Posted on by Spain and France Accountants

Registration as a self-employed small business in France: Auto-Entrepreneur

Registration as an auto-entrepreneur is effected in two parts, both of which can be completed online.

  1. Registration of your self-employed business activity in the INPI portal https://procedures.inpi.fr/ and requesting a French business tax/ VAT number, which is called a SIREN/ SIRET. Once submitted, the Tax Office can take 2-3 weeks to approve the registration.
  1. Once the above procedure is complete and you have been issued with a SIREN/ SIRET, you should register for Social Security on the website of the URSSAF, giving your bank account details for the direct payment of Social Security.

Note that in order to complete this part of the application, you must have previously obtained a French Social Security number. Non-EU citizens will likely need to obtain a residence permit first.

You can choose to make these payments monthly or quarterly and are required to upload your income and and expenditure data to your URSSAF account on the same basis.

You can opt to pay your income tax on the same basis (versement libératoire) if your annual income is below a certain threshold, which current is around 27k Euros per member of your family unit.

If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us on returns@franceaccountants.com . You will also find informative articles on non-residents’ tax on our blog and website www.franceaccountants.com