You run a company in London, New York, Dubai or Singapore, and France is your next market. Goods cross the border, a French customer asks for an invoice with French VAT, or your carrier sends a bill for import VAT you never expected to pay. At that moment, one question decides everything: does your foreign company need its own French VAT number, and who pays the tax if the paperwork is wrong? This guide answers that question from abroad, step by step: when registration becomes compulsory, how to obtain an intra-Community VAT number without opening an office in France, when the reverse charge shifts the tax to your customer, what a compliant invoice must show, and how to fix the two most expensive mistakes \u2014 import VAT billed twice and a reassessment served on the wrong person. The court rulings mentioned below are public facts about the parties they name; the guidance that follows is general in scope: it describes the checks that are useful in any comparable situation and does not describe the situation of those named companies, about which this article makes no finding.<\/p>\n
French VAT catches every supply of goods and every provision of services made for consideration by a taxable person acting as such. The French Tax Code (CGI<\/em>, the Code g\u00e9n\u00e9ral des imp\u00f4ts<\/em>) states it plainly: “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> The place where your company has its registered office does not protect it. What matters is where the transaction is deemed to take place, and France deems a long list of cross-border transactions to take place on its territory.<\/p>\n The French tax administration summarises the trigger in one sentence on its official registration page for foreign businesses<\/a>, which states the trigger plainly: a business with no fixed establishment in France that carries out any of the listed transactions must register for French VAT and obtain an individual identification number. An \u00e9tablissement stable<\/em> is a fixed establishment, a real operational presence such as an office, a warehouse or a workshop with staff and equipment. If you have none in France and you still carry out any of the listed transactions, you must register for VAT in France and obtain an individual identification number, the well-known intra-Community VAT number starting with FR.<\/p>\n The transactions that most often trap foreign founders are the following. First, selling goods located in France to French private individuals or to buyers who are not identified for VAT in France: the VAT collected must appear on French VAT returns and be paid whenever the VAT collected exceeds deductible VAT. Second, shipping goods from France to another European Union member state, which is an intra-Community supply, including mere transfers of your own stock between two countries. Third, exporting goods out of France. Fourth, distance sales of goods shipped from another member state to private individuals in France, subject to the European small-operator scheme: below a combined annual threshold of 10,000 euros excluding tax for all intra-Community distance sales plus certain electronic services, a business established in a single member state may escape registration, but above that line registration becomes compulsory. Fifth, self-assessed VAT on imports, the autoliquidation<\/em> (reverse charge at import), for which registration has been compulsory for these operations since 1 January 2022. Sixth, self-assessed VAT on purchases of goods or services from a supplier that is not established in France, once the company is already registered in France for customs purposes.<\/p>\n Imports deserve special attention because they generate the costliest misunderstandings. The Code provides that “Les importations de biens sont soumises \u00e0 la taxe sur la valeur ajout\u00e9e.”<\/a> And an import is defined as “l’entr\u00e9e en France d’un bien, originaire ou en provenance d’un Etat ou d’un territoire n’appartenant pas \u00e0 l’Union europ\u00e9enne, et qui n’a pas \u00e9t\u00e9 mis en libre pratique”<\/a>, in other words goods arriving from outside the Union that have not yet been cleared for free circulation. Every container from China or the United States entering through Le Havre, Marseille or Roissy therefore creates a French VAT event, and someone must declare it. Since 1 January 2022 that someone is normally the importer itself on its French VAT return, the CA3<\/em> (the standard French VAT return form), rather than the carrier at the border. Foreign founders who keep thinking in pre-2022 terms, when an individual authorisation was needed and customs collected the tax at the gate, systematically misread their carriers’ invoices, as the court case examined in the second part of this article demonstrates.<\/p>\n Services follow a different territorial logic, and it produces a mirror image of the same trap. For business-to-business services, the place of supply is in principle where the customer is established. The Code states that “Le lieu des prestations de services est situ\u00e9 en France”<\/a> whenever the customer is a taxable person with its business seat, a fixed establishment receiving the services, or failing that its domicile or habitual residence in France. A consultant in New York billing a French operating company, a software vendor in London invoicing a French distributor, or a Dubai holding company charging management fees to its French subsidiary are all, in principle, making supplies located in France. Whether that means registering for French VAT or applying the reverse charge depends on the next question, examined below. The official English-language page of the French administration confirms the starting point: when a taxable company established in France buys services from a seller in another member state, the service is subject to French VAT, and the applicable rules then turn on the tax regime of the French customer, the country of taxation, the nature of the service and whether the seller holds an intra-Community VAT number in the customer’s country (VAT applicable to trade in services within the European Union<\/a>).<\/p>\n Two practical consequences follow for a founder living abroad. First, the VAT analysis must be done before the first invoice and before the first shipment, because customs systems and marketplaces increasingly demand the FR VAT number upstream, and a missing number freezes goods or gets invoices rejected by French customers whose accountants refuse documents without a valid number. Second, the registration route is entirely separate from creating a French company: a British limited company, an American LLC or a UAE free-zone company can hold a French VAT number while remaining a foreign company, without a Kbis<\/em> (the official company identity certificate issued through the greffe<\/em>, the commercial court registry), without share capital and without a French director. Registration is a tax identity, not a corporate transformation. Founders who confuse the two either incorporate a SAS<\/em> they do not need or trade for months without the VAT number they do need. If the broader question of setting up a French presence is also on the table, the firm’s general roadmap for foreign founders covers incorporation, bank account, Kbis, VAT and first hire in one place (setting up a company in France as a foreign founder<\/a>), and this article takes over exactly where that roadmap leaves the VAT question open.<\/p>\n Registration runs through the French tax administration, the DGFIP<\/em> (Direction g\u00e9n\u00e9rale des finances publiques<\/em>, the Directorate General of Public Finances), and more precisely through the tax office dedicated to businesses with no establishment in France, the SIEE<\/em> (Service des imp\u00f4ts des entreprises \u00e9trang\u00e8res<\/em>, the tax office for foreign companies). The official registration page designates that competent office and lists the supporting documents to file; the core of the file is the EE0 form, the registration declaration for foreign businesses, in which a company concerned by import self-assessment must state so expressly in the relevant boxes. Founders based in Paris or elsewhere in the \u00cele-de-France region follow the same national procedure, since the competent office is centralised: the Paris specificity is practical rather than legal, with filings, correspondence and any in-person appointment concentrated in French, frequently through a French-speaking representative, an accountant or a lawyer, given time-zone gaps and language requirements.<\/p>\n The substantive clock starts as soon as activity begins. The Code provides that “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> Every taxable person must therefore file the starting declaration within fifteen days of beginning operations, and the same provision requires a declaration when the business ceases. A foreign founder who makes a first taxable delivery in France and waits six months to regularise the position is already late, with interest and penalties accruing from the first transaction. Once identified, the business enters the normal return cycle: “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> Businesses under the standard real-taxation regime file the CA3 return monthly, reporting total transactions and the detail of taxable ones, and pay the VAT due each month. The identification articles cited in that provision, 286 ter and 286 ter A, are precisely the ones that create the individual VAT number, so registration, identification and recurring returns form one continuous chain.<\/p>\n Companies established outside the European Union face one additional layer: representation. French import and VAT mechanics for third-country sellers historically run through a repr\u00e9sentant fiscal<\/em>, a France-based fiscal representative who performs the customs and declaration formalities for the foreign principal. A July 2025 judgment of the Paris judicial court shows why the choice of that representative, and the wording of its mandate, is a commercial decision with real money behind it (TJ Paris, chamber 9 section 1, 17 July 2025, RG 23\/03217<\/a>). In that case, 83 customs declarations covering mobile phones were drawn up between September and December 2021 by an international carrier acting as indirect representative before the Roissy customs office, for a Chinese company whose fiscal representative was a French services company. When the customs administration issued a recovery notice for the VAT, the fiscal representative argued that only the foreign company and the customs broker should answer for the debt, and asked the court to annul the notice. The court rejected the argument in full: “D\u00c9BOUTE la soci\u00e9t\u00e9 LOGEFI SERVICES de l’ensemble de ses demandes”, “CONFIRME l’avis de mise en recouvrement n\u00b0783\/22S60”, and ordered the unsuccessful company to pay 3,300 euros under article 700 of the Code of Civil Procedure plus the costs. The lesson for a founder in Shenzhen, New York or Dubai is direct: whoever signs as your fiscal representative, and whoever your carrier names on the import declaration, determines who the administration pursues first, and unwinding that designation after a recovery notice is an uphill case. Put the allocation of the VAT debt in writing before the first shipment, check every declaration to see whose name appears as consignee, and keep the mandate letter of the representative together with the transport contracts.<\/p>\n Three file-building reflexes save months. First, apply as soon as the business model is fixed, not when the first problem appears, because the number is needed upstream by carriers, warehouses and customers. Second, describe the planned transactions precisely on the EE0 form \u2014 domestic sales, intra-Community supplies from France, distance sales, import self-assessment \u2014 since an incomplete description produces a number with the wrong scope and a second round of correspondence. Third, keep proof of everything the administration issues: registration confirmation, allocated FR number, filing receipts for each CA3. French VAT disputes are document disputes, and the company that cannot produce its own registration trail starts every discussion at a disadvantage.<\/p>\n The reverse charge, or autoliquidation<\/em>, is the mechanism that most often surprises common-law founders, because it reverses the reflex learned at home: instead of the seller collecting VAT, the buyer declares both the VAT due and the corresponding deduction on its own return, so no cash changes hands for the tax. France applies it widely to cross-border supplies precisely to avoid forcing every foreign seller to register. The central provision states that “La taxe sur la valeur ajout\u00e9e doit \u00eatre acquitt\u00e9e par les personnes qui r\u00e9alisent les op\u00e9rations imposables”<\/a>, subject to the reverse-charge cases that follow, in which “la taxe est acquitt\u00e9e par l’acqu\u00e9reur, le destinataire ou le preneur”<\/a> where the supplier is established outside France and the buyer is a taxable person holding a French VAT number. Three conditions therefore coincide: the supplier is not established in France, the transaction is covered, and the buyer is itself a taxable person holding a French VAT number. The amount due is then identified on the return mentioned in article 287, the CA3 cycle described above.<\/p>\n The same article extends the logic to services supplied by businesses not established in France \u2014 services covered by article 259 supplied by a business not established in France, which are taxed on the buyer \u2014 and to intra-Community acquisitions of goods, where “la taxe doit \u00eatre acquitt\u00e9e par l’acqu\u00e9reur”, with the seller remaining jointly liable when the buyer is established outside France. In practice, a German company selling equipment to a French taxable distributor, or an Irish consultancy billing a French client company, invoices without French VAT and leaves the French customer to self-assess it. The U.S. founder billing a French operating company for management services stands in the same position, provided the French recipient is a taxable person with a French number. Conversely, the moment the customer is a private individual or a non-taxable body, the reverse charge is unavailable, the supplier must generally charge French VAT itself, and registration becomes unavoidable \u2014 which is exactly the distance-sales and B2C-services trap described in the first part.<\/p>\n Invoicing is where the reverse charge succeeds or fails, because the invoice is the document both tax administrations read. The Code imposes a simple but absolute duty: “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> for supplies to another taxable person or non-taxable legal person that are not exempt. A reverse-charge invoice must therefore exist, identify both parties with their VAT numbers, describe the supply, and carry the statement that the tax is due by the customer under reverse charge, so that the French buyer can book the self-assessed VAT and the foreign seller can prove it charged nothing. Invoices that mention French VAT “for information”, invoices with no VAT number, and invoices mixing French VAT and reverse-charge wording on the same line are the three documentary defects French auditors exploit first. The English-language service-public page confirms the surrounding framework for intra-EU services and should be worked through line by line before drafting invoice templates (VAT applicable to trade in services within the European Union<\/a>), alongside the impots.gouv.fr registration page for the operations that require CA3 returns (Immatriculation \u00e0 la TVA<\/a>). Competitor guides aimed at French businesses, such as the legal publishers and company-formation platforms, generally describe the same rules from the French seller’s viewpoint; what they rarely give the foreign founder is the combined reading \u2014 registration scope, customer-side self-assessment and invoice wording in a single procedure \u2014 which is what this article provides.<\/p>\n One verification closes the loop on every new customer and every new supplier: check the validity of the counterpart’s intra-Community VAT number on the European VIES database before invoicing, record the result, and re-check periodically for recurring flows. A reverse charge applied to a customer whose French number is invalid at the invoicing date is a reassessment waiting to happen, and the administration will test precisely that point. The number check costs minutes; the dispute costs years.<\/p>\nB. How to obtain the French VAT number from abroad: forms, offices and representatives<\/h3>\n
II. Charging, reverse-charging and invoicing French VAT without paying twice<\/h2>\n
A. When your French customer pays the VAT for you: the reverse charge explained<\/h3>\n
B. When the paperwork has already gone wrong: double-billed import VAT and reassessments<\/h3>\n