France DAS 2 third-party fees reporting 2026: CGI Art. 240 obligations, €1,200 threshold, penalties and field cases

Updated 25 May 2026 — reviewed by Hayot Expertise, chartered accountant (expert-comptable) in Paris.

The Annual Declaration of Salaries and Fees (DAS 2), codified in CGI Article 240, is one of the most heavily sanctioned and least operationally managed tax obligations in France. Any entity that pays fees, commissions, brokerage, rebates, ad-hoc allowances (vacations), directors' fees (jetons de présence) or copyrights to a third party for more than €1,200 VAT-inclusive per year and per beneficiary must file a DAS 2 by 31 January of the following year.

The subject remains poorly understood at executive level: thresholds confused with VAT rules, blurred distinction from the DSN (nominative social declaration), systematic omission of payments to non-residents or occasional consultants. The sanction is severe: 50% of unreported sums under CGI Article 1736 I, applied to the gross amount paid — not to any underlying tax evaded. This 2026 practical guide clarifies scope, operational decisions and concrete pitfalls.

In brief — Once €1,200 VAT-inclusive has been paid during the year to the same independent service provider (fees, commissions, directors' fees, brokerage...), you must report that beneficiary in your DAS 2 by 31 January of year N+1. An omission costs 50% of the unreported amount. A spontaneous correction filed before any audit notice removes the penalty entirely.

The obligation falls on the payer, irrespective of legal form: commercial company (SARL, SAS, SA), liberal profession (BNC — non-commercial profits), non-profit association (loi 1901), public body, SCI (real-estate holding company), animating holding. The single condition is carrying out a non-salaried activity and making payments that fall within the scope of CGI Article 240.

On the beneficiary side, the following individuals and legal entities operating independently (BIC — industrial and commercial profits — or BNC) are covered when they receive:

• Fees (honoraires): independent lawyers, chartered accountants (experts-comptables), private-practice doctors, consultants, coaches, architects.
• Commissions: business introducers, non-salaried commercial agents.
• Brokerage (courtage): independent insurance intermediaries, non-salaried property negotiators.
• Rebates (ristournes): discounts granted to intermediaries outside any employment relationship.
• Ad-hoc allowances (vacations): occasional-service remuneration for non-recurring assignments.
• Directors' fees (jetons de présence): paid to non-salaried members of a supervisory board or board of directors.
• Copyrights: authors, photographers, illustrators, freelance journalists.

The scope excludes a number of situations that business owners frequently confuse with third-party fees:

Our reading: The most frequent confusion involves wage portage (portage salarial). Once you receive an invoice from a portage SAS, no DAS 2 is required from your side: the portage company handles its employee's DSN. However, if you contract directly with the same consultant outside portage, the DAS 2 obligation applies from €1,200 cumulative during the year.

The threshold is assessed cumulatively per beneficiary and per calendar year, combining all payment categories. A beneficiary who receives €600 in fees in March and €700 in brokerage in September reaches €1,300 — DAS 2 is mandatory.

The declared amount is always the total VAT-inclusive amount paid during the calendar year, not the pre-VAT figure. For beneficiaries not subject to French VAT — micro-entrepreneurs (auto-entrepreneurs) operating under the franchise de TVA exemption, private individuals — the amount paid is directly the gross figure to declare.

A Paris-based consulting firm with 12 employees uses external providers on a regular basis. Here is its DAS 2 table for 2026:

Total to declare in DAS 2: 3 confirmed beneficiaries (€9,600 cumulative), 1 case to verify (SELARL lawyer per BOFiP BOI-BIC-DECLA-30-70-20).

This example highlights two points that are frequently overlooked: (1) the threshold at exactly €1,200 does not trigger the obligation — a detail that surprises many finance directors; (2) fees paid to a lawyers' SEL are in a grey area: where the invoice is issued by the société d'exercice libéral as a legal entity, some practitioners exclude DAS 2; others include it as a precaution. The BOFiP position deserves verification on a case-by-case basis.

Operational calendar#

Filing methods#

• Paper Form 2460: permitted only if the number of lines is fewer than 200.
• EDI (TDFC): mandatory beyond 200 lines (CGI Art. 1649 quater B bis), via an approved EDI partner (Cegid, EBP, Quadra, ACD) or certified accounting software with a built-in DAS 2 module.
• Online filing: via the impots.gouv.fr professional space, under the "Déclaration DAS 2" section.

Required data per beneficiary#

• Full identity (surname, first name or company name) and postal address.
• SIRET/SIREN for legal entities; NIF or French tax identification number for individuals.
• Payment category (fees, commissions, brokerage, ad-hoc allowances, copyrights, directors' fees).
• Total VAT-inclusive amount paid during the calendar year.
• For non-residents: country of tax residence, specific notation, and interaction with the withholding tax.

CGI Article 1736 I is unambiguous: the fine is 50% of unreported sums. It applies to the gross amount paid, not to any tax evaded by the beneficiary. It is one of the highest penalties in the entire CGI for a filing obligation.

Concrete case: An SME fails to declare €80,000 of fees across 3 financial years (2022, 2023, 2024). During a tax audit in 2026, the DGFiP applies CGI Art. 1736 I: potential fine of €40,000 (50% × €80,000), plus late-payment interest. The outcome is financially devastating for a mid-size structure.

The underestimated risk: Beyond the direct penalty, a DAS 2 omission can trigger a tax rectification at the beneficiary's level. The beneficiary may then turn liability back toward their client, generating commercial litigation risk and damaging the business relationship. DAS 2 is as much an act of professional loyalty toward service providers as a compliance obligation.

DAS 2 coexists with the withholding tax under CGI Article 182 B for payments to providers who are not French tax residents. This withholding applies to fees, commissions and similar remuneration paid to individuals or companies whose domicile or registered office is outside France.

Key points:

• The withholding rate is generally 25% of the gross pre-VAT amount, unless a bilateral tax treaty reduces or eliminates that rate.
• The DAS 2 form includes a specific section for non-resident payments, separate from the resident section.
• Both obligations are cumulative: withholding tax on one side, DAS 2 reporting on the other.
• Where the non-resident provider is established in a country that has a tax treaty with France, reduced or nil withholding requires a tax residency certificate (the appropriate French Cerfa form or the partner country's equivalent).

In practice: As soon as you engage a foreign consultant — a European freelancer, a US adviser, an offshore communications agency — verify simultaneously: (1) whether a France–country X bilateral tax treaty applies; (2) whether CGI Art. 182 B withholding must be applied; (3) whether the payment exceeds €1,200 and triggers DAS 2 reporting. The two obligations are cumulative — neither replaces the other.

The DGFiP operates an automatic cross-matching tool: DAS 2 declarations received are compared against beneficiaries' BIC/BNC income tax returns. An inconsistency — a beneficiary declaring less income than the amount reported by the payer, or conversely a beneficiary declaring fees with no matching DAS 2 — generates an automatic flag.

Audits target primarily:

• Companies whose supplier ledger (grand livre fournisseurs) shows significant "fees" or "commissions" entries with no DAS 2 on file.
• Liberal professions (lawyers, doctors, architects) that regularly pay retrocessions or business-introduction commissions.
• Entities with frequent foreign service providers and no withholding tax applied.

• Threshold unchanged: the €1,200 VAT-inclusive threshold has been in force since 2017; no legislative change has been announced for 2026 or 2027.
• E-invoicing rollout 2026–2027: the progressive roll-out of electronic invoicing via PDP/PPF will ease supplier data collection but does not remove the DAS 2 obligation. The two systems are independent.
• Directors' fees: a frequently missed point — fees paid to non-salaried board members or supervisory-board members fall within the DAS 2 scope.
• Cross-check with the corporate tax return and liasse fiscale: third-party fees declared in DAS 2 must be consistent with deductions taken in the annual tax return (liasse fiscale), particularly account 633.
• Interaction with employee taxation: where bonuses are paid to individuals in an ambiguous status — neither clearly salaried nor clearly independent — the question of taxable bonus requalification arises alongside DAS 2.

• Open a per-beneficiary tracking table from the first payment, with an automatic alert at €1,000 (a safety margin before the €1,200 threshold).
• Require a SIRET or TIN from every new external provider at the first invoice (supplier KYC procedure).
• Define a clear internal policy on wage portage vs direct freelance, documented in the internal procedure manual.
• Schedule DAS 2 reviews in November and December, ahead of the year-end accounting close.
• Evaluate switching to EDI if more than 50 beneficiaries are expected (recommended before hitting the mandatory 200-line threshold).
• Cross-check the supplier ledger against the previous year's filed DAS 2 to identify any omissions eligible for spontaneous correction.
• For each non-resident provider: verify applicable tax treaty, compute CGI Art. 182 B withholding, and complete the non-resident section of the DAS 2 form.

DAS 2 suffers from a paradox: it is technically simple but operationally under-managed. The problem is not the declaration itself — it is the tracking during the year. Business owners who discover the DAS 2 requirement in December, during the accounting close, find themselves collecting SIRET numbers in a rush for dozens of providers who may have changed address or ceased trading.

In the files we manage, the most common shortfalls affect three profiles: (1) SMEs that engage consultants on a one-off basis without a supplier KYC procedure; (2) liberal professions that pay business-introduction commissions without tracking the annual cumulative total; (3) entities internationalising their service purchases without coordinating DAS 2 and CGI Art. 182 B withholding.

Spontaneous correction remains available and removes the 50% penalty — but it requires identifying the omission before receiving an audit notice. This is why an annual supplier-ledger review, cross-referenced against the filed DAS 2, is the best preventive investment.

This article reflects general rules under CGI Articles 240 and 1736 as at 25 May 2026. It does not constitute personalised tax advice. Specific situations — non-resident providers, société d'exercice libéral structures, intra-group retrocessions — require individual case-by-case analysis.