France, like other European Union countries, is combating VAT fraud. Consequently, the country has chosen to implement both e-invoicing and e-reporting, the latter of which relies on the provision of certain information to the administration on commercial transactions that is not covered by the former.

This requirement will give the French tax authorities an overall picture of the business and work of a given company, which will make tax fraud detection much easier  and will increase collected VAT.

Who is affected?

In general, all VAT taxpayers established in France that carry out their activities with non-taxable individual or legal clients, or with foreign entities .

What has to be reported?

First of all, the obligation applies to the transactions described in the art. 290 of the Tax Code, for example:

• Supplies of goods taxed in France where the recipient of the goods is a non-taxable person
• Deliveries of goods shipped from France to another EU Member State
• Provision of services deemed not to be in France
• Intra-community acquisition of movable property located in France

Secondly, reporting of payment data such as collection date and amount charged, including VAT, broken down by VAT rate, if applicable, must be submitted to the tax administration.

What’s excluded?

Taxpayers do not have to report transactions not subject to VAT or exempt from VAT, such as medical, insurance, education, etc.

When will the reporting start?

The implementation of e-reporting follows the same schedule as in the case of e-invoicing:

1. Large companies – from July 1, 2024
2. Medium-sized companies – from January 1, 2025
3. All other companies – from January 1, 2026

How?

Data must be provided by the company carrying out the operation through:

1. Partner of the dematerialisation platform („PDP”) or
2. Public Invoicing Portal („PPF”)

The French tax authorities have promised that different methods and formats of delivery will be possible.

Companies will be able to enter or submit a summary of the transactions carried out during the period.

When invoicing foreign clients or private individuals, entrepreneurs will be able to submit these invoices directly in the appropriate format on the selected dematerialisation platform or public invoicing portal. One or the other will only extract the data useful for e-reporting for tax authorities.