You live in London, New York, Dubai or Singapore. Your French company is registered: the Kbis (the official identity card of a French company, issued by the greffe, the registry of the commercial court) is in your inbox, the SIREN (the nine-digit identification number assigned by INSEE, the French statistics institute) is active, and your first French customer is asking for an invoice. Then your accountant writes three sentences that freeze everything: the French VAT number has not arrived yet, the invoice you already sent does not comply with French invoicing rules, and the first VAT return is due online even though you have never logged into the French tax portal. Every week of improvisation from this point costs real money, because VAT paid to suppliers without a valid number cannot be recovered, invoices without the correct VAT treatment get challenged by customers, and missed returns trigger penalties that grow on their own. This guide explains, entirely in English and step by step, how a foreign owner running a French company from abroad gets the VAT number, knows when French VAT applies, files and pays from another country, switches to mandatory e-invoicing, and fixes mistakes before they turn into a reassessment.<\/p>\n
French VAT looks technical because every rule is written in dense administrative French and every acronym hides a procedure. Its logic, however, is simple and strict: registration gives you a number, the number goes on every invoice, invoices follow the correct rate and format, returns report the VAT collected minus the VAT paid, and the tax office checks the chain from abroad through your online professional account. The trap for foreign owners is rarely the substance of the rate. It is distance plus delay: documents sleeping at the registered office (the si\u00e8ge social), a return nobody filed because nobody felt concerned, a wrong rate copied from one invoice to the next for a year. Read this article as an operating manual. At each stage, note who does what, by when, and with which proof, because in VAT disputes the administration rarely argues about intentions. It asks for the number, the invoice, the return and the payment, in that order.<\/p>\n
Before you charge a single euro of French VAT, two questions must be answered in order: does your company hold a French VAT number, and are its sales actually subject to French VAT? Foreign founders often answer the second question first and the first never, which produces the classic blockage: a company that invoices with foreign VAT logic, or with no VAT logic at all, while the French file does not even exist yet. The two steps below put the file and the logic in the right order.<\/p>\n
Your company receives its basic identity at registration: the SIREN, the nine-digit number that identifies the legal entity, and one or more SIRET numbers (each SIRET adds five digits identifying each establishment) for each place of business. Registration runs through the single online portal (the guichet unique des formalit\u00e9s), and the commercial court registry, the greffe, then issues the Kbis that proves the company exists. If you chose a SAS (soci\u00e9t\u00e9 par actions simplifi\u00e9e, the flexible joint-stock company most foreign founders prefer) or a SARL (soci\u00e9t\u00e9 \u00e0 responsabilit\u00e9 limit\u00e9e, the more rigid private limited company), that choice is already made by now; if it is not, read our guide on choosing between a SAS, a SARL, a branch and a subsidiary when you invest from abroad<\/a> before going further, because the vehicle determines who signs tax documents and who is liable when filings go wrong. The VAT number itself, called the num\u00e9ro de TVA intracommunautaire, is a separate identifier built on the SIREN: the official business portal explains that le service des imp\u00f4ts des entreprises (SIE) transmet automatiquement le num\u00e9ro de TVA intracommunautaire \u00e0 l’entreprise au moment de son immatriculation<\/a>, where the SIE (service des imp\u00f4ts des entreprises) is the local branch of the DGFIP (direction g\u00e9n\u00e9rale des finances publiques, the French tax administration) that holds your company’s tax file. In plain terms, for a company liable to VAT, you do not apply for the number in a separate procedure: the tax office sends it automatically once the company is registered, and the number then follows a fixed structure, with the official portal confirming that en France, le num\u00e9ro est constitu\u00e9 du code FR, d’une cl\u00e9 informatique (2 chiffres) et du num\u00e9ro SIREN de l’entreprise (9 chiffres)<\/a>, meaning FR plus a two-digit computer key plus your nine-digit SIREN.<\/p>\n The statute behind that number is article 286 ter of the French Tax Code (code g\u00e9n\u00e9ral des imp\u00f4ts, universally shortened to CGI), which states that “Est identifi\u00e9 par un num\u00e9ro individuel : 1\u00b0 Tout assujetti qui effectue des livraisons de biens ou des prestations de services lui ouvrant droit \u00e0 d\u00e9duction”<\/a>, in other words every taxable person carrying out supplies that open a right to deduct VAT gets an individual number. Note the condition hidden in that sentence: the number exists to track deductible VAT, so a company that will never deduct anything may never receive one automatically. The same tax article that creates the obligation to register also sets your first deadline as a taxable person: “Toute personne assujettie \u00e0 la taxe sur la valeur ajout\u00e9e doit : 1\u00b0 Dans les quinze jours du commencement de ses op\u00e9rations, souscrire au bureau d\u00e9sign\u00e9 par un arr\u00eat\u00e9 une d\u00e9claration conforme au mod\u00e8le fourni par l’administration.”<\/a> Within fifteen days of starting operations, the company must file the opening declaration with the designated office. From abroad, treat that fortnight as your first real test of organisation: your accountant (expert-comptable) or tax adviser should hold a signed mandate (a simple written authority is enough in practice), monitor the mail arriving at the si\u00e8ge social, and create the company’s espace professionnel, the secure online business account on the impots.gouv.fr portal, because almost every VAT step afterwards happens there. The tax administration itself points companies to that account, noting that your VAT regime can be checked inside votre espace professionnel sur le site impots.gouv.fr via le service \u00ab D\u00e9clarer la TVA \u00bb<\/a>, your professional account on the impots.gouv.fr website through the declare-VAT service.<\/p>\n Two frequent foreign-founder situations deserve a warning at this stage. First, if your company stays under the small-business exemption thresholds and pays no VAT (the franchise en base de TVA explained below), the official portal warns that attribution of an intra-Community VAT number in that case n’est pas automatique<\/a>, it is not automatic, so you will have to request the number expressly if you need one for cross-border purchases or sales. Founders who chose the exemption to save accounting fees and then discover they need a number for a German supplier or a Spanish customer lose weeks at exactly the moment the business starts moving. Decide the question before registration if you can: if the company will buy or sell across borders in its first year, assume it needs a VAT number from day one and organise the file accordingly. Second, once the number arrives, it must appear everywhere the administration looks. The official guidance states that the number must appear on the company’s commercial and administrative documents, expressly naming facture, d\u00e9claration de TVA, etc.<\/a>, invoices, VAT returns and similar papers. An invoice issued by your French company without its VAT number is not a formal detail: it tells the customer that your file is incomplete, it prevents a VAT-liable customer from recovering the VAT you charged, and it is the first document an inspector asks for in any control. From abroad, the practical rule is therefore simple: no compliant invoice leaves the company before the VAT number is confirmed in writing, and every template used by your sales team, your billing software and any freelancer issuing invoices in your name must show the number, the rate applied, and the VAT amount in euros.<\/p>\n With the number in hand, the next question is where French VAT applies to what you sell. The founding rule sits in article 256 of the Tax Code: “Sont soumises \u00e0 la taxe sur la valeur ajout\u00e9e les livraisons de biens et les prestations de services effectu\u00e9es \u00e0 titre on\u00e9reux par un assujetti agissant en tant que tel.”<\/a> Supplies of goods and services made for consideration by a taxable person acting as such are subject to VAT. Your French SAS or SARL, once operating, is precisely that taxable person (assujetti), so the default answer is that its sales for payment fall inside French VAT unless a specific exemption, place-of-supply rule or reverse-charge mechanism moves them outside. Three families of situations matter most for foreign owners. Goods delivered in France to French customers carry French VAT at the applicable rate. Services follow the place-of-supply rules of article 259, whose starting point is that “Le lieu des prestations de services est situ\u00e9 en France : 1\u00b0 Lorsque le preneur est un assujetti agissant en tant que tel et qu’il a en France : a) Le si\u00e8ge de son activit\u00e9 \u00e9conomique”<\/a>, the place of services is in France when the customer is a taxable person with the seat of its economic activity in France, which in practice means business-to-business services for a French-established client are French-taxed while the same services for a client established in another country usually move elsewhere under rules your adviser must map contract by contract. Purchases are the mirror image: article 256 bis provides that “Sont \u00e9galement soumises \u00e0 la taxe sur la valeur ajout\u00e9e les acquisitions intracommunautaires de biens meubles corporels effectu\u00e9es \u00e0 titre on\u00e9reux par un assujetti agissant en tant que tel”<\/a>, intra-Community acquisitions of movable goods for consideration by a taxable person are also subject to VAT, so goods your French company buys from a German, Italian or Spanish supplier and brings into France generate French VAT that you declare and, where the conditions are met, deduct in the same return.<\/p>\n Charging VAT also means charging the right rate, and the right rate is where foreign owners lose the most money through inattention. The standard rule is brutally short: article 278 states that “Le taux normal de la taxe sur la valeur ajout\u00e9e est fix\u00e9 \u00e0 20 %.”<\/a> Twenty percent is the default, and every reduced rate is an exception that you must be able to justify line by line. The best-known reduced rate comes from article 279, which opens with “La taxe sur la valeur ajout\u00e9e est per\u00e7ue au taux r\u00e9duit de 10 % en ce qui concerne”<\/a> before listing the covered transactions sector by sector. A recent Paris appeal decision shows what happens when a company reads that list too generously. In that case, a franchisee’s customer invoices had all been drawn up at the reduced rate, since “Les factures clients ont toutes \u00e9t\u00e9 dress\u00e9es au taux de taxe sur la valeur ajout\u00e9e (TVA) r\u00e9duit pr\u00e9vu \u00e0 l’article 279 du code g\u00e9n\u00e9ral des imp\u00f4ts (soit 10 %)”<\/a> (Paris Court of Appeal, P\u00f4le 5, Chamber 4, 2 October 2024, case no. 22\/14165). The tax administration disagreed and sent a reassessment, considering that “elle aurait d\u00fb soumettre ses prestations au taux normal de TVA (soit 20 %) d\u00e8s le d\u00e9but de son activit\u00e9”<\/a>, it should have applied the standard 20 percent rate from the start of its activity. The franchisee, which blamed its franchisor’s network doctrine for the rate choice, lost at every level: the commercial court dismissed all its claims and the Court of Appeal ended with “Confirme le jugement entrepris en toutes ses dispositions soumises \u00e0 la cour”<\/a>, confirming the lower judgment in all its provisions before the court. For a foreign owner, the lesson travels directly: the rate on your invoices is your decision and your risk, even if a network, a template or a well-meaning adviser suggested it. Before your company issues its first hundred invoices at 10 percent, 5.5 percent or zero, ask your French adviser to confirm in writing which article covers each product or service line, keep that written analysis with the contracts, and re-check it whenever the offer changes, because a rate error repeated for a year becomes a reassessment for a year plus surcharges.<\/p>\n One more threshold question belongs in this first part because it decides whether you charge VAT at all. Small businesses established in France may benefit from the franchise en base, the exemption that spares them from charging and paying VAT while their turnover stays below statutory ceilings. Article 293 B frames it as follows: “Pour leurs livraisons de biens et leurs prestations de services, les assujettis \u00e9tablis en France b\u00e9n\u00e9ficient d’une franchise qui les dispense du paiement de la taxe sur la valeur ajout\u00e9e”<\/a>, established taxable persons benefit from a franchise releasing them from paying VAT. The exemption is comfortable but double-edged: you charge no VAT, but you deduct none either, so a company with heavy French suppliers or equipment purchases often pays more VAT hidden in its costs than it saves in paperwork. Invoices under the franchise must state that VAT does not apply by reference to the franchise, so customers know why no VAT appears. Foreign founders should run the arithmetic with their accountant before electing the franchise: compare the VAT you would collect from customers against the VAT you would recover from suppliers, factor in cross-border needs that require a VAT number anyway, and remember that crossing the turnover ceiling mid-year pushes the company into normal VAT with invoicing and return duties from the crossing date, a transition that fails whenever nobody watches the monthly sales figures from abroad.<\/p>\n Charging VAT correctly is only half the job. The other half is periodic and unforgiving: declare it, pay it, document it electronically, and correct every error through the proper channel before the administration prices it for you. Distance changes nothing in these duties. Returns are filed online from anywhere, payments leave any SEPA account, and corrections follow the same forms whether you sign them in Paris or in another hemisphere. What distance changes is vigilance, so this second part turns each duty into a routine you can supervise from abroad.<\/p>\n The core routine is the VAT return, in practice the form known as the CA3 (formulaire 3310-CA3-SD, the standard French VAT return). Article 287 sets the duty without ambiguity: “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> Every identified VAT person must file the prescribed return with its tax office within the set time. Frequency depends on the company’s VAT regime: companies under the standard regime file monthly, since the article continues that “Les redevables soumis au r\u00e9gime r\u00e9el normal d’imposition d\u00e9posent mensuellement la d\u00e9claration vis\u00e9e au 1”<\/a>, persons under the standard actual-taxation regime file the return monthly. Smaller companies may qualify for quarterly filing or the simplified regime with lighter periodic duties, but the logic never changes: each return states the VAT collected on sales, subtracts the deductible VAT paid on purchases and expenses, and the balance is either paid to the Treasury or carried as a VAT credit (cr\u00e9dit de TVA) where deductions exceed collections. From abroad, organise this as a monthly closing ritual even if your regime allows quarterly filing: on a fixed day, your accountant receives all sales invoices, purchase invoices, bank statements and customs documents, prepares the return in the espace professionnel, and you approve payment before the deadline. Never let returns accumulate because the activity seemed small or the company dormant: a company with no sales still files, marking zeros or the credit carried forward, because a missing return is itself a breach that draws penalties and flags the file for control, while a zero return keeps the file clean and the credit alive.<\/p>\n The return also hosts two mechanisms foreign owners meet constantly: reverse charge (autoliquidation) and deduction. Reverse charge shifts the duty to pay VAT from the supplier to the customer, which matters whenever your French company buys services from providers established outside France or subcontracts works in sectors where the law imposes it. The general mechanism of article 283 starts from the principle that “1. La taxe sur la valeur ajout\u00e9e doit \u00eatre acquitt\u00e9e par les personnes qui r\u00e9alisent les op\u00e9rations imposables”<\/a>, VAT must be paid by the persons carrying out the taxable transactions, before the same article moves the burden to the French customer where the supplier is established outside France. A Paris decision illustrates the mechanism in its most common French setting, construction subcontracting: the court recalls that “Dans le secteur du b\u00e2timent et des travaux publics (BTP), l’auto-liquidation de la TVA s’applique lorsque des travaux sont effectu\u00e9s par un sous-traitant pour le compte d’un donneur d’ordre assujetti \u00e0 la TVA.”<\/a> In the building and public-works sector, VAT reverse charge applies where works are performed by a subcontractor for a VAT-liable project owner. It continues that “La taxe due pour les travaux de construction r\u00e9alis\u00e9s par le sous-traitant doit alors \u00eatre acquitt\u00e9e par le donneur d’ordre.”<\/a> The tax due on the subcontractor’s construction works must then be paid by the project owner, and draws the practical conclusion that “Le sous-traitant n’a plus ni \u00e0 d\u00e9clarer, ni \u00e0 payer la TVA pour ces op\u00e9rations.”<\/a> The subcontractor no longer has to declare or pay VAT on those transactions (Paris Court of Appeal, P\u00f4le 5, Chamber 10, 16 January 2023, case no. 21\/08496). If your French company hires foreign consultants, buys intra-EU goods, or acts as project owner with French subcontractors, each invoice must state who accounts for the VAT, the return must show the reverse-charged amounts on both the collected and deductible lines where the rules provide, and your contracts should allocate the VAT duty expressly, because the most expensive reverse-charge disputes are not about rates but about two companies each assuming the other paid.<\/p>\n Invoicing itself is a legal duty independent of payment, and it is becoming electronic by statute. Article 289 provides the foundation: “I. \u2013 1. Tout assujetti est tenu de s’assurer qu’une facture est \u00e9mise, par lui-m\u00eame, ou en son nom et pour son compte, par son client ou par un tiers”<\/a>, every taxable person must ensure that an invoice is issued, by itself or in its name and on its behalf by its customer or a third party. Every sale to a VAT-liable customer or a non-liable legal person, unless exempt under the listed articles, must therefore produce a compliant invoice with the mandatory particulars: identities and addresses, VAT numbers, date, unique number, description, price, rate, VAT amount and total. Since 2026 that paper invoice is no longer enough between French-established taxable businesses. Article 289 bis commands the shift: “Pour l’application de l’article 289 et par d\u00e9rogation au VI du m\u00eame article 289, l’\u00e9mission, la transmission et la r\u00e9ception des factures relatives aux op\u00e9rations mentionn\u00e9es aux a et d du 1 du I dudit article 289 ainsi qu’aux acomptes s’y rapportant s’op\u00e8rent sous une forme \u00e9lectronique, selon des normes de facturation \u00e9lectronique d\u00e9finies par arr\u00eat\u00e9 du ministre charg\u00e9 du budget, lorsque l’\u00e9metteur de la facture et son destinataire sont des assujettis qui sont \u00e9tablis ou ont leur domicile ou leur r\u00e9sidence habituelle en France.”<\/a> Issuing, sending and receiving those invoices now happens electronically under ministerial e-invoicing standards where both supplier and customer are taxable persons established, domiciled or habitually resident in France. The tax administration confirms the timetable publicly: en France, \u00e0 partir du 01\/09\/2026, la facturation \u00e9lectronique est g\u00e9n\u00e9ralis\u00e9e entre entreprises<\/a>, from 1 September 2026 e-invoicing is generalised between businesses. For a foreign owner this reform is an organisation project, not a software purchase: designate who in the company issues invoices and through which certified platform or operator, connect the billing tool to the directory and the e-reporting duties for transactions with private individuals and foreign customers, train whoever sends invoices that a PDF attached to an email is no longer an electronic invoice, and calendar the company’s own reception duty, because from the same date your company must be able to receive electronic invoices from French suppliers through the same channel. Companies that run billing from abroad through a foreign system with no French e-invoicing connection will discover the gap on the first rejected invoice, so test the full loop, issue and receive, with your accountant before the first real transaction of the month.<\/p>\n Mistakes happen in every VAT file; what separates a routine correction from a reassessment is speed, channel and proof. Take the wrong rate first, the error the franchisee case above illustrates at full scale. If your company charged 10 percent where 20 percent applied, or 20 percent where an exemption or a reduced rate applied, the correction runs through documents, not through goodwill: issue a corrective invoice or a credit note (avoir) referencing the original invoice number and date, show the correct taxable base, rate and VAT amount, send it to the customer through the same compliant channel as the original, and report the adjustment on the next CA3 with the supporting papers kept together. Where the customer already recovered the wrong VAT, warn them in writing so they correct their own deduction, because a rate correction that your customer ignores becomes a dispute between you about who bears the difference. Where the error ran for months, quantify the whole period before the administration does: extract every affected invoice, total the undercharged or overcharged VAT, and file the corrections return by return rather than burying a full year in a single line, since a clean, documented self-correction presented by your adviser reads as diligence while the same amounts discovered by an inspector read as concealment.<\/p>\n Missed returns follow the same philosophy with even less room for waiting. A return that was never filed does not age well: late-filing interest and surcharges accrue, the file gets flagged, and any VAT credit sleeping in the unfiled period cannot be used or refunded until the return exists. The remedy from abroad is immediate and boring: mandate your accountant to file every missing return now, oldest first, pay each balance shown through the online account, and claim each cr\u00e9dit de TVA on the return itself so the credit is recorded before any time limit bites. Do not net periods informally, do not offset a missing month against the next one without showing both returns, and do not assume that a dormant company owes nothing without filing the zero returns that prove it. Keep the proof of each filing and each payment, confirmation receipts, bank debits, return copies, because a later dispute about whether a period was filed is won with the confirmation number, never with recollection. If cash is tight, French procedure offers formal payment timing routes through the tax office file, but those routes are negotiated with documents and guarantees, not obtained by silence, so instruct your adviser to contact the SIE with accounts and a plan rather than letting direct debits fail one after another.<\/p>\nB. Knowing when you must charge French VAT: territory, services and intra-EU purchases<\/h3>\n
II. How you file, pay and correct French VAT from abroad without penalties<\/h2>\n
A. Filing and paying French VAT from abroad: returns, reverse charge and e-invoicing<\/h3>\n
B. Correcting VAT mistakes from abroad: wrong rate, missed return and reassessment<\/h3>\n