French VAT Fiscal Representative: Exempt Countries

The requirement sits in Article 289 A of the French General Tax Code. In the version in force since 1 January 2025, the first paragraph of I says that a person not established in the European Union who is liable for French VAT, or who has to meet French declarative obligations, must have a taxable person established in France accredited as its representative. That representative carries out the formalities and, where there are taxable transactions, pays the tax in the person's place. Where no representative is accredited, the VAT and any related penalties are due from the recipient of the taxable transaction, which is why French business customers care about the answer as much as their non-EU suppliers do.

The obligation is drafted negatively, and that matters for half the readers of this page. It bites only on a person not established in the European Union. A business established in an EU member state is therefore not exempted from anything: the provision never reaches it. For businesses established outside the EU, Article 289 A, I then states that the first paragraph does not apply in two cases, which the article numbers 1° and 2° (the raised circle is how French law numbers the sub-paragraphs of an article, so 1° and 2° are simply the first and second sub-paragraphs of Article 289 A, I, and this page cites them the French way throughout). The first, at 1°, covers persons established in a non-EU state with which France has a legal instrument on mutual assistance of similar scope to Directive 2010/24/EU on the recovery of tax debts and Regulation (EU) No 904/2010 on administrative cooperation in VAT, and the list of those states is fixed by order of the minister for the budget. The second, at 2°, does not look at the country at all: it covers persons not established in the EU that carry out only transactions under Article 277 A, I with payment of the tax suspended, or supplies of natural gas, electricity, heat or cold on which the tax is due in France by the acquirer under 2 quinquies of Article 283. The reach of that second exemption is narrower than it looks: a business established in China or the United States is outside the requirement on the strength of 2° alone only where its French activity consists of those specific transactions and of nothing else, so a business established in China or the United States that makes ordinary taxable supplies in France does need an accredited fiscal representative, neither country being on the list at 1°. Our fiscal representation service for non-EU sellers sets out what accreditation involves when a representative is in fact required.

Everything else turns on where the business is established, which means the seat of its economic activity or a fixed establishment. It is not the country of incorporation, not the nationality of the shareholders, and not the country that issued an existing VAT number. Settle that point first, because it decides which of the two lists below you should be reading.

The French tax authority states the EU position in a single sentence in its doctrine: only persons not established in the EU that carry out transactions taxable in France, or that have to meet French declarative obligations, are required to have a representative accredited. Its published doctrine on mandates and representation for taxable persons not established in France uses the word only, and then goes further: a taxable person established in another EU member state with no establishment in France has neither the obligation nor the option to appoint a fiscal representative in France. It is not a choice that can be bought. The public registration page puts the two halves of the answer in one line, describing the businesses that avoid a representative as those established in another EU member state, or in one of the listed third countries.

All 27 member states are outside the requirement. There is no turnover threshold attached to it, no waiting period, and no administrative discretion to apply it anyway.

One qualification, and we state it as a qualification rather than as an answer. The comparison drawn by the VAT rules is with the European Union as defined for VAT purposes, and Article 256-0 of the French General Tax Code carves several territories out of that definition. Most of them are territories of member states: Helgoland and Büsingen for Germany, Ceuta, Melilla and the Canary Islands for Spain, the Åland Islands for Finland, Mount Athos for Greece, and Livigno, Campione d'Italia and the Italian waters of Lake Lugano for Italy. The Channel Islands are named separately in the same enumeration and are attributed to no member state at all: they are Crown Dependencies, they are not part of the United Kingdom, and since the United Kingdom left the EU they are not the territory of any member state. Article 256-0 makes the contrast explicit in the other direction, providing that the Isle of Man is to be treated as part of the territory of the United Kingdom, and saying nothing of the kind about the Channel Islands. None of these territories appears on the list of 42 either, and the United Kingdom entry on that list does not reach Jersey or Guernsey. No published source applies the Article 256-0 carve-out to the fiscal representation rule specifically, so we do not treat the position of a business established in one of them as settled. If that is your situation, ask us before you register, and expect a reasoned answer rather than a one-word one.

A page on the French tax authority's site aimed at businesses established outside the EU still publishes a version of the list containing 24 countries. It carries its own date stamp, published on 21 September 2016 and modified on 3 May 2017, so it predates the order of 16 February 2021 entirely and omits all 18 entries that order added. Among the entries missing from it are the United Kingdom and Turkey. We re-checked the page on 1 August 2026 and it was still live and still showing 24.

The practical consequence is specific rather than theoretical. A British or Turkish business that reads that page concludes it needs a French fiscal representative, and either appoints one it does not need or abandons a direct registration it was entitled to make. Advisers reading it reach the same wrong conclusion. The page in question is the tax authority's older non-EU business page, and it should be read against its own date stamp. The list the administration actually operates is the one on its VAT registration page, which matches the consolidated order and has 42 entries.

Being on the list removes one obligation only: the obligation to have a representative accredited under Article 289 A. It does not remove the French VAT registration, the returns, the payment deadlines, the invoicing rules or the record-keeping, and it does not remove the refund representative dealt with further down this page. A business established in an exempt country that makes taxable supplies in France registers with the tax office for foreign businesses, part of the non-residents directorate, and files there.

For taxable persons not established in France and handled by that office, the return is due by the 19th of the month following the period. Missing that because the exemption was read as a wider relief is a common and avoidable error. Our French VAT returns service covers preparation and filing, and if you only need to confirm that a counterparty's French VAT number is valid, the VAT number checker will do that in seconds.

The list is Article 1 of the order of 15 May 2013, as amended by the order of 28 February 2017 and the order of 16 February 2021. The consolidated text on Legifrance has been in force in its current form since 27 February 2021 and contains 42 entries. The French tax authority reproduces the same 42 on its VAT registration page. A business established in any of them registers for French VAT on the same footing as an EU-established business, so far as Article 289 A is concerned.

Ten of the 42 are not sovereign states of the ordinary kind: Aruba, the Cook Islands, Curaçao, the Faroe Islands, French Polynesia, Greenland, Niue, Saint-Barthélemy, Saint-Martin and Sint Maarten. They range from constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and autonomous Danish territories to French overseas collectivities and states in free association with New Zealand. That is why the accurate phrase is countries and territories, and why the French and Dutch halves of one Caribbean island appear as two separate entries.

The reason Norway and Iceland are on the list, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein are not, is worth understanding because it kills the most common wrong assumption. Article 289 A, I, 1° requires an instrument covering both administrative cooperation in VAT and assistance in the recovery of tax debts. France has an exchange of information clause with Switzerland and with Liechtenstein, but not a recovery assistance clause. Membership of the European Economic Area is not the test, and it has never been the test.

The United Kingdom is named in full in the order, as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, so a business established in Northern Ireland is covered by the country entry whatever else applies. The XI VAT prefix and the Ireland and Northern Ireland Protocol change how movements of goods are classified for VAT, treating Northern Ireland as part of the EU VAT territory for goods while services are treated as a third territory. They do not change the fiscal representation answer, which is the same either way.

Article 289 A, I, 2° exempts persons defined by the transactions they carry out rather than by the country they are established in. This is the part of the rule that most published summaries leave out, and leaving it out is what makes an answer engine say that every Chinese or American seller needs a representative.

The provision covers a person not established in the EU that carries out only transactions under Article 277 A, I with payment of the VAT suspended, or only supplies of natural gas, electricity, heat or cold on which the tax is due in France by the acquirer under 2 quinquies of Article 283. The first limb is the suspensive customs and tax warehouse arrangements. The second is mentioned for completeness, because it rarely concerns online sellers.

The word doing the work is only, uniquement in the French text, and it governs the pair rather than each limb separately. A business whose French activity consists of those two kinds of transaction in any combination is covered. A single transaction outside them and the exemption falls away for the whole position, not just for that transaction. The exemption applies whatever the country of establishment, including countries nowhere near the list of 42.

Read together with the country list at 1°, these are the only two ways out of Article 289 A. They are not the only representative obligation in French VAT, which is the subject of the next section.

Article 289 A is not the only French VAT provision that requires a representative established in France, and the list of 42 does not travel to the other one. A business established outside the EU that has incurred French VAT but has not made supplies situated in France recovers that VAT through the refund procedure at Article 242-0 Z quater and following of Annexe II to the General Tax Code, the French implementation of the 13th Directive. The costs involved are the familiar ones: exhibition and trade fair charges, conference and event services, and supplier invoices that carry French VAT. The ordinary French exclusions still apply to the claim, and they bite harder than most claimants expect: VAT on accommodation provided to the claimant's own directors and staff, on vehicles designed to carry people and the expenses attached to them, and on fuel is not refundable under this procedure.

Article 242-0 Z octies of Annexe II says that taxable persons established outside the European Union are required to have a taxable person established in France accredited with the tax office as their representative, who undertakes to carry out the formalities and obligations falling on them, and that the representative may in addition be required to provide a solvent surety jointly bound to repay any sums wrongly refunded. The text of that section of Annexe II contains no country list, no cross-reference to the order of 15 May 2013 and no derogation. The tax authority's doctrine on the procedure repeats the obligation without a country carve-out, leaves the choice of representative open to any French-established VAT-registered business, and requires the representative to give a written undertaking to repay the VAT in the place of the non-EU claimant if the conditions turn out not to have been met.

There is a ministerial list in this procedure, and it is routinely misread as an exemption. It is not. It sits in the first paragraph of Article 242-0 Z quater, it names countries and territories that do not grant comparable advantages to French businesses, and its effect is to shut their businesses out of the French refund entitlement altogether. The doctrine records that to date no country or territory appears on it. It decides who may claim, not who may claim without a representative. Nothing in the refund procedure turns on the order of 15 May 2013.

The practical consequence is specific. A United Kingdom, Norwegian, Japanese or Turkish business can register for French VAT directly and file its own returns with no accredited representative, and still has to accredit one the moment it wants French VAT back through the refund procedure. The two routes are largely, but not entirely, separate. The refund procedure is open only to a business that has made no supplies situated in France in the period, so a business that is registered and filing French returns normally recovers its input VAT through those returns instead, and there the Article 289 A exemption does apply. The exception is worth knowing, because it is the one case where both apply at once: Article 242-0 Z quater, II provides that for this purpose the transactions listed at 2° of Article 242-0 O are not treated as carried out in France, and those include exempt transport and ancillary services and supplies on which the tax is due by the customer under the reverse charge. A business established outside the EU whose only French supplies are reverse-charged can therefore be inside the refund procedure and carrying French declarative obligations at the same time. If you are on the list of 42 and have concluded that you need nothing from anyone in France, the refund claim is the case to check. Send us the invoices you are trying to recover on and we will say which route they fall into.

The country list is closed. There is no residual discretion, no bilateral shortcut and no read-across from an income tax treaty. If the country where your business is established is not in the EU and is not one of the 42, then unless the business carries out only the transactions at Article 289 A, I, 2°, an accredited fiscal representative established in France is required before the French VAT registration can be completed. What that accreditation involves, and what the representative takes on in your place, is set out in our fiscal representation service for non-EU sellers. These are the cases we are asked about most often.

One trap deserves naming. The French tax authority publishes a separate annex, BOI-ANNX-000508, listing the states with which France has an exchange of information clause and, separately, an international recovery assistance clause, across income tax, corporation tax, VAT and other taxes. It is a general inventory, not an exemption list, and a recovery assistance clause on its own is not enough: the exemption at 1° needs both legs. Switzerland and Liechtenstein appear in that annex with a yes in the information exchange columns and a no in the recovery assistance columns, and both are outside the fiscal representation exemption. Other states appear with a recovery assistance clause for income taxes and none for VAT, and they are outside it too.

If your business is established in one of these countries, the question is no longer whether you need an accredited representative but who will act as one, and the accreditation has to be in place before the French VAT registration can be completed. We act as accredited fiscal representative in France. Tell us the country where the business is actually run, the French transactions involved and any existing French VAT number, and we will confirm the registration route and what the accreditation would require from you.

Monaco is asked about often enough to deserve its own answer, and it is absent from the list of 42 because it does not need to be on it. Article 7 of Directive 2006/112/EC provides that the Principality of Monaco is not to be regarded as a third country, and that transactions originating in or intended for Monaco are treated as transactions originating in or intended for France. The French tax authority's territoriality doctrine says the same, placing Monaco among the territories that are not third territories, and records that the French VAT rules are introduced in the Principality by princely ordinances.

A business established in Monaco is therefore inside the territory in which French VAT applies, and the premise of Article 289 A, that the person is not established in the European Union, is not met in the ordinary way. We give this as a territoriality point rather than as a settled answer: no published French source addresses fiscal representation for a Monaco-established business head on. If that is your situation, ask before you assume.

This one is a genuine discrepancy between two official sources, and we would rather set it out than leave it to be discovered mid-registration. The order of 28 February 2017, as published in the Journal officiel, adds Albania to the list. Albania appears twice in that text, once in the enacting words of its Article 1, which remove Argentina and add fifteen entries including Albania, and once in the notice that accompanies the order, which records the same changes. The notice lists what the order does. It does not spell out the consequence for the businesses concerned.

The consolidated version of the order of 15 May 2013 has never contained Albania. The version in force since 27 February 2021 lists 42 entries and Albania is not among them, and the tax authority's registration page does not list it either. Comparing the entries added and removed by each amending order against the consolidated total leaves one entry unaccounted for, which is consistent with an omission at consolidation rather than a deliberate deletion.

The practical position for an Albania-established business is therefore that the exemption is arguable on the text of the 2017 order but unavailable in practice, because the consolidated list is what the tax office applies. Plan the registration on the basis that a representative will be required, and raise the discrepancy only if there is a reason to.

These roles are routinely confused, including in commercial offers, and the differences are not administrative. An accredited fiscal representative under Article 289 A is a taxable person established in France, accredited by the tax authority, who undertakes to meet your obligations and to pay the tax in your place. Liability follows: the representative answers for the VAT alongside the business it represents, which is why accreditation is subject to conditions of compliance history, administrative resources and solvency, or a guarantee set at one quarter of the obligations, under Article 289 A, IV.

An agent, in French a mandataire, is a different arrangement, and there are two of them. The permanent agent sits at Article 95, III of Annexe III to the General Tax Code, and it is open to two populations and no others: taxable persons established in another EU member state, and persons established in a non-EU state that meets the conditions at Article 289 A, I, 1°, which is to say the 42. Either may appoint a permanent agent to carry out some or all of its formalities and to pay the tax in its name, but the agent acts under the exclusive responsibility of its principal. The tax authority's published doctrine restates the same two populations. So a business on the list of 42 can be represented in practice without buying joint liability, which is usually what it actually wants. A business established outside the EU and outside the 42 cannot: for it, the accredited fiscal representative is the only route, and any offer of a lighter arrangement should be read closely.

The occasional agent, the mandataire fiscal ponctuel, is narrower still. In a rescrit published on 3 December 2025, the French tax authority describes it as a mechanism allowing taxable persons established in another EU member state to appoint an agent, and restricts it to taxable persons carrying out only VAT-exempt imports followed by an intra-Community supply, and exits from customs or tax suspensive regimes relieved of the tax followed by an export, certain supplies or an intra-Community transfer. It then says that taxable persons established in a third country outside the EU, including those that have concluded a convention on assistance in the recovery of tax debts with France, are not admitted to use the mechanism. That exclusion covers every country on the list of 42, and it shuts them out of the one arrangement they would most want it for. Being on the list does not put you on the same footing as an EU-established business for this purpose. The international agent at Article 289 A bis does not fill the gap either, because it does not cover imports followed by an intra-Community supply, the arrangement commonly known as customs procedure 42.

Two dates matter if you are unwinding an older arrangement. The occasional form of fiscal representation that used to exist at Article 289 A, III was repealed with effect from 1 January 2025 by the finance act for 2024, with an administrative tolerance that ran to 31 December 2025 and has now expired. If you are changing provider rather than starting from scratch, our transfer of French fiscal representative service covers the handover and the accreditation formalities.

This page was verified on 1 August 2026 against the consolidated text of the order of 15 May 2013 in force since 27 February 2021, the two amending orders of 28 February 2017 and 16 February 2021, Article 289 A of the General Tax Code in the version in force since 1 January 2025, Article 256-0 of the same code, Article 95 of Annexe III, Articles 242-0 Z quater and 242-0 Z octies of Annexe II, the French tax authority's VAT registration page, and its published doctrine on representation and mandates, on the office and filing deadline for taxable persons not established in France, on refunds to businesses established outside the European Union, and on the territory in which VAT applies. Lists like this one change by ministerial order and without notice, so treat the date above as part of the answer and re-check before acting on it.

One change is already scheduled, and it is not the change it is often reported to be. Ordonnance no. 2025-1247 of 17 December 2025, published in the Journal officiel of 20 December 2025, recodifies the VAT provisions into the Code des impositions sur les biens et services, and Book II of that code takes effect on 1 September 2026. An ordonnance is a different instrument from the arrêtés that fix the country list. Recodifying is not repealing: the substance of the fiscal representation rule is not altered, the list of exempt countries is not withdrawn, and the requirement is not abolished. The same ordonnance also carries other changes to that code alongside the recodification, which is one more reason to read the new numbering rather than assume it. We will name the new article numbers here when they are confirmed rather than guess at them now.

If you want the answer applied to your own facts, send us the country where the business is actually run, the French transactions involved, whether you are claiming French VAT back, and any existing French VAT number. We act as accredited fiscal representative in France, and we will tell you which of the representative obligations on this page applies to you, if either.