Setting up a SASU in France step by step (2026 guide)

The SASU (Société par Actions Simplifiée Unipersonnelle) is the single-shareholder version of a SAS, France's most popular corporate vehicle for founders, freelancers and holding structures. The SASU has become the default vehicle for a solo founder, ahead of the EURL.

Three reasons explain this dominance:

• Statutory flexibility: bylaws can include preferred shares, BSPCE warrants, vesting clauses, drag-along, anti-dilution, investor-ready by default.
• Favourable social regime for the president: treated as an "assimilated employee" affiliated to the French general social security system (excluding unemployment).
• Dividends are not subject to social charges in a SASU, unlike the EURL where dividends above 10% of share capital trigger TNS contributions.

This guide, written by Samuel HAYOT, a French CPA based in Paris 8th, walks you through every practical step to set up a SASU in France in 2026, with real costs, timelines, common pitfalls and tax optimisations available from year one.

See also: Salary vs dividends in a SASU: optimisation guide, our companion guide with worked examples on €50k, €100k and €200k profit.

Why expats and foreign founders prefer the SASU#

• English-speaking ecosystem: Paris-based CPAs, lawyers and neobanks (Qonto, Shine) operate fluently in English.
• Remote setup: the entire process is online via INPI; non-residents can be president with valid ID and proof of address abroad.
• Eligibility for French Tech Visa and Talent Passport schemes.
• Tax treaty leverage: works well with US/UK/EU residents under double-tax treaties.

a. Eligible activities#

Almost any commercial, industrial, artisanal or non-regulated liberal activity. Regulated professions (accounting, law, medicine, pharmacy) require specific structures (SEL, SCP).

b. Registered office (siège social)#

1. Personal address: free, but check lease and condominium rules (5-year maximum where the lease forbids it).
2. Domiciliation provider: €20 to €50/month in Paris (Sedomicilier, Kandbaz, Regus).
3. Commercial lease or business incubator: required for client-facing premises.

A registered office in Paris 8th or 1st notably strengthens credibility with corporates and investors.

c. Trade name & corporate name#

Check availability on:

• data.inpi.fr for registered trademarks
• pappers.fr for existing French companies
• afnic.fr for .fr domain availability

d. Drafting the corporate purpose#

Should be broad but coherent. The APE/NAF code assigned by INSEE flows from this and impacts your collective bargaining agreement, professional insurance and eligibility for grants.

The bylaws are the SASU's internal constitution. They cover:

• Governance (president's powers, optional committees)
• Approval and pre-emption clauses for future shareholders
• Share transfer rules
• Profit allocation
• Conversion to multi-member SAS

Free templates vs custom drafting#

• Free templates (INPI, Bpifrance): fine for simple solo activities. Risk: no BSPCE, no investor clauses, gaps if you raise capital.
• Custom bylaws drafted by a French CPA or a lawyer, quoted on a case-by-case basis. Essential if you plan a fundraise, will onboard a co-founder, or build a holding structure.

Hayot Expertise drafts SASU bylaws suited to a fundraising path (BSPCE, vesting, drag-along, anti-dilution). Scope and fees are set out in a written quote, based on how complex the structure is.

Cash contributions#

Funds are deposited in a blocked account. French law recognises only two depositaries: a credit institution (a traditional bank, or a neobank backed by one, such as Qonto or Shine) and a notary. A lawyer cannot hold the share capital, and the Caisse des dépôts et consignations has not accepted new deposits since 1 June 2021.

Paying up the capital: the rule most guides skip. In a SAS or a SASU, at least half of the cash contributions must be paid up at incorporation, with the balance called within five years of registration (article L. 225-3 of the Commercial Code, applied through article L. 227-1). This matters financially: the reduced 15% corporate tax rate requires fully paid-up capital, so a SASU with €10,000 of capital only half paid up is excluded from it until the balance is called.

The deposit certificate is required to register the company. Releasing the funds, however, is neither automatic nor time-bound: the money stays blocked until registration, after which the president must ask the depositary to release it and hand over the registration certificate (the Kbis).

In-kind contributions#

Important, and widely misreported: a SASU can be exempted from appointing a contribution auditor (commissaire aux apports), on exactly the same terms as a SARL since the 2016 Sapin II Act. The sole shareholder may waive the auditor where no single in-kind contribution exceeds €30,000 and the total value of in-kind contributions left unaudited does not exceed half of the share capital (article L. 227-1, paragraphs 5 and 6, of the Commercial Code). In exchange, the sole shareholder remains liable for five years for the value they retained. See our contribution auditor guide.

How much capital should you put in?#

Mandatory publication in an authorised Journal d'Annonces Légales (JAL) of the registered-office department.

Fixed national pricing#

The formation notice is charged at a flat national rate: it does not vary from one department to another. The rate is set by the order of 19 November 2021 on the pricing of judicial and legal notices, as amended by the order of 19 November 2025 applicable since 1 January 2026.

• SASU: €142 excl. VAT in mainland France, Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, Saint-Barthélemy, Saint-Martin and Wallis-and-Futuna
• SASU in Réunion and Mayotte: €167 excl. VAT
• Do not confuse this with the multi-shareholder SAS, whose formation notice costs €199 excl. VAT

Online platforms (LegalStart, JAL.fr) pass on the official rate, sometimes with a service fee on top.

Since 1 January 2023, all French company formalities go exclusively through the single-window portal at formalites.entreprises.gouv.fr (backed by the INPI technical portal, procedures.inpi.fr). The traditional CFE no longer exists. One frequent confusion is worth clearing up: the RNE (national business register, created by ordinance no. 2021-1189) replaced the former national registers, but not the RCS. Your SASU is still registered with the commercial court registry, which is what issues the Kbis.

Documents required#

1. Signed and initialled bylaws (PDF)
2. Bank/neobank capital deposit certificate
3. Legal announcement publication certificate
4. Proof of registered-office occupancy (lease, domiciliation contract, utility bill)
5. President's ID (passport or French CNI)
6. Non-conviction and parentage declaration (INPI form)
7. Beneficial Ownership Declaration (DBE): €19.33 incl. VAT
8. Contribution auditor's report if in-kind contributions

Statutory fees#

These are the regulated registry fees set by the order of 26 February 2026, in force since 1 March 2026. Guides still quoting €37.45 and €21.41 are running on the previous schedule.

Time to obtain the Kbis#

• Neither INPI nor service-public.fr publishes a guaranteed processing time: the real duration depends on how complete your file is and on the workload of the competent registry. Treat the "average" figures circulating online with caution, as none of them rests on published statistics.
• Monitor your account on the single-window portal. An incomplete file is put on hold or rejected and goes back to the queue, so before filing check that the documents above are present (the eighth applies only to contributions in kind valued by an auditor), legible, signed and current.

Unlock the capital#

Present the Kbis (your registration certificate) to the depositary and ask for the capital to be released: the blocked account then becomes an operational pro current account.

Insurances#

• Professional liability (RC Pro): mandatory for regulated professions, strongly recommended for all, at €300 to €800/year.
• Multi-risk pro if you have commercial premises.
• Cyber insurance for digital activities, increasingly required by enterprise clients.

VAT regime#

The franchise regime is attractive at launch (no VAT to invoice or report) but blocks input VAT recovery on purchases. For asset-light freelancers, it's ideal. For agencies with subcontractors or e-commerce, the simplified regime is usually more profitable from year one.

Annual filings#

What "assimilated employee" actually means#

The president is affiliated to the French general social security system: health, basic and supplementary pension (AGIRC-ARRCO), disability/death, but no unemployment cover (private GSC/APPI policies fill the gap, ~€1,500-€3,000/year).

Cost of social charges#

For €1 net received, the company pays roughly €1.75 to €1.85 in total cost. A SASU president is excluded from the general reliefs on employer contributions that apply to ordinary employees, which is why the coefficient is heavier than for a salaried executive on the same package.

Combining ARE unemployment + SASU#

If you were a salaried employee before and qualify for ARE: pay yourself no salary. Your allowance is then maintained, but for a business created after a contract ended on or after 1 April 2025, this combination stops once 60% of the rights remaining at the date of creation have been used; beyond that, continued payment requires the approval of the regional joint body, provided you have drawn no remuneration from the activity. The maximum benefit period is 548 days, i.e. roughly 18 months for a claimant under 55 (15 months for a mutual termination effective since 1 September 2026).

You can then draw income through dividends distributed at year-end. The legal reason is straightforward: dividends are investment income, not earnings from activity, so they do not reduce your ARE. France Travail does not "approve" them and has no reason to reclassify them.

If you take no remuneration at all#

The "zero salary" set-up has a counterpart that is rarely spelled out: with no remuneration, no contributions are due, but no rights are earned either. No basic pension quarters and no AGIRC-ARRCO points for the office held, no daily sickness or maternity allowances, and no work-accident cover unless you take out voluntary insurance. Your health cover then rests on the French universal health scheme (PUMa) or on rights opened through another activity or through your unemployment benefit. It is a short-term cash decision, worth revisiting every year.

Default regime: corporate income tax (IS)#

• 15% on the first €42,500 of profit, then 25% beyond. The reduced rate is not automatic: it requires turnover below €10M, fully paid-up capital, and continuous ownership of at least 75% by individuals (directly or indirectly).
• 25% on the whole profit where any of those conditions is not met

Optional IR pass-through (5 financial years max, article 239 bis AB of the French Tax Code)#

Cumulative conditions: SASU less than 5 years old at the effective date of the option, fewer than 50 employees, turnover or balance sheet total below €10M, eligible activity (excluding the management of one's own securities or real-estate portfolio), at least 50% of the capital and voting rights held by individuals, including at least 34% held by the directors and their household, and shares not admitted to trading on a regulated market. The option runs for five financial years at most and cannot be renewed.

Use case: valuable during a loss-making launch phase, since losses flow through to your personal tax return.

Dividend distribution#

• Approval of the accounts by the sole shareholder, within the period set by the bylaws: unlike a SARL or a SA, a SAS or SASU is not bound by a statutory deadline, six months after year-end being the usual practice
• Distributable profit = post-IS profit, less prior losses and the allocation to the legal reserve (5% of profit until the reserve reaches 10% of capital)
• Flat tax (PFU): 31.4% since the 2026 social security finance act (12.8% income tax plus 18.6% social levies, CSG having risen from 9.2% to 10.6%). This rate covers dividends and securities capital gains: life insurance, regulated savings accounts, rental income and property capital gains remain at 17.2% social levies
• The option for the progressive income tax scale, which unlocks the 40% rebate on dividends, is open whatever your marginal tax rate. It is a global election (it applies to all your investment income for the year) and is generally more favourable than the flat tax when your marginal rate is 0% or 11%

1. Generic bylaws without BSPCE/approval clauses → expensive rewrite at fundraise.
2. €1 share capital → refused account opening at major banks.
3. Home address without lease authorisation → risk of eviction.
4. Forgetting the Beneficial Ownership Declaration (DBE) → 6 months' imprisonment and a €7,500 fine for the legal representative (article L. 561-49 of the Monetary and Financial Code), up to €37,500 for the company, plus a possible management ban and removal from the RCS by the registrar.
5. Believing the IR option is lost if it is not filed within three months of incorporation. It is not: the option stays open at the start of any financial year while the company is under five years old, the three-month window being the first three months of the year the option applies to.
6. No CPA in year one → VAT errors and tax-bundle non-compliance triggering audit.

In other words, the statutory floor for setting up a SASU in 2026 is €223.56: €142 excl. VAT for the formation notice and €53.16 incl. VAT for the registry and the beneficial ownership filing. Everything else, from bylaws to domiciliation and professional support, is a choice rather than an obligation.

Based in Paris 8th, our firm handles SASU formations, in particular for:

• Freelancers and consultants (tech, marketing, advisory)
• Pre-seed startups (investor-ready bylaws, BSPCE)
• Patrimonial holdings (SASU + operating subsidiary)
• Foreign founders (remote setup, banking introductions, US ITIN coordination if needed)

Our engagement covers drafting the bylaws, filing on the single-window portal, support with opening the bank account and setting up first-year accounting. Scope and fees are set out in a written quote, after an initial discussion of your project.

• Bpifrance Création: the SASU
• Service-public.fr: the single-shareholder simplified joint-stock company (F37383)
• Service-public.fr: depositing and paying up the share capital (F32333)
• Service-public.fr: registry fees for RCS registration (F37688)
• Service-public.fr: pricing of the formation legal notice (F31972)
• Service-public.fr: social contributions of a SASU president (F36240)
• INPI: the single window for company formalities
• French Commercial Code, article L. 227-1 (contribution auditor exemption)
• French tax guidelines: election for income tax by capital companies (BOI-BIC-CHAMP-70-20-40-10)
• France Travail: how the ARE entitlement period is determined

Looking to set up your SASU in Paris or anywhere in France? Contact Hayot Expertise for a free project review and a tailored quote.

The corporate purpose (objet social) is more than boilerplate. It drives the APE/NAF code that INSEE assigns you, and that single code then determines which collective bargaining agreement applies, which professional liability insurance you need, and whether you qualify for certain grants. Draft it broad but coherent. Too narrow, and you will be blocked the day you want to pivot into an adjacent activity. Too vague, and the registry can reject the file.

For a tech freelancer, a robust wording reads along these lines: all consulting services in digital strategy, software and IT solutions development, support for digital transformation, continuing professional training, and more generally any commercial, industrial, financial, movable or immovable operations connected directly or indirectly to that corporate purpose. The closing catch-all clause is what gives you room to evolve without amending the bylaws later.

Checking availability is not the same as securing the name. Confirm the corporate name and trademark are free on data.inpi.fr for registered trademarks, pappers.fr for existing French companies, and afnic.fr for .fr domain availability. Then anticipate filing your trademark with INPI as early as the formation stage. The filing costs 190 euros online for one class of goods or services, plus 40 euros per additional class, and it stops competitors from using the name you are about to build value around. Founders who skip this step often discover, a year in, that a rival registered the mark first, forcing a costly rebrand right when commercial traction was finally building.

See also: Salary or dividends in a SASU | How to choose your accountant in Paris | Business creation service in Paris