Accounting software for French businesses

How French TVA works

The points below describe the French regime itself, not HelloBooks — they are the rules your books have to line up with.

Standard rate — 20%

The taux normal, applied to most goods and services in metropolitan France.

Intermediate rate — 10%

The taux intermédiaire, covering categories such as restaurant meals, passenger transport and certain renovation work.

Reduced rate — 5.5%

The taux réduit, covering categories such as most food products, books and energy-saving work.

Super-reduced rate — 2.1%

A narrow rate applying to categories such as press publications and certain reimbursable medicines.

CA3 is normally monthly

Under the régime réel normal the CA3 is filed monthly. A business whose annual TVA payable is below EUR 4,000 may opt to file quarterly instead.

The régime simplifié is different

It is not quarterly CA3 filing: it runs on an annual CA12 return with instalments during the year. Quarterly CA3 is an option inside the normal regime.

Deadline — mid-month, personal to you

The CA3 deadline falls between the 15th and the 24th of the month after the period. There is no single national date; yours is shown in your espace professionnel.

Franchise en base de TVA

Small businesses below the turnover limits neither charge TVA nor deduct it. The thresholds have been the subject of recent reform, so check the figure that currently applies to your activity.

FEC — Fichier des Écritures Comptables

A prescribed-format export of your accounting entries that computerised bookkeeping must produce for a tax audit. It is not a return, and it is a roadmap item here.

Mandatory B2B e-invoicing

Under the published timetable, every business must be able to receive electronic invoices from 1 September 2026, large businesses and ETI must issue them from the same date, and SMEs and micro-enterprises from 1 September 2027. Confirm your own start date.

Where it is filed

impots.gouv.fr, in your espace professionnel, administered by the Direction Générale des Finances Publiques (DGFiP).

From your ledger to the CA3

Every invoice you raise carries its TVA rate and every supplier bill carries the TVA déductible you can reclaim. At period end those lines are totalled into the shape the CA3 asks for: taxable turnover by rate, TVA collectée, exports and intra-EU supplies, TVA déductible, and the net amount to pay or to carry forward as a crédit de TVA. You check the totals against the transactions behind them, then key them into your espace professionnel or send them to your expert-comptable. HelloBooks transmits nothing to the DGFiP.

The bank feed keeps the ledger current in between: transactions come in, AI categorisation proposes the account and the TVA treatment, and you confirm or correct. When your date arrives, the return is a review.

Who this is for

• SAS and SARL companies that need a euro ledger, correctly rated sales and purchases and monthly statements without a full ERP.
• Independants and small practices that prepare their own CA3 and want the boxes computed from transactions, not typed from a spreadsheet.
• Restaurants, hotels and food businesses juggling 20%, 10% and 5.5% lines.
• Exporters and intra-EU sellers who need zero-rated supplies kept apart from domestic turnover.
• French subsidiaries of foreign groups that invoice in other currencies but report in euro.

Questions French businesses ask