Most French VAT guidance is written for French-resident businesses, who get a revenue threshold before VAT registration becomes mandatory. Foreign companies selling into France do not get that grace period, and missing this distinction is one of the more expensive mistakes we see.
French residents benefit from a franchise en base: no VAT registration required below roughly €93,500 for sales of goods and €41,250 for services (2026 thresholds). Non-resident businesses do not get this exemption. If you are a foreign company making a taxable supply of goods or services in France (selling to French customers, holding stock here, or importing), you generally need a French VAT number from your very first transaction, regardless of revenue.
France applies a standard VAT rate of 20%, two reduced rates of 10% and 5.5% (the 5.5% rate covers most food, books, and energy renovation work), and a super-reduced rate of 2.1% reserved for a narrow set of items including certain press publications and prescription medicines.
If your company is based outside the EU, France generally requires you to appoint a fiscal representative established in France, who becomes jointly liable for your VAT compliance alongside you. This adds a real ongoing cost most non-EU founders don't budget for. There is an exception: companies based in a country that has a mutual assistance agreement with France on VAT recovery (the UK and Norway are the most common examples for our clients) are exempt from this requirement. EU-based companies never need a fiscal representative; they can register directly.
Registration itself goes through the Service des Impôts des Entreprises Étrangères (SIEE), the tax office dedicated to foreign businesses, and typically takes up to eight weeks to receive your VAT number. Plan around that lead time before your first invoice is due.
The standard VAT return is the CA3 (Cerfa 3310), covering VAT collected, VAT deductible, and any import VAT reverse charges. Non-resident companies are placed on monthly filing by default from their first VAT number, due between the 19th and 24th of the following month depending on your regime. After one full year of compliant monthly filing, you can request to switch to quarterly returns, but only if your annual VAT liability stays under roughly €4,000.
If you sell online directly to French consumers from another EU country, the One-Stop Shop (OSS) scheme lets you declare that VAT once, quarterly, without a separate French registration, but only for that specific distance-selling flow. The moment you store goods in France, import into France, or make local B2B sales, those transactions fall outside OSS and require a standard French VAT registration and CA3 filing regardless of your OSS status. Founders who assume OSS covers everything usually discover the gap when a French warehouse or fulfilment partner asks for a local VAT number they don't have.
In practice, the failure mode is rarely the rate itself: it's timing. Companies register for VAT only after a client or customs flags the problem, by which point they may owe VAT retroactively on invoices already issued without it. Registering before your first French transaction, not after, is the difference between a routine filing and a costly correction.
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