France is making e-invoicing mandatory. We will take care of it for you.
New legal requirement · Electronic invoicing in France

Two questions:

1 Are you an auto-entrepreneur or an artiste-auteur?

2 Do you have a French furnished rental — LMNP or LMP?

If you answered yes to either — this applies to you.

Electronic invoicing is now the law, and you must comply.

This applies to anyone who has a SIRET or SIREN number — even if you do not charge or claim back TVA.

Under article 289 bis of the Code général des impôts, from 1 September 2026 your business must be able to receive electronic invoices through a government-approved platform.

If you have read that small businesses have until 2027, that is a different obligation. September 2027 is the date for issuing electronic invoices. The date for being able to receive them is 1 September 2026, and it applies to everyone from day one — because it is your suppliers who decide when it starts, not you.

We have it handled — and we give you an English-language portal that helps you run your auto-entreprise or your French rental: income and expenditure, threshold alerts, and more added through 2027.

€12 a month, per SIREN  •  From the office that already handles your declarations
The service

Electronic Invoicing from France Central

You already trust us with your tax return. This is the same arrangement, extended: we set up your e-invoicing, and you get a portal built to run the rest of it — in English, from the people who already know your situation.

No platform to choose, no French system to learn, no bank account to open, nothing to move.

€12 a month, per SIREN €144 a year, billed annually  •  no charge per invoice  •  no tier to upgrade to
  • We confirm what applies to you first. Your status and TVA position decide what you actually have to do — and for LMNP, LMP and SCI that is rarely obvious. We check yours before anything is set up.
  • We register you. We take your details from the official registers, register your business for electronic invoicing and activate it. You do not fill anything in.
  • Receive electronic invoices from 1 September 2026, in your France Central portal, in English.
  • Your own portal, built for your status — an auto-entrepreneur workspace and a separate furnished-letting workspace, not one generic dashboard, arriving through 2027. Full detail below.
  • Issuing and e-reporting when you need them, ahead of the September 2027 deadline. We will enable them for you and confirm the price before we do.
  • Support and updates all year, from the same office that handles your declarations.
  • No charge per invoice — fair use is 500 invoices a year per SIREN, sent and received combined. That covers ordinary activity for an auto-entrepreneur or a landlord many times over. If you ever approach it we will tell you and agree terms with you first. Nothing is ever charged retrospectively.
  • Your data is never sold or shared. You are paying for the service, so you are the client — not the product. Your figures are used to run your account and meet the regulations, and for nothing else.
Register your business

One agreement covers one SIREN. If you run more than one business — say a furnished letting and an SCI — each has its own registration and its own fee, because each is a separate legal entity. Where you hold several activities under a single SIREN, one fee covers them all.

Read this first

“I don’t charge TVA, so this can’t apply to me”

It is the most common thing we are told, and it is the wrong way round.

The obligation set out in article 289 bis of the Code général des impôts — introduced by ordonnance n° 2021‑1190 of 15 September 2021, with the dates fixed by article 91 of the Finance Act for 2024 — applies between businesses that are assujettis à la TVA. That is a technical term, and it does not mean “businesses that charge TVA”.

If you are an auto-entrepreneur under the franchise en base, you are an assujetti. You are simply not liable to charge TVA. Being under the threshold does not take you out of the reform, and the tax administration has said so plainly: from 1 September 2026 electronic invoicing becomes mandatory for all businesses assujetties à la TVA.

And the first obligation is about receiving, not sending. Even if you never issue a single invoice with TVA on it — even if you invoice nobody at all — your suppliers will be sending you electronic invoices from September 2026, and you must be able to receive them through an approved platform. There is no way to opt out of being sent an invoice.

Penalties for non-compliance are set out in article 1737 of the CGI.

Being exempt from TVA does not get you out of it either. A classic residential letting under article 261 D 4° of the CGI is exempt, so there is no obligation to issue electronic invoices for it. The obligation to receive them on an approved platform still applies. The Ordre des Experts-Comptables puts it in exactly those terms in its guidance for furnished lettings: choosing an approved platform is required even if you are exempt, in order to receive.

So the short version: if you have a registered business in France — auto-entrepreneur, artiste-auteur, furnished letting, SCI or company — you need an approved platform in place by 1 September 2026. What differs between you is what happens next: whether you must also issue electronically, and from when. That is what we work out for you before anything is registered — and for furnished lettings it turns on whether services are provided alongside the letting, where the criteria changed recently and are worth checking.

Read this too

“All my clients are outside France, so this can’t apply to me”

The second thing we hear most, usually from consultants, coaches, designers and freelancers whose customers are in the UK, the US or elsewhere in Europe. It is half right.

The half that is right: your invoices to customers abroad never go through the electronic invoicing system. Not now, and not after September 2027. You carry on writing and sending them exactly as you do today.

The half that is wrong: the obligation to receive has nothing to do with your customers. It attaches to your SIREN. If you have a registered business in France, you must be able to receive electronic invoices from 1 September 2026 — whether or not a French supplier ever sends you one.

And from 1 September 2027 there is a third step, which is the one people miss. Your sales abroad are reported to the tax office. Not the invoice itself — the figures. That is called e-reporting, and it is explained further down this page.

In three lines, for a business whose customers are all outside France:

  • Now: register with an approved platform, so that you can receive.
  • Until September 2027: invoice exactly as you do today.
  • From September 2027: your sales are reported. We make the transmission; you tell us about the sales.
What does my invoice to a customer abroad have to show?

Your French registered address and SIREN, the currency, and the right TVA wording — on one invoice, which can be in French and English side by side. That has its own page.

Invoicing — language, currency and clients abroad →
In practice

So how does an invoice actually reach me?

This is the question we are asked most, usually as: “does that mean when I buy something at Castorama they will send me an electronic invoice?” Here is how it works.

You register once. After that it happens by itself.

When we register your business, your SIREN and SIRET are entered in the national directory the tax administration opened for the reform, pointing at the platform that receives for you. When a supplier issues you an invoice, their platform looks your business up in that directory and delivers it to yours. It then appears in your portal.

You never have to tell a supplier which platform you use. The directory does that. There is nothing to configure and no address to hand out.

But your suppliers need your SIREN

This is the one thing that is on you. A supplier can only look you up if they hold your SIREN or SIRET. If Castorama has you as a private customer with a loyalty card, they cannot find you — that is a consumer sale, you get a ticket de caisse, and no electronic invoice is generated.

Buy on a trade account in the name of your business, or give your SIREN when you ask for a facture, and it is a transaction between two businesses. From 1 September 2026 that invoice has to be electronic, and it lands in your portal automatically.

Worth doing before September: open trade accounts where you buy regularly — Castorama, Leroy Merlin, your builders' merchant — and make sure your utilities and your telecoms provider hold your SIREN on a professional account. Trade accounts are usually free to open; with an energy or telecoms supplier it is worth checking what their professional offer costs before you switch, because it is not always the better deal. This is what makes those invoices arrive by themselves instead of in a drawer.

Two you can leave alone. Your syndic does not need your SIREN for this. An appel de fonds or appel de charges is not an invoice in tax law, so it sits outside electronic invoicing altogether — the Ministry confirmed exactly that in May 2026. Your relevé de charges carries on as it is today, and it stays your supporting document for the TVA within the charges. Your insurer is much the same: insurance premiums are exempt from TVA and insurers are not required to issue an invoice at all, so expect the avis d’échéance to keep arriving as it does now.

And none of this is compulsory. Your obligation is to be able to receive electronic invoices, not to make every supplier send you one. If a supplier goes on treating you as a private customer, nothing is breached and you are not at fault. What you gain by giving them your SIREN is the invoice arriving by itself — and, if you are at the régime réel, a proper facture to deduct from.

For the first year you will get a mix, and that is normal

Large companies and mid-sized ones must start issuing electronically on 1 September 2026. Smaller businesses — including most auto-entrepreneurs — only have to from 1 September 2027.

So from September 2026 the big suppliers arrive electronically in your portal: the DIY chain, the energy company, the telecoms provider, the letting agent. Meanwhile the auto-entrepreneur who did your plumbing may still send you a PDF by email until September 2027, and that is perfectly legal. Both run side by side for a year, and then the second group joins.

If you use other auto-entrepreneurs

Many of our clients do — a cleaner between lets, a gardener, a decorator, a photographer. Nothing changes for them until September 2027. From that date they issue electronically too, and their invoices arrive in your portal the same way. If they ask you about it, the answer is the same as yours: they need a platform, and they need your SIREN.

The practical effect is that by the end of 2027 nearly everything you buy from a French supplier lands in one place, dated, with the TVA broken out, attached to the right year. If you are at the régime réel and deduct your costs, that is the difference between a folder of faded till receipts and a record that is already in order.

Suppliers established outside France are the exception, and they stay outside it permanently. That matters more than it sounds — see below.

Your portal

Built for your status, not a generic dashboard

Most tools give everyone the same screen. We are building two, because an auto-entrepreneur and a furnished-letting landlord have almost nothing in common administratively.

If you are an auto-entrepreneur

  • Threshold and ceiling monitor. Your turnover watched against both limits that matter — the TVA franchise thresholds and the micro-entreprise ceiling — with clear warnings well before you reach them, not after.
  • Income and expenditure. Every invoice payment recorded automatically. Add expenses by photographing a receipt, or turn a supplier invoice you have received into an expense in one click.
  • What you are really making. Side by side: the flat-rate allowance the tax office assumes, and your actual categorised expenses. Most micro-entrepreneurs have never seen that comparison for their own business.
  • Cash flow, three to six months ahead. Invoices due in, recurring costs out, and your URSSAF quarter set aside before it lands — with the tight months flagged and the reason given.
  • Getting paid. Overdue invoices flagged, with a polite reminder you can send in one click.
  • A record that stands up to scrutiny. Income and expenditure kept properly, year by year, with the documents attached. If URSSAF or the tax office ever asks you to justify your figures, the answer is already in one place rather than in a drawer.

If you let furnished property — LMNP or LMP

  • A record for each property. Classification, tax regime, TVA position, start dates and address, held properly rather than in a folder somewhere.
  • Tenancies and rent. Leases, monthly rent and occupation history against each property.
  • Full annual accounting. Income, expenditure, capital allowances and depreciation — the figures your return is built from, visible all year instead of assembled each spring.
  • Your annual position at a glance. Total income, real expenses, local property taxes, capital expenditure, depreciation and net profit, for each property and each year.
  • Locked once submitted. When a year has been declared it is closed and preserved, so what you filed stays what you filed — which is exactly what you want if you are ever asked to justify it.

When: electronic invoice reception goes live for registered clients from 1 September 2026. The portal follows during 2027, starting with income and expenditure and adding the rest in stages — all included in your subscription at no extra cost. We would rather build these properly than name a day and miss it.

Why us

Five reasons clients choose this

We already hold your fileWe prepare the personal tax declarations for our clients. We know your structure, your status and your history — so the setup is done from what we already have, not from a form you struggle to complete.
A bespoke English serviceNot a translated interface. The portal, the guidance, the alerts and the person who answers the phone — all built for English speakers running a French business, by people who work in both.
Modern, accredited infrastructureWe work in partnership with Storecove, an approved platform on the official government list, to give you a compliant and modern e-invoicing system without you ever having to deal with it.
We do not sell your dataYour figures are used to run your account and meet the regulations. They are not sold, shared or used to market anything at you. You pay us, so you are the client.
One price, no catches€12 a month per SIREN, billed annually as €144. No charge per invoice, no charge for the portal, no tier to upgrade to. If something ever costs extra, you hear the price before it happens.

To be clear about how it fits together: France Central is not itself an approved platform, and we would not claim to be. Storecove holds that accreditation and operates the infrastructure in the background. We provide everything you deal with — the checks, the registration, your portal and your support — and the arrangement is set out plainly in the agreement you sign. You get government-accredited plumbing with a firm you already know in front of it.

Staying ahead

You will know before it becomes a problem

Most costly administrative surprises in France are not complicated. They are simply spotted too late — a TVA threshold crossed three months ago, a micro ceiling passed for a second year running, a quarter's URSSAF arriving in the same month as an insurance renewal.

Your portal watches for those and tells you in plain English, with the numbers it used, while there is still time to act. Where a decision follows — such as whether to move from auto-entrepreneur to a company — we will sit down and work it through with you properly. That is advisory work with its own quote, and we will tell you what it costs before we start. What matters is that you get the warning early enough for the choice to still be yours.

Register

Electronic invoicing request

Takes a couple of minutes. We check your details against the official registers, confirm what applies to your business, and send you the agreement to sign. We invoice once you have signed, and register your business as soon as the invoice is settled — so it is worth starting early, as you need to be registered by 1 September 2026.

Trouble loading the form? Open it in a new tab.

Not sure whether this applies to you? The full guide below explains the reform, the dates, and exactly what each status — auto-entrepreneur, artiste-auteur, LMNP, LMP, SCI — has to do. Read the guide.

What is changing

The reform in one minute

The French tax administration is introducing mandatory electronic invoicing (facturation électronique) and e-reporting of transaction data. This is a major change to how invoices are issued, sent and received between businesses in France.

A compliant electronic invoice is not a paper invoice that has been scanned, an ordinary PDF, or a document sent by email. It is a structured file, exchanged through a government-approved platform, that can be read and processed automatically. From the dates below, the old formats will no longer meet the rules.

Every business must do two things: receive electronic invoices from suppliers, and — depending on size — issue electronic invoices to professional clients and report certain data to the administration.

Key dates

The timetable

1 September 2026
Everyone must be able to receive electronic invoices All businesses, whatever their size, must be able to receive electronic invoices — so every business needs an approved platform for reception by this date. Large and mid-sized companies must also start issuing electronic invoices and doing e-reporting from this point.
1 September 2027
Small, micro and medium businesses must issue too Small, micro and medium-sized enterprises must be able to issue electronic invoices and transmit their e-reporting data by this date at the latest. Most of our clients fall into this group for the issuing obligation.

The practical takeaway: even if your obligation to issue electronic invoices only starts in September 2027, your obligation to receive them starts in September 2026. Suppliers such as your electricity, phone or internet provider may send you electronic invoices from that date, so a reception solution needs to be in place first.

If all your customers are outside France, or are private individuals, September 2027 means reporting, not issuing. Your invoices to them never go through the platform — the figures are reported instead.

Who is concerned

Does this apply to me?

The reform concerns all businesses established in France that are subject to TVA — regardless of size, turnover, legal form or tax regime. That expressly includes independent workers, the liberal professions and micro-entrepreneurs (auto-entrepreneurs).

Businesses under the TVA-exemption threshold (franchise en base de TVA) are still considered "subject to TVA" for this purpose, so they are covered for both receiving and issuing. Even a business that issues no invoices at all must still be able to receive electronic invoices from its suppliers.

Operations that are exempt from TVA are not brought into scope by those exempt operations. This matters for property structures: for example, an SCI whose activity is exempt from TVA (such as the rental of residential property) has no obligation to issue electronic invoices for that activity — but if it is otherwise recognised as subject to TVA, it must still be able to receive them. TVA status here depends on the facts of each case, so speak to us if you are unsure how it applies to your structure.

Your situation

What it means for your status

The exact obligation depends on your activity and your TVA position. Below is a guide for the statuses we most often work with. One rule is common to all: if you are recognised as subject to TVA, you must be able to receive electronic invoices from 1 September 2026. What differs is the obligation to issue them.

Auto-Entrepreneur (micro-entrepreneur)

Fully within scope. Even if you benefit from the TVA exemption (franchise en base de TVA), you still count as "subject to TVA" for this reform.

Receive
From 1 September 2026 — choose an approved platform to receive suppliers' invoices.
Issue
From 1 September 2027 — issue electronic invoices to professional clients and transmit e-reporting data.

Good to know: when you invoice private individuals rather than businesses, that becomes an e-reporting declaration of the transaction data, not an electronic invoice sent to the client.

Artiste-Auteur

You are subject to TVA even under the special exemption (franchise en base, art. 293 B CGI) — being an assujetti is separate from actually charging TVA. You hold a SIRET, so the reform reaches you.

Receive
From 1 September 2026 — you must be able to receive electronic invoices from suppliers who treat you as a professional. Choose an approved platform; your SIRET is what identifies you.
Issue
From 1 September 2027 — issue electronic invoices when you sell to French professional clients (galleries, publishers, companies, festivals, local authorities), quoting their SIRET. Sales to private individuals, non-profit associations or foreign clients are not e-invoiced but are declared through e-reporting.

If you are paid by a French publisher, producer or collecting society — the précompte case: where they handle self-billing (auto-facturation) and the TVA withholding under a mandate, they invoice on your behalf. You have nothing to issue for those royalties, and the arrangement carries on as it does today.

If you are paid by an agent, publisher or producer outside France — a different position entirely: that income sits outside French electronic invoicing altogether, and stays outside it. Nothing changes about how you are paid, and your agency has nothing to join. From 1 September 2027 those receipts are declared through e-reporting instead, which we handle for you.

And if you never raise an invoice at all — many authors receive a payment and a statement rather than invoicing anyone — that is common and usually fine. It is worth us reading your agency or publishing agreement once, because whether those statements formally stand in place of an invoice depends on what the agreement says, and from 2027 the e-reporting is built from those records. Better established now than reconstructed later.

LMNP — Loueur en Meublé Non Professionnel

A furnished let is an economic activity, so a loueur en meublé counts as subject to TVA — even when the letting itself is exempt. Your issuing duty then follows the TVA nature of the letting.

Receive
From 1 September 2026 — this applies to you even for exempt residential letting, because you are treated as subject to TVA. You will need an approved platform and a SIREN number.
Issue
Standard furnished residential letting is exempt from TVA (art. 261 D CGI) — no obligation to issue electronic invoices or e-report for that activity.

The exception: if you provide para-hotelier services — a furnished tourist let with at least three hotel-type services such as breakfast, regular cleaning, linen or reception — that activity is TVA-taxed and fully in scope: receive from 2026, issue to French business clients from 2027, and e-report sales to private individuals or foreign clients.

LMP — Loueur en Meublé Professionnel

The professional / non-professional distinction is about income tax, not TVA, so the same logic as LMNP applies — you are treated as subject to TVA.

Receive
From 1 September 2026 — applies to you even for exempt residential letting (approved platform plus a SIREN number).
Issue
Plain furnished residential letting stays exempt from TVA (no issuing); para-hotelier / serviced tourist letting is TVA-taxed and in full scope (issue from 2027).

Also check your size: because LMP often means a larger activity, confirm your enterprise category — a business classed as large or mid-sized would have to start issuing from September 2026 rather than 2027.

SCI — Société Civile Immobilière

Two things about an SCI often get mixed up: its income-tax regime (IR or IS) and its TVA position. For electronic invoicing, only the TVA side matters — whether your SCI is at IR or IS makes no difference to the rules below.

SCIs have their own section on this page. Because the answer depends on who uses the property and whether anyone pays, we have set it out separately — including how many subscriptions you need if an SCI owns the property and a shareholder lets it furnished. Read the SCI section.

This is a guide, not a verdict. TVA status — especially for LMNP, LMP and SCI — depends on the specifics of each activity. Before you commit to a platform or an approach, let us confirm exactly where you stand.

SCI owners

If you have an SCI, read this bit

SCIs cause more confusion than any other structure. In practice almost every one of our clients falls into one of three cases.

  1. Nobody but the family uses it, and nobody pays The property is made available free of charge to the SCI's shareholders and their invited family and friends, and to nobody else — the classic arrangement for keeping a house in the family. The SCI is outside the electronic invoicing system. Nothing to do.
  2. The SCI lets the property unfurnished The SCI must be registered to receive electronic invoices, whether or not it is registered for TVA. Unfurnished residential letting is exempt from TVA, so there is no obligation to issue — but the obligation to receive applies all the same.
  3. The SCI owns it and a shareholder lets it furnished under their own LMNP or LMP This is the most common arrangement among our clients, and it needs two registrations: one for the SCI's SIREN and one for the LMNP/LMP SIREN.

Why the third case needs two, when the SCI charges nothing

Because the exemption in case 1 is narrow. It applies where the property is made available exclusively to the shareholders, to keep a property in the family. Once paying guests are staying there, that is no longer what is happening — the guests are not shareholders, family or friends, and they are paying for the use of the property.

There is also a practical reason that settles it whichever way the analysis goes. The SCI has its own suppliers — the builder, the plumber, the energy supplier, the letting agent, the accountant — and they hold the SCI's SIREN, not yours. From September 2026 those invoices arrive electronically. If the SCI is not registered, they have nowhere to go.

The syndic is not one of them, and neither is your insurer: an appel de charges is not an invoice in tax law, and insurance premiums are exempt from TVA and carry no invoicing obligation. Both carry on exactly as they do today.

So the SCI needs its own reception route for its own costs, and the LMNP/LMP needs one for the letting business. Two legal persons, two SIREN numbers, two agreements, two subscriptions.

The three cases at a glance

Start here. Find your situation in the first column. That tells you whether the SCI needs to be able to receive electronic invoices, and how many subscriptions you need — and those are the questions that matter for September 2026.

Your situation SCI must receive
e-invoices
SCI must issue
e-invoices
Subscriptions
needed
Family use only
Property used exclusively by the shareholders and their invited family and friends, free of charge. Nobody pays to be there.
No No None
Unfurnished letting
The SCI lets the property unfurnished, whether or not it is registered for TVA.
Yes Depends
on TVA status
1 — the SCI
SCI owns, shareholder lets furnished
A shareholder uses the property free of charge and lets it furnished under their own LMNP or LMP.
Yes No 2 — SCI
and LMNP/LMP

Whether you also have to send electronic invoices depends on your TVA position

The receiving obligation is settled by the table above, and it starts on 1 September 2026. The issuing obligation is a separate question, it starts on 1 September 2027, and for cases 2 and 3 it turns on whether the SCI is registered for TVA and on what it is letting.

  • Residential letting, bare or furnished, with no services — exempt from TVA, so no obligation to issue. This covers the great majority of our SCI clients.
  • Professional or commercial premises let unfurnished, where the SCI has opted for TVA — the SCI does have to issue electronically and report its transactions.
  • Premises fitted out for professional use, parking let separately, or a letting with hotel-type services — TVA applies of right, so issuing and reporting both apply.
  • Case 3 — the SCI charges nothing, so it has nothing to invoice and nothing to issue. The letting side of it sits with the LMNP/LMP, on its own timetable.

The LMNP/LMP itself must be able to receive from 1 September 2026, and issues or reports from 1 September 2027 depending on whether services are provided with the letting.

We work this out for you. Whether an SCI counts as assujettie à la TVA can turn on the facts of the individual case, and the tax administration's own doctrine says that collecting rent does not settle it by itself. So we check your SCI — the lease, what is let, and whether the TVA option has been taken — before anything is registered, rather than assuming.

SCIs taxed at IS, or anything out of the ordinary? We work with a chartered French accountant for those and will put you in touch.

What you should do now

Your first steps

1
Understand what changes for you Confirm which obligations apply to your situation and your TVA status. If in doubt, that is exactly what we are here for — this is where a wrong assumption is easiest to correct early.
2
Map your invoice flows List who sends you invoices (suppliers) and who you invoice (professional clients), so you know what needs to flow in and out electronically.
3
Review your current tools Check whether any invoicing, accounting or till software you already use will become a "compatible solution" connected to an approved platform. Many providers are adapting — you may not need to buy anything new.
4
Get an approved platform in place before 1 September 2026 Each business must designate an approved platform (plateforme agréée) to receive — and later issue — its electronic invoices. You can choose and set one up yourself from the official list on impots.gouv.fr, or let us handle the whole thing for you. That is what the service below does.

Or skip steps 1 to 4

We do all of the above for you — the status check, the registration, the platform — and you get the portal to run your activity from. €12 a month per SIREN, billed annually as €144.

Register your business
On your invoices

Four new mandatory details

The way you calculate and present invoices does not change, but from 1 September 2026 four new pieces of information must appear on invoices:

  • The SIREN number of your client.
  • The category of the operation — a sale of goods, a supply of services, or both.
  • Where relevant, a mention that you have opted to pay TVA on debits (TVA sur les débits).
  • The full delivery address, only where it differs from the client's billing address.

These are in addition to the details already required on every invoice. For the wider question of what has to appear — the TVA mentions, the language, and what to do when you invoice in another currency — see our invoicing page.

Suppliers outside France

The invoices that will never arrive electronically

Electronic invoicing runs between two businesses established in France. A supplier established anywhere else is outside it — permanently, not just until 2027.

So if you pay for Adobe, Canva, Microsoft, Google Workspace, Zoom, Meta advertising, a website subscription or almost any other online tool, those invoices will keep arriving exactly as they do today: a PDF by email. They will not appear in your portal by themselves, and there is no date on which that changes. You add them to your records yourself — which is one of the things the portal is being built to make easy.

And there is a second thing on those invoices worth knowing about

Look at the TVA line on one. If it reads 0%, and somewhere on the invoice there is a phrase like “Autoliquidation de la TVA” or “Customer to Reverse Charge”, that supplier has not charged you any tax — because the French TVA on that purchase is yours to account for, not theirs.

What that means in practice depends entirely on your own position:

  • If you charge TVA — a company, or a business at the régime réel — you declare it and deduct it on the same return. The cash effect is nil. It is a bookkeeping entry.
  • If you are under the threshold and charge no TVA — most auto-entrepreneurs — you declare it and pay it, and you cannot reclaim it. It becomes a real cost of roughly twenty euros in every hundred you spend with that supplier.

The second case is the one almost nobody has been told about, because it is invisible: nothing on your French paperwork mentions it, and no supplier will raise it with you. It rests on a rule that has been in place for years and has nothing to do with the invoicing reform — we are flagging it here because we are asking every client about their suppliers anyway.

What we suggest. If you pay for any software, advertising or online services billed from outside France, tell us when we set you up. The amounts are usually modest, and the fix going forward is straightforward — it starts with an intracommunautaire TVA number, which your tax office issues free and which does not change your position on the sales you make.

If it turns out you should already have been doing this, putting it right voluntarily is materially cheaper than being asked to. That is the whole reason we would rather raise it now than leave it.

From September 2027 these purchases are also e-reported. Purchases from suppliers not established in France where you account for the TVA yourself sit inside the reporting perimeter, even though the invoice never travels through any platform. That part we handle for you.

What this looks like on an actual invoice

Our invoicing page walks through a real example — where the wording appears, what it means, and what to do about it.

Invoicing — buying from outside France →
Clients abroad

Selling outside France, or to private individuals

Many of our clients invoice customers outside France, or rent to private individuals. Both sit outside the electronic invoicing system — and both are simpler than they sound.

The short version: nothing changes about how you invoice them. You write the invoice exactly as you do today and send it exactly as you do today — by email, by post, however you like. There is no platform involved and your customer does not need one.

What changes is that, from 1 September 2027 (2026 for large companies), the amounts must also be sent to the tax office through your platform. That is called e-reporting. We make the transmission; you tell us about the sales. You never upload an invoice, and your customer never sees any of it. How you tell us — through your portal or by sending us the figures — we will set up with you well before September 2027.

Which of your sales are we talking about? Two kinds: sales to a customer outside France, and sales to a private individual rather than a business.

For a furnished-letting landlord that is most of your income — and it makes no difference whether you let long term or by the week. A tenant on a three-year lease and a guest staying seven nights are both private individuals, so both are reported rather than invoiced through the platform. What decides it is who you are letting to, not how long they stay.

Length of let and whether you provide services decide something else entirely: your TVA position. That is a separate question, and it is one of the things we check for you.

What if a French business books the property? A company taking an apartment for staff, a firm booking for a contractor — most holiday landlords have a handful of these a year without thinking of them as different. It is a sale between two French businesses, but whether it has to go out as an electronic invoice from September 2027 depends on your own TVA position, not on your customer's.

A standard furnished letting exempt under art. 261 D carries no obligation to issue — not to a private guest and not to a business either. The tax administration's own guidance for loueurs en meublé says so in terms: “les bailleurs exonérés de TVA n'ont pas d'obligation d'émission en matière de facturation électronique”. You still have to be able to receive.

You should still give a business guest an invoice, though. An exempt letting is excused the tax rules on invoicing — art. 289, I‑1 a — but not the commercial ones, and a company that has booked is entitled to ask for one. An ordinary invoice by email does it: your name and address, your SIREN, a number in your own sequence, the company's details, the amount, no TVA, and the taxe de séjour on its own line. What you do not do is send it through a platform. If a company's accounts department ever argues the point, the tax administration's note for furnished lettings settles it — Facturation électronique : je suis un loueur en meublé (DGFiP, PDF) → Ask us and we will send you the wording to reply with. If instead your letting is taxed — because you provide para-hôtelier services, or you have opted for TVA — then a booking by a French business is invoiced electronically from September 2027, and your portal handles it.

And when your business is the one booking. The same rules run the other way, which catches people out. If your company books an Airbnb for a business trip, you do not invoice Airbnb, and Airbnb does not invoice you for the stay. Airbnb is an intermediary. The stay is supplied by the owner, and the document your accounts need is the owner's invoice in your company's name — not the booking confirmation.

So give your company name and SIRET when you book, and ask the owner for a facture. Do not expect it to appear in your portal. Most owners let on an exempt basis and have no obligation to issue electronically, so a PDF or a paper note is the normal and correct answer.

Airbnb's own service fee is a separate invoice, from a company established outside France. That one never travels through the system either, and depending on how it is billed it may be a purchase your business has to account for the TVA on itself.

Electronic invoicing proper — the platform-to-platform system described above — applies only between two businesses established in France. Everything else is reported instead: your sales to customers abroad, your sales to private individuals, and your purchases from suppliers abroad where you account for the TVA yourself. The figures reported are in euros.

Which language? Which currency? What has to appear about TVA?

Those questions have their own page, because the answers apply whether or not electronic invoicing touches you — including the commission Airbnb or Booking.com charges you, which is a common reason a landlord who never charges TVA still needs an intracommunautaire number.

Invoicing — language, currency and clients abroad →

This page is a general explanation prepared for information only and is not individual tax or legal advice. Rules and dates may be updated by the administration; where a specific situation is concerned, please contact us so we can review it against your circumstances.