Chartered Accountant Coach: Cabinet Hayot Expertise

Based rue de Monceau (Paris 8), the firm carries out the day-to-day work of an expert-comptable (chartered accountant) and adapts it to a coaching practice:

• digital bookkeeping on Pennylane: invoices, bank feeds and expenses synchronised, profitability by type of offer readable every month;
• annual accounts and tax returns: form 2035 with the profit carried over to form 2042-C-PRO for a sole proprietorship under the real regime (régime réel, taxed on actual receipts and expenses); balance sheet, profit and loss account and tax return package (liasse fiscale) for a company;
• VAT and filing obligations: franchise en base (the VAT exemption for small businesses) or VAT registration, returns, application for the training exemption certificate;
• qualification of your offers: mapping of coaching / training / conferences / online products, with the VAT split set out from the quote onwards;
• the financial side of Qualiopi: preparation of the certification's financial elements, invoicing compliance, monitoring of EDOF (the platform used to invoice training funded by the CPF, the personal training account) and the annual BPF (pedagogical and financial report);
• choice and creation of the structure: quantified micro / real / company simulation, SASU or EURL incorporation, alignment with ARE unemployment benefits where relevant;
• the director's remuneration: a documented salary / dividend arbitrage, reviewed every year against your objectives;
• electronic invoicing: preparing your invoicing tools for the reform, described on the e-invoicing support page.

The engagement is for independent coaches, whether in a micro-entreprise (the simplified flat-rate regime), in a sole proprietorship under the real regime or in a company: professional and executive coaches, life and personal development coaches, business coaches, ICF or EMCC-certified coaches who also train, in Paris and throughout France.

Coaches also share many issues (daily rates, multiple clients, light cost structure, the micro-to-company switch) with independent consultants: our page on the accountant for consultants complements this reading if your activity mixes coaching and consulting.

You are starting out. The first choice is the regime: micro-BNC (the simplified regime for non-commercial income, with a flat-rate allowance), a sole proprietorship under the real regime or a company. The firm runs the comparison with you in figures, starting from your prices, your clients (individuals or companies) and the costs you expect, then sets up the company if that is the option chosen. The steps are described on the company formation in Paris page. If you are leaving salaried employment with unemployment benefit rights, the alignment with France Travail (the French public employment service) is done before incorporation (see below).

You are changing accountant. Describe your practice in a few lines: legal status, share of coaching and of training, individual or corporate clients, training activity declaration (déclaration d'activité) or Qualiopi where relevant. The fee proposal is drawn up after a review of your documents: latest form 2035 or tax return package (liasse fiscale), bank statements, the year's invoices. Before accepting the engagement, the firm informs your current accountant; an engagement letter (lettre de mission) then sets the scope and who does what (changing accountant). Bookkeeping is then set up on Pennylane, with your bank and your invoices connected.

The word coach covers activities whose accounting and VAT are not handled in the same way.

• Professional coach, executive coach or business coach: clients are mostly companies, which generally recover VAT. Coaching is taxable at 20% outside the franchise en base (the VAT exemption for small businesses); only continuing professional training can be exempt, when you hold the exemption certificate (attestation) issued by the administration.
• Life coach or personal development coach: clients are individuals, who pay for sessions, packages or workshops and do not recover VAT. Life coaching has no exemption of its own: it becomes taxable at 20% as soon as the franchise en base no longer applies. Crossing the threshold therefore needs to be prepared in advance, because VAT then weighs on your price or on your margin.

Professional coaching counts more than 30,000 practitioners in France, within a continuing-education market valued at €16 billion. Paris concentrates around half of all coaches certified by ICF (International Coaching Federation) and EMCC (European Mentoring and Coaching Council). Behind that headline figure, three business models coexist, and they call for neither the same accounting structure nor the same VAT treatment:

• generalist individual coaching (life coaching, career transitions): daily rate of €400 to €700, mostly private clients, often run as a micro-BNC;
• certified professional coaching (ACC, PCC or MCC on the ICF side, EIA on the EMCC side): daily rate of €700 to €1,500, a mix of private and corporate clients, with a switch to a company often relevant from €60,000 of annual revenue;
• executive and leadership coaching: daily rate of €1,500 to €3,000 per day, exclusively corporate clients, structured as a SAS with a patrimonial holding for established practices.

Certification bears directly on the daily rate. On the ICF side, the Associate Certified Coach (ACC) requires 60 hours of training and 100 hours of practice, the Professional Certified Coach (PCC) 125 hours and 500 hours, and the Master Certified Coach (MCC) 200 hours and 2,500 hours. An MCC positioned on executive coaching can charge €2,500 to €3,500 per day. On the EMCC side, the EMCC Global Individual Accreditation (EIA) runs across four levels (Foundation, Practitioner, Senior Practitioner, Master Practitioner), particularly recognised by corporate HR departments.

Our reading. A coach's legal status, VAT position and invoicing policy must follow the business model. A B2C coach starting out and a multi-activity executive coach have neither the same optimal structure nor the same documentary obligations. Your accountant's first task is to map your revenue streams, and only then to choose a framework.

Micro-BNC: simplicity at the cost of deductions

The micro-BNC regime applies up to €83,600 of annual receipts. Its appeal is simplicity: no accrual accounting, a flat-rate allowance applied to receipts, lighter filing obligations. Its limit is structural: no actual expense is deductible. Yet a growing coach invests heavily in their practice: certification, supervision, marketing, room rental. The more these costs weigh in your model, the more expensive the micro regime becomes in tax terms, even though it remains the simplest option at the very start.

The sole proprietorship under the real regime: form 2035

Under the controlled declaration regime, a coach taxed in the BNC category files a form 2035 every year and carries the profit over to the 2042-C-Pro of their personal income tax return. Every justified professional expense is deducted from taxable profit. It is the right intermediate framework: actual costs exceed the micro allowance, but the level of activity or the project does not yet justify a company. The switch from micro to real is decided on evidence, by comparing the flat-rate allowance with the expenses you actually incur over twelve months.

The company (SASU, EURL): steering remuneration and preparing for growth

Switching to a company generally becomes relevant in a zone of €50,000 to €70,000 of annual revenue, and is often recommended from €60,000 for a certified coach working with corporate clients. A company subject to corporate income tax allows you to depreciate investments, to smooth remuneration from one year to the next, and to arbitrate between salary and dividends, the latter bearing the flat tax (PFU) at 31.4%. A frequent special case among coaches transitioning from employment: creating a SASU without paying yourself any remuneration lets you keep your ARE unemployment benefits, up to 60% of the rights remaining at the date of creation (for contracts ended since 1 April 2025; beyond that, only with the approval of the regional joint body), with accumulated profits distributed later as dividends. This strategy is calibrated against your France Travail situation and quantified before incorporation.

Quick decision guide

The "Quick decision guide" table helps you choose a status; this one shows what each regime requires you to keep and file.

In every case, VAT is filed separately as soon as you no longer benefit from the franchise en base. The micro regime is not lost during the year: it ends on 1 January following two consecutive years of receipts above €83,600.

The principle: coaching is a taxable service

Coaching is a service subject to VAT at the standard rate of 20%. Below the franchise-en-base threshold (€37,500 of annual services receipts in 2026), you can invoice without VAT; above it, charging VAT becomes mandatory. Voluntarily leaving the franchise can actually pay off: you recover VAT on your investments (tools, rooms, equipment), and your corporate clients deduct it anyway, which leaves your price unchanged in their eyes on a net-of-tax basis.

The exception: continuing professional training

Services qualifying as continuing professional training can be exempt from VAT under article 261-4-4° of the French tax code (CGI). The exemption is not automatic: it requires being a declared training provider, hence holding a training activity declaration number (NDA) issued by the DREETS, and then requesting the exemption certificate. It carries substantive obligations: a structured programme with learning objectives, training agreements, participant tracking, and the annual filing of the pedagogical and financial report (BPF) with the DREETS. A coach who claims the exemption without this documentation is exposed to a VAT reassessment on all the services concerned.

Qualiopi: the gateway to CPF and OPCO funding

Mandatory since 2022 for access to public or pooled funding (CPF, OPCO, France Travail), the Qualiopi certification, whose framework is set by decree 2019-565, validates the quality of pedagogical processes through an audit cycle run by an accredited certification body. The certification should be anticipated as soon as funded engagements appear in your sales pipeline, not after a client's first request. CPF-funded services are invoiced to the Caisse des Dépôts through the EDOF platform, with payment within 30 calendar days once the service delivered has been validated by the Caisse des Dépôts; they are VAT-exempt if the provider holds the exemption certificate, the activity declaration alone not being enough. CPF funding represents around 30% of the market for coach-trainers: giving it up is a commercial choice.

The underestimated risk. A hybrid offer invoiced globally, without separating coaching from training, exposes the entire engagement to a VAT requalification. The split must be set out from the quote and the invoice onwards.

For a coach, the franchise en base, which releases small businesses from charging VAT, rests on two amounts of receipts from services: €37,500 over the previous calendar year and €41,250 over the current year.

• You exceed €37,500 during the year without exceeding €41,250: you remain under the franchise for the current year and VAT is due from 1 January of the following year.
• You exceed €41,250 during the year: VAT is due from the date the threshold is exceeded.

The firm tracks your taxable receipts across all your activities: the threshold is measured on the services that would be subject to VAT without the franchise. Receipts from continuing professional training exempt under the exemption certificate are not counted. The firm then prepares what follows with you: your prices, since individual clients do not recover VAT, then your invoices and your first returns. You can also waive the franchise without waiting for the threshold: the option takes effect on the first day of the month in which it is declared and covers two years, including the year of the declaration.

Most established coaches combine several revenue streams, and each follows its own VAT, invoicing and documentation rules:

• one-to-one coaching sessions: a service taxable at 20%, invoiced to the individual or the company, with no pedagogical documentation requirement;
• training programmes: eligible for the VAT exemption if you hold the exemption certificate (Qualiopi is required only for CPF or OPCO funding), backed by a programme, objectives and evaluations;
• conferences and one-off speaking engagements: their tax qualification is examined case by case according to the actual content and the contractual framework; they are neither coaching nor automatically training;
• online products (video programmes, subscriptions, remote group workshops): the qualification depends on the degree of human support and on whether the learning path is structured or not.

Three practical consequences. First, invoicing: each offer must be described and priced separately, including within a single contract or a single support programme. Second, accounting: analytical tracking by type of offer lets you read the profitability of each activity; one-to-one coaching often funds the launch of online products, rarely the other way round at the start, and only stream-by-stream tracking shows it. Third, thresholds: the micro ceiling is assessed on the receipts of all your activities, the VAT franchise on your taxable receipts; an online product that takes off can make VAT due mid-year, as soon as those receipts exceed €41,250, and take you out of the micro regime on 1 January following two consecutive years above €83,600.

Our reading. Multi-activity is the natural trajectory of a coach who is professionalising: it smooths seasonality, creates recurring revenue and monetises the certification. Poorly structured, it mixes incompatible VAT regimes on the same invoice. The framing is done when each new offer is launched, not at year-end closing.

A coach who works with individuals often collects small amounts through several channels: single sessions, packages paid in advance, payments in instalments, online booking or payment platforms. Three points need to be kept in order.

• The gross amount: what counts as your receipts is the price paid by your client, not the net payout from the platform. The platform's commission is an expense, deductible only under the real regime or in a company.
• Packages: in a company, sessions paid for but not yet delivered at year-end are not income of that financial year; they are carried over to the next one, whereas VAT, when it applies, is due as soon as the payment is received.
• Refunds and cancellations: each one is documented, with a credit note (avoir) when an invoice has been issued.

The firm matches the platforms' payouts to your sales in Pennylane, so that the revenue you declare corresponds to what your clients paid.

Under the real regime as in a company, the bulk of a coach's professional investment reduces taxable profit:

• professional certifications (ICF ACC, PCC or MCC tracks, EMCC accreditations) and their renewals;
• supervision and practice analysis, deductible when they are tied to the practice of the profession;
• the coach's own continuing education: courses, professional conferences, specialised documentation and subscriptions;
• room and office rental for individual sessions and group workshops;
• digital tools: video conferencing, online booking calendar, CRM, website, online course platforms;
• marketing and business development: advertising, content creation, professional network memberships;
• travel costs to clients: when re-billed to the client, they enter the VAT base like the service itself; the disbursement (débours) regime is reserved for expenses incurred in the client's name and on the client's behalf, under a mandate, for their exact amount.

Illustrative case. An ICF-certified executive coach who moves from a micro-entreprise to a SASU under corporate tax deducts their actual expenses (PCC certification, supervision, digital tools, room rental), which the micro regime does not allow. The effect on tax depends on each situation and is quantified before the switch.

From one file to the next, the same friction points come back:

• a hybrid offer invoiced as a single block, which weakens the VAT exemption on the training component;
• staying in micro-BNC even though actual expenses have long exceeded the flat-rate allowance;
• a VAT exemption claimed without an NDA or pedagogical documentation, indefensible in an audit;
• a forgotten or late BPF filing, which puts the activity declaration and funding access at risk;
• certification and supervision costs left unrecorded, for lack of centralised supporting documents;
• a company incorporation misaligned with ARE rights, which forfeits part of the unemployment compensation.

The firm supports independent, certified and executive coaches, in Paris and throughout France, with a response within 24 to 48 hours. We frame your file from your real figures. Contact the Hayot Expertise firm for a first conversation about your situation, in English throughout the engagement.

Up to date as of 10 November 2026. Informative content reviewed by a chartered accountant registered with the Ordre des experts-comptables of Île-de-France.