Mobile app creator: monetisation and taxation 2026

Quick answer. The monetisation and taxation of a mobile app creator rest on three pillars: reporting the income paid out by the App Store and Google Play as turnover from services, handling VAT under business-to-business reverse charge with platforms established in Ireland, and choosing between micro-entreprise and company depending on volume. Commissions of 15% to 30% and technical costs weigh on the real margin.

You build an app, it starts generating income, and the tax question lands all at once: should you charge VAT, what do you report to the tax office, and under which status? The topic is confusing because the money does not come from your end users but from two giants, Apple and Google, that stand between you and the user. Understanding this circuit changes everything, because it governs VAT, the category of your profits and the turnover you actually report.

Before tax, you must map your income sources, because they do not all follow the same treatment.

A paid download is the sale price of the app on the stores. In-app purchases group the options, features or content sold inside the app. Subscriptions fund recurring access, monthly or yearly. Advertising (networks such as Google AdMob) pays for displaying ads in the app. Finally, some publishers sell a professional software-as-a-service version, or monetise indirectly through sponsorship.

Each flow follows its own logic, but two players always recur: Apple and Google. They collect from the user and pay you your share.

This is the most misunderstood point. For app sales, in-app purchases and subscriptions, Apple and Google are, for VAT purposes, deemed to supply the service to the final consumer.

The European VAT rule on electronic services considers that the platform controlling billing and delivery terms is presumed to buy the service from the developer then resell it to the user. In practice, Apple Distribution International and Google, both established in Ireland, determine, collect and remit the VAT due by the final customer, store by store, country by country. You, the developer, charge no VAT to the app user.

This mechanism spares you a nightmare: without it, you would have to apply the VAT rate of every country of every buyer. The stores take this on for you.

If Apple and Google resell to the consumer, then your own transaction is a service supplied to Apple and Google, not to the public. And these platforms are taxable persons established in Ireland.

A service supplied to a taxable person established in another EU State is taxable at the place of the recipient (French Tax Code art. 259, 1). It therefore falls outside the scope of French VAT: you invoice net of tax, and the platform reverse-charges the VAT at its end. On your documents, the expected wording is along the lines of "VAT not applicable, reverse charge by the recipient, article 259-1 of the French Tax Code".

Two practical consequences follow. First, you must file a European services declaration (DES) with customs, listing these intra-EU services, with no triggering threshold. Second, even if you fall under the VAT exemption scheme, you must request an intra-EU VAT number as soon as you supply these services to an EU recipient: the exemption does not waive this obligation for intra-EU services.

Here is the classic mistake that distorts a threshold breach. Since the platform acts as a reseller to the consumer, your turnover is the net amount it pays you, not the price paid by the user.

Take an example. In one month, users pay 10,000 EUR of purchases in your app. Apple takes a 30% commission, that is 3,000 EUR, and pays you 7,000 EUR. It is this 7,000 EUR that forms your taxable turnover, not the 10,000 EUR collected by the platform. The commission is neither a cost to deduct under micro, nor income to record: it never passed through your accounts.

This distinction is decisive to track your micro-entreprise threshold, since reasoning in gross would make you cross the ceiling far sooner than reality.

As long as income stays modest, the micro-entreprise is enough. The turnover threshold for services stands at 83,600 EUR for the 2026 to 2028 period (against 77,700 EUR until 2025). Below it, you benefit from a flat-rate allowance for costs, and you may opt for the discharging payment, set at 2.2% of turnover for liberal activities falling under non-commercial profits.

Micro shows its limits as soon as income climbs or your real costs exceed the allowance. Servers, subcontracted development or a large acquisition budget are not deductible under micro, where you are taxed on turnover after allowance, not on real profit. At that point, a company subject to corporate tax (SASU or EURL) becomes relevant: corporate tax is 15% up to 42,500 EUR of profit then 25% beyond, real costs are deductible, and salary and dividends can be arbitrated. Dividends paid bear the flat tax of 31.4% in 2026. The switch is prepared, as we detail in our article on when to move from micro-entreprise to a company.

The category of taxation depends on the real nature of the activity, and it is not always obvious.

Bespoke development for clients, seen as an intellectual service, generally falls under non-commercial profits. The distribution of a standardised product sold en masse on the stores, added to advertising income, instead takes a commercial colour leaning towards industrial and commercial profits. The stake is not theoretical: under micro, the flat allowance reaches 34% for non-commercial profits against 50% for commercial services, and the accounting obligations differ. This classification deserves to be settled from launch with your accountant to avoid a reclassification.

Outside micro, you deduct your real costs. For an app publisher, they are often significant.

Recurring costs include Apple's developer program registration, at 99 dollars per year, the one-off Google Play console registration for about 25 dollars, cloud hosting and servers, hardware (a Mac is required to publish on iOS), software and programming-interface subscriptions, and subcontracted development or design. If your app relies on research and development, the research tax credit or the innovation tax credit may apply, and the young innovative company status opens reliefs, as we explain in our guide to the research tax credit for startups.

In the files of app creators we support, two reflexes avoid most errors. The first is to reason in net paid out by the stores from the first euro, which gives a true picture of the micro threshold and the real margin after commission. The second is to handle intra-EU VAT without delay: request an intra-EU VAT number and file the European services declaration, even under the exemption, even on small amounts.

On the choice of structure, we rarely advise switching to a company while real costs stay below the micro allowance. The switch becomes useful when technical costs rise, when you reinvest heavily, or when you want to steer your remuneration. Since building an app is often a growth project, the horizon matters as much as the current turnover.

An independent developer consults us with a subscription app that is taking off. Over the year, users paid 95,000 EUR through the App Store, but after the 30% commission the platform only paid out 66,500 EUR. He worried he had crossed the 83,600 EUR micro threshold. In reality, his taxable turnover was 66,500 EUR, below the ceiling: he could stay under micro for one more year. We nonetheless prepared his move to a company, because his server costs already reached 14,000 EUR per year, not deductible under micro, and his app would cross the threshold the following year. He had also neglected the European services declaration for 18 months: we regularised his situation and requested his intra-EU VAT number.