CFE in France: The Business Tax You Might Miss
If you run any kind of business in France, from a one-person design studio to a gîte or an Airbnb, you owe the cotisation foncière des entreprises. Most owners meet the CFE the same way: someone mentions it over coffee in November, they start researching this Company Property Tax, and they find a bill sitting inside an online account they never knew they had to create. The amounts are usually modest. The way the tax is delivered is what costs people money.
You Won’t Be Notified by Post
The CFE notice is dematerialised. The tax office publishes it in your espace professionnel on impots.gouv.fr and posts nothing to you, and the balance is due by 15 December at midnight, moving to the next working day when the 15th falls on a Saturday or a Sunday.
The trap sits one step earlier. To find the notice, you need that espace professionnel, and impots.gouv.fr clearly states that creating one is a prerequisite for consulting and paying your CFE. On the simplified route, the activation code is sent to you by post within 15 days. Start the process on 5 December, and the envelope can arrive after the deadline has passed.
Two further details catch people out. Payment must be made through a dematerialised method, meaning direct online payment or monthly or on-the-due-date direct debit, and the bank account registered in your space must be with a bank in a SEPA zone country. Separately, if your CFE reached €3,000 last year, half of it falls due as an instalment on 15 June.
How Much is the CFE in 2026?
CFE is charged on the rental value of the premises used for the business, which is why it gets confused with the taxe foncière. They are different taxes: taxe foncière is paid by the owner of the building; CFE is paid by whoever runs a business in it, whether they own it, rent it, or work from the kitchen table.
That last case is the common one here. Work from home, from a spare room, or at your clients’ properties, and your rental value is small or nil. You are liable anyway. The tax is then built on a minimum base that your commune sets within a range fixed by law, and the range depends on the turnover you recorded two years earlier. The minimum base for CFE in 2026 is determined by the turnover generated in 2024, and is as follows:
- For turnover up to €10,000: €250 to €597
- Turnover over €10,000 up to €32,600: €250 to €1,194
- Turnover over €32,600 up to €100,000: €250 to €2,509
- Turnover over €100,000 up to €250,000: €250 to €4,183
- Turnover over €250,000 up to €500,000: €250 to €5,974
- Turnover over €500,000: €250 to €7,769
Source: article 1647 D of the Code général des impôts, (July 2026)
The base is not the bill. Your commune applies its own rate, so two identical businesses in neighbouring villages pay different amounts for the same work. On top sits the chamber of commerce surcharge, set at 1.12% of the CFE base for 2026, plus 1% in collection fees.
The First Year is Free (and That’s When Things Go Wrong)
A new business owes no CFE in its year of creation, and its base is halved the year after. Neither relief is silent. To get them, you need to file the déclaration initiale 1447-C-SD with your local Service des Impôts des Entreprises before 31 December of the year you started, as set out by the French tax office. Register in March and that form is due by 31 December of the same year, to establish the tax payable the following year.
After that, there is no annual CFE return. You submit Form 1447-M-SD again by the second working day after 1 May only when something changes: floor area, a new site, a closure, or a claim to one of the optional local exemptions.
So the shape of the budget is nothing in year one, half a bill in year two, and a full bill in year three, arriving in December. Plenty of people who set up in 2024 are about to meet their first real one this year.
Who is Exempt, and Who Isn’t?
Turnover of €5,000 or less in the reference year cancels the minimum contribution outright, under that same article 1647 D. For a business with no premises, that means no CFE. If you started trading last year, the threshold is tested on that first year’s turnover, recalculated as though you had traded for a full twelve months, which quietly pushes some part-year businesses over the line.
Classified holiday lets and chambres d’hôtes are exempt where the rooms are part of your own home, main residence or second home, and are not the guest’s own residence. Two conditions do the damage. The meublé de tourisme must be declared, and the commune can vote to revoke the exemption. Confirm both at the mairie rather than assuming.
Letting on its own is a separate question. Bare residential letting sits outside CFE. Furnished letting is subject to the €5,000 gross receipts threshold, unless the let is in your main home. Bare commercial letting is caught at €100,000. Artists selling only their own work, authors and translators paid in royalties, and artisans working alone or with apprentices and family help are exempt by law.
What You Need to do Before December
Log in to impots.gouv.fr and check whether you have an espace professionnel with the fiscal account service switched on. If you do not, start it now rather than in the first week of December, because the activation code travels at the speed of the post. You will need to provide the company’s SIREN number, an email address to contact them, and another for login.
Most owners can handle the CFE alone. It is one online account, one paper form in the first year, and one payment a year after that. It stops being simple when the exemption is arguable: an unclassified gîte, a business run from a second home, a first-year turnover that needs pro-rating, or a commune that has set its minimum base near the top of the range. Those are worth an hour with a French accountant, and an hour before the notice is issued is worth more than an hour after.
This article is for information only and is not tax or legal advice; check your own position with a qualified accountant or legal expert before filing.
Thank you, Aurelio, for your contribution to this article about the CFE tax. Aurelio Maurici is co-founder of EasyFranceNow and writes about tax, banking and administration for foreign residents living and working in France.
