French VAT Thresholds in 2026: What Changed, What Did Not, and What Happens If You Cross One

The French VAT threshold has been the subject of two years of noise, three proposals and one full reversal. If you lost track, you are not alone. Here is where things actually landed for 2026. The current thresholds Under the franchise en base regime you do not charge VAT to your clients, and you cannot reclaim VAT on your purchases. The thresholds for 2026 are: Activity Base threshold Tolerance threshold Services and liberal professions €37,500 €41,250 Sale of goods and accommodation €85,000 €93,500 For mixed activities, total turnover must stay under €85,000 and the services portion under €37,500. Nothing changed on 1 January 2026. The thresholds are the same as 2025. The €25,000 proposal that did not happen The 2025 finance bill proposed a single threshold of €25,000 for all activities. That would have made several hundred thousand micro-entrepreneurs liable for VAT overnight. The reaction was loud, the measure was suspended, and a consultation followed. An intermediate version circulated during 2025 keeping €37,500 for services but applying €25,000 to construction work. That was also dropped during parliamentary debate. So the position today is unchanged. The subject may return in a future budget, which is worth knowing if you are near a threshold and planning ahead, but nothing is in force. The trap: two different sets of numbers This is the single most common misunderstanding, and it costs people money. The VAT threshold and the micro-enterprise turnover ceiling are not the same number. The micro-enterprise ceilings are considerably higher, around €83,600 for services and €203,100 for commercial activity. You can therefore be comfortably within the micro regime for income tax and social contributions while being liable for VAT on your sales. People assume that staying a micro-entrepreneur means staying out of VAT. It does not. What happens when you cross The rules changed in 2025 and are stricter than they used to be. Crossing the base threshold (€37,500 or €85,000) in a given year means you leave the franchise on 1 January of the following year. The old rule requiring two consecutive years of overrun was removed. Crossing the tolerance threshold (€41,250 or €93,500) means you become liable for VAT from the first day of the overrun, not from the first day of the month, which was the position until 2024. That is a real change and it is unforgiving. If you cross on 14 October, sales from 14 October carry VAT. First partial year. If you started trading during the year, your threshold is prorated by the number of days the business existed. Starting on 1 July does not give you a full €37,500. Assuming otherwise is a common route to a tax adjustment. What to do if you are approaching a threshold Track turnover monthly, not annually. The tolerance threshold rule makes the exact crossing date matter, so an annual check is too coarse. Work out whether VAT actually hurts you. If you sell to consumers, losing the franchise means either a 20% price rise or a 20% margin cut, which is genuinely painful. If you sell to VAT-registered businesses, they reclaim it, so the change is close to neutral and you gain the right to reclaim VAT on your own purchases. Some businesses with heavy equipment or stock costs are better off registered. Consider voluntary registration. It is allowed, and for a business investing in equipment it can be the better choice. Update your invoice wording. Under the franchise you must carry the exemption mention. From 1 September 2026 the reference changes from Article 293 B of the CGI to the Code des impositions sur les biens et services, with a tolerance until 31 December 2027 during which the old reference stays acceptable. Remember the e-invoicing reform applies to you. Being in the franchise does not exempt you. From 1 September 2026 every VAT-registered business must be able to receive electronic invoices. Getting answers without a monthly retainer None of this is complicated once explained, but it is specific to France, it changes with each finance bill, and general-purpose AI assistants get it wrong regularly because their training data is full of outdated or foreign rules. Tools built for the French market handle this better. Mirage Cloud includes an agent scoped specifically to French accounting, VAT and tax questions, alongside integrations with Pennylane and Qonto. Narrow scope is the point. An assistant that only handles French tax questions is less likely to answer with an American rule. Treat any generated answer as a starting point rather than a filing. Anything with a tax consequence still needs a qualified professional to confirm it, and any vendor claiming otherwise is overselling. But for the question of whether you are close to a threshold and what happens if you cross it, a specialised tool will get you a usable answer in seconds.