DSN, file the missing returns first and dispute the estimate before the friendly-appeals board (commission de recours amiable) and then the judicial court if needed. In every forum, three exhibits decide the outcome: proof of the real date (postmark, portal receipt, bailiff’s report), proof of good faith (first offence, accountant’s failure documented, immediate correction), and proof of payment or guarantee for the undisputed part. Foreign companies that pay what they plainly owe while fighting what they genuinely dispute settle faster and for less.<\/p>\n Paris and \u00cele-de-France add their own practical layer. Companies seated in Paris file with the greffe of the tribunal des activit\u00e9s \u00e9conomiques de Paris, which runs the busiest counter in France and answers complete electronic files fastest \u2014 so a Paris-seated company owned from abroad should always file through the guichet unique rather than sending paper across borders. Requests to extend the six-month approval deadline go to the president of the court of the company’s si\u00e8ge: Paris for a Paris si\u00e8ge, otherwise Nanterre, Bobigny, Cr\u00e9teil or the other commercial courts of the inner and outer suburbs, each with its own filing habits your lawyer knows. Tax correspondence follows the SIE of the si\u00e8ge’s district, reachable through the impots.gouv.fr secure messaging, which accepts English-language attachments alongside a short French cover note. And when a meeting with the authorities becomes unavoidable, Paris offers the full range of professionals \u2014 bilingual accountants, auditors and counsel \u2014 within a metro ride of every court and tax office, which is one reason foreign groups keep their French holding in the capital even when operations sit elsewhere.<\/p>\n The French legal calendar is demanding but entirely predictable: approve the accounts within six months of year-end, file them with the greffe within one month of approval or two months electronically, return the corporate tax result by the second working day after 1 May, report and pay VAT every month or quarter, send the DSN every month from the first hire, declare the CFE base by the same May deadline, and keep the beneficial-owners declaration current with every ownership change. Each deadline has a named recipient \u2014 the shareholders in meeting, the greffe, the SIE, URSSAF, the company register \u2014 and each missed deadline has a known repair route: extension by the court president, late filing through the guichet unique, formal claim to the SIE, moderation of the daily penalty. A foreign owner who keeps this calendar, empowers a local accountant with real portal access, and reacts to the first letter within its stated window runs a French company as safely from Sydney or San Francisco as from the 8th arrondissement. The companies that suffer are never those with complex structures; they are those that discover the calendar from an injunction.<\/p>\n Year-end approaching for your French company, a greffe injunction or an SIE penalty already received, or a filing you cannot complete from abroad? 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 \u00cele-de-France, in English, from the first approval of accounts to the contestation of penalties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Foreign owner of a French company? The full legal calendar in English: approve accounts in 6 months, file with the greffe, pay IS, VAT, CFE and payroll on time – and fix a missed deadline from abroad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":251031309,"featured_media":16496,"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-2121241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-decryptage","category-doing-business-in-france"],"yoast_head":"\nI. What your French company must approve and file after year-end, and by when<\/h2>\n
A. How a foreign owner approves the annual accounts within six months of year-end<\/h3>\n
B. How a foreign company files its accounts with the greffe without receiving an injunction<\/h3>\n
II. What your French company must declare and pay during the year, and how to fix a missed deadline from abroad<\/h2>\n
A. How a foreign-owned company pays corporate tax, VAT and payroll charges on time<\/h3>\n
B. How a foreign owner catches up a missed deadline from abroad, with Paris and \u00cele-de-France specifics<\/h3>\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n
Need a quick opinion on your case<\/h2>\n