French research tax credit (CIR): 2026 guide

Quick answer. The French research tax credit (CIR) remains at 30 % of eligible R&D expenditure up to EUR 100 million, then 5 % above that threshold (Article 244 quater B of the French Tax Code, version in force on 1 January 2026). The overhead lump sum stands at 40 % of personnel costs since 15 February 2025. SMEs benefit from immediate refund of the credit; the filing is done through form 2069-A-SD attached to the corporate tax return.

The 2026 Finance Act (Law No. 2026-103 of 19 February 2026) confirms the continuation of the CIR without major structural reform, but consolidates the adjustments introduced in 2025. The headline 30 % rate is kept, technology watch costs and patent-related fees have been definitively removed from the base, and the overhead lump sum on personnel expenditure remains at 40 %. The Young Doctor scheme, which used to double the personnel base for new PhD holders, was abolished for expenditure incurred on or after 15 February 2025.

At the same time, the legislator created a new status, the Young Innovative Company with Impact (JEII), which opens benefits comparable to the classic JEI regime to firms combining an R&D intensity of between 5 % and 20 % of expenses with social-utility criteria (social and solidarity economy). The minimum R&D spend required to keep JEI status itself rose from 15 % to 20 % of tax-deductible expenses under Article 22 of the 2025 social security financing act: the 15 % threshold now only applies to financial years closed before 1 March 2025.

At Hayot Expertise, we have advised deeptech startups, SaaS publishers and industrial SMEs on the qualification, calculation and defence of their CIR for more than ten years. A Paris-based software publisher CEO recently approached us after a first claim was rejected for lack of evidence of technical uncertainty: rebuilding the file ex post worked, but cost three months of avoidable back-and-forth. This guide aims precisely to prevent that scenario.

The CIR is available to industrial, commercial or agricultural businesses taxed on actual profits (corporate or personal income tax), whatever their size. Companies enjoying ZRR, ZRD, JEI, JEC, JEII, BER, ZFANG or certain urban enterprise zone exemptions also qualify. Legal form (SAS, SARL, SA, SNC, sole trader) is not a criterion: what matters is the nature of the work performed.

Excluded are associations without economic activity, businesses on the micro regime and entities that do not carry out R&D within the meaning of the Frascati Manual (the OECD reference used by BOFiP, the French tax doctrine database).

Article 244 quater B covers three categories: fundamental research, applied research and experimental development. The common thread is the existence of a scientific or technical uncertainty at the start of the project that cannot be solved by simply applying available knowledge. Product improvement, integration of a known technical brick or marketing optimisation is not enough.

Five practical tests help check whether a project qualifies:

1. Novelty: does the targeted result bring something new compared to the state of the art?
2. Creativity: is the approach based on original concepts or hypotheses?
3. Uncertainty: is the outcome uncertain at the start (meaningful probability of failure)?
4. Systematic approach: do the works follow a documented and reproducible protocol?
5. Transferability: can the conclusions be reproduced by a third party of the field?

These five Frascati criteria form the lens used by MESR (Ministry of Higher Education and Research) experts during an audit or advance ruling.

The 2026 CIR base covers several categories, framed by Article 244 quater B and BOI-BIC-RICI-10-10-20:

• Personnel costs: gross salaries and employer social charges of researchers and research technicians, weighted by their actual R&D time.
• Overheads: a flat 40 % of personnel costs (since 15 February 2025) plus 75 % of depreciation of allocated assets.
• Depreciation: charges on new assets created or acquired and directly allocated to R&D.
• Subcontracting: works entrusted to public bodies, universities, public-interest foundations, or private bodies holding an MESR CIR accreditation.
• Standardisation expenses: included at 50 % of their amount.
• New plant variety protection fees: removed from the base, like patent costs, for expenditure incurred from 15 February 2025 (2025 Finance Act). They remain deductible from taxable profit, but no longer give rise to the tax credit.

Technology watch costs and patent defence fees, previously included, were removed from the base by the 2025 Finance Act. This exclusion explains part of the few-percentage-point gap observed between 2024 and 2025 filings on the same R&D perimeter.

The calculation follows a cascade logic: eligible base → rate application → offset or refund.

Public subsidies (Bpifrance, France 2030, Horizon Europe) received for eligible projects are deducted from the base in the year of receipt, whether refundable or not. This neutralisation prevents double-aid on the same R&D euro.

The resulting amount is offset against corporate or personal income tax for the year. Where the credit exceeds the tax due or the company has no tax to pay, the receivable can be offset over the next three years. EU-sense SMEs (fewer than 250 employees, turnover ≤ EUR 50 m or balance sheet ≤ EUR 43 m), JEI and JEII firms, newly created companies and firms in collective proceedings benefit from immediate refund. This point is critical for an R&D startup's cash runway.

For a quick estimate, you can use our CIR / JEI startup simulator updated with 2026 parameters.

Subcontracting is one of the highest-risk areas in CIR audits. The 2026 rules are strict:

• subcontracting only qualifies when entrusted to a public body, university, public-interest foundation, or private organisation holding an MESR CIR accreditation;
• the official list of accredited bodies is updated annually on recherche.gouv.fr;
• the overall subcontracting cap is EUR 2 million per year, raised to EUR 10 million for work entrusted to public research bodies with no dependency link to the company;
• subcontracting costs are only taken into account up to three times the total of the company's other eligible research expenditure;
• caution: the doubling of expenditure entrusted to public research bodies was abolished by the 2025 Finance Act. Since 15 February 2025 those costs count for their invoiced amount only, with no uplift: simulations built on the old double-counting rule mechanically overstate the credit;
• the works must be performed in France or in a European Union or EEA state with a French administrative assistance treaty.

In practice, a startup outsourcing 100 % of its development to an Indian provider cannot include those costs in its CIR base: neither accreditation nor location is satisfied.

The CIR filing follows a precise schedule aligned with the annual tax return.

1. Prepare the technical file per project (state of the art, blockers, methodology, results), ideally continuously and by year-end at the latest.
2. Calculate the base and the credit per project, reconciled with payroll, invoices and internal notes.
3. Complete form 2069-A-SD (Cerfa 11081) and its annexes (2069-A-1-SD for project detail, 2069-A-2-SD for subcontracting).
4. Carry the amount over to form 2069-RCI-SD attached to the tax return (2065 for IS companies, 2031 for BIC).
5. Keep the supporting file for at least six years (the tax authorities' reassessment window) — it is not sent with the filing but must be produced immediately upon audit.
6. Request the refund through form 2573-SD for SMEs eligible for immediate restitution.

For companies closing on 31 December 2025, the 2026 return is due by 20 May 2026 at the latest (3 May plus the 15-day e-filing extension). If contemplated, the advance ruling request must be lodged at least 6 months before that deadline.

The CIR advance ruling (Article L80 B 3° of the Tax Procedures Code) allows a company to ask the tax authorities about the eligibility of a precise project before filing. The answer must arrive within 3 months from receipt of a complete file; absent a reasoned reply, the opinion is deemed favourable and binding on the administration in case of a later audit. Since 2026, the provisions of Article 115 of Law No. 2026-103 facilitate the rolling advance ruling, which lets the company update the initial opinion as the project evolves.

Other preventive procedures exist: audit on request, CIR consultative committee (in case of disagreement with the administration), MESR expertise. Yet the best protection remains a properly maintained technical file, dated and signed by the operational teams.

Hayot Expertise advice. The CIR advance ruling is under-used by startups, even though it provides major legal certainty before a fundraising round or a sale. An acquirer always looks at the last three CIR claims: a favourable ruling turns a grey zone into a valuable asset. When the annual CIR exceeds EUR 100,000, we systematically recommend an advance ruling on the structuring projects.

Early-stage startup. Pre-incorporation expenses are not eligible, but those incurred from incorporation onwards are. Immediate refund turns the CIR into cash, which can represent 15 to 25 % of the R&D budget depending on the salary / subcontracting mix. See our dedicated tech startup accounting practice.

JEI and JEII (2026 status). The CIR + JEI combination is explicitly allowed. JEI adds a full exemption from employer social insurance and family allowance contributions on the pay of researchers, engineers, technicians, R&D project managers and company officers assigned to R&D, until the last day of the 7th calendar year following the year of incorporation, capped at EUR 8,401.58 of gross monthly pay per employee and EUR 240,300 per establishment per calendar year (2026 caps). By contrast, the corporate or personal income tax exemption was abolished by the 2024 Finance Act: it only survives for companies incorporated up to 31 December 2023 (100 % of the first profitable year, then 50 % of the next), and no company incorporated on or after 1 January 2024 is entitled to it. The minimum R&D threshold rose from 15 % to 20 % of tax-deductible expenses (Article 22 of the 2025 social security financing act): the 15 % threshold now only applies to financial years closed before 1 March 2025. Our dedicated article on the Young Innovative Company (JEI) status details the full articulation.

Animating holding and tax-consolidated group. Within a tax-consolidated group, the CIR is computed company by company and offset against the group's corporate tax; subsidiaries entitled to immediate refund (SME, JEI) keep it. A pure holding cannot carry CIR: the works must be performed within an operating company. See our analysis of corporate income tax 2026.

Innovation Tax Credit (CII). Distinct from CIR, the CII targets SMEs developing prototypes or pilot installations of new products. Rate of 20 %, annual cap of EUR 400,000. It is combinable with the CIR on different projects.

Reassessments observed in 2024 and 2025 cluster around the same issues in more than 70 % of cases:

• Confusing commercial innovation with eligible R&D: a new product for the market is not automatically a research project in the tax sense.
• Overstating time without dated and signed activity logs cross-referenced with tools (Jira tickets, Git commits, sprint reports).
• Documenting only the financial side without a technical annex describing the blockers and tests.
• Including ineligible expenditure: technology watch, patent fees, commercial travel, marketing services.
• Mishandling subsidies: forgetting to neutralise Bpifrance or France 2030 aid, leading to an inflated base.
• Subcontracting to a non-accredited provider or outside the EU/EEA.
• Failing to request the refund when the company qualifies as an SME, freezing a liquid asset into an idle receivable.

Beyond these technical errors, the most structural risk is the absence of running traceability. A file rebuilt three months after closing is always weaker than one updated each sprint.

CIR is not a tax product activated at year-end: it is a living file built throughout the project. Three recommendations from our practice:

First, identify the R&D perimeter at project kickoff, jointly with the CTO and CFO. A project / person / R&D-time-percentage matrix, updated monthly, beats any post-hoc reconstruction. Second, request an advance ruling as soon as a structuring project exceeds EUR 100,000 of annual CIR: the marginal cost is small compared with the legal certainty obtained. Third, treat the CIR as a financial topic as much as a tax one: it changes a startup's runway, it weighs on SaaS unit economics and it forms part of the due diligence done by any investor.

For structured groups, the CIR / CII / JEI / France 2030 arbitration must be set in a portfolio view. Our CIR, CII and JEI advisory service integrates this logic, in conjunction with the steering of a startup outsourced CFO when the financing topic becomes strategic.

Hayot Expertise advice. We recommend introducing, from the seed stage, a simple "R&D logbook": a shared file per project, with test dates, hypotheses tried, results and people involved. The marginal upkeep cost is low. The gain in an audit, and the valuation upside at fundraising, are substantial. A strong CIR file is not a thick one: it is a dated, sourced file that is consistent across science, payroll and accounting.

• The 2026 CIR remains at 30 % up to EUR 100 m of eligible expenditure, 5 % above, based on Article 244 quater B of the French Tax Code.
• The overhead lump sum stands at 40 % of personnel costs since 15 February 2025.
• SMEs, JEI, JEII and newly created companies benefit from immediate refund; others offset over 3 years.
• Subcontracting only qualifies with MESR-accredited bodies, capped at EUR 2 m (private) or EUR 10 m (without dependency).
• The CIR advance ruling (LPF L80 B 3°) secures eligibility within 3 months and remains under-used by startups.
• The technical file must be maintained continuously and kept for 6 years: a file rebuilt ex post is always weaker.
• The JEI status now requires 20 % R&D in tax-deductible expenses (financial years closed on or after 1 March 2025); the new JEII status extends comparable benefits to impact-driven companies whose R&D intensity sits between 5 % and 20 %. Caution: the JEI corporate income tax exemption is abolished for companies incorporated since 1 January 2024; the employer contribution exemption, however, remains open to companies incorporated up to 31 December 2028.