French Accountant for Refurbished Tech and Second-Hand Goods

Quick answer. An accountant specialising in refurbished tech secures the VAT margin scheme, separates new, second-hand and repair streams in the till, sets up the register of movable objects required by the French Criminal Code, and computes real margin after refurbishment cost and scrap. They also price the private copying levy due on refurbished products. From 258 EUR excluding VAT per month, quote within 24 to 48 working hours.

It is an accountant who has understood that this trade cannot be read like ordinary retail: value is not created at purchase, it is created between the buy-back and the resale.

A device often enters with no deductible VAT, because it comes from a private individual. It then incurs a refurbishment cost that varies by model, and a share of the devices bought back will never return to sale. It finally leaves under a specific VAT regime where tax applies to the margin rather than to the price. Together, these three features make a refurbisher's profit and loss account unreadable until the bookkeeping has been built for this model.

On top sit two obligations most operators in the sector discover late: a register derived from the Criminal Code and a private copying levy applicable to refurbished products.

Why the margin, not ordinary VAT

When a shop buys a phone back from a private individual, that individual charges no VAT. The shop therefore bears no deductible VAT on that entry. If it then had to charge VAT on the full resale price, the tax would hit a second time a value already taxed at origin. That is what the margin scheme avoids: VAT is computed on the difference between the selling price and the purchase price.

On a device bought back at 120 EUR and resold at 200 EUR, the taxable base is not 200 EUR but the 80 EUR margin, VAT included, to be brought back to a VAT-exclusive amount (coefficient 0.833 at the 20% rate).

What "as is or after repair" means

The scheme assumes the item is resold as is or after repair without substantial transformation. Refurbishment in the ordinary trade sense falls within that definition: diagnosis, cleaning, battery or screen replacement, data wiping and software reinstallation, testing and reconditioning.

The limit lies where the work no longer restores an existing item but manufactures a new one. In practice the point to watch is the ratio between the value of the parts incorporated and the value of the device itself: the higher it climbs, the more debatable the qualification becomes. This is settled upfront, model by model, not during an audit.

Separating the streams: the real accounting work

This is where most files deteriorate, and the mistake is always the same: treating the margin scheme as a month-end computation when it is a data entry architecture.

Refurbisher bookkeeping that holds up rests on three separations, effective from the point of payment:

• separate purchase accounts for acquisitions with no deductible VAT;
• separate sales accounts for margin-scheme sales;
• a POS configuration assigning each sale automatically to the right family.

Without this, the taxable base can no longer be reconstructed with certainty, and the error repeats at every filing until it becomes a liability.

Article 321-7 of the French Criminal Code requires a register of movable objects to be kept day by day by any professional whose activity involves, even for a small proportion of transactions, the sale or exchange of second-hand goods, or of goods acquired from persons who are neither their manufacturer nor their trader. Article 321-8 penalises inaccurate entries and refusal to produce the register to the competent authority, while articles R. 321-3 et seq. set its content and procedures, article R. 321-1 governing the prior declaration.

The French Directorate General for Enterprise states that the obligation is not limited to antique and bric-a-brac dealers: it covers any professional dealing in second-hand goods, in any sector. Failure to keep it is punishable by six months' imprisonment and a 30,000 EUR fine.

Beyond criminal compliance, the register is the evidence of provenance of your devices. That is exactly what an inspector asks for before accepting the margin scheme.

Buying back from a private individual is the founding transaction of the model, and it is also the worst-equipped process in most shops we take on. It serves three purposes, and a well-designed buy-back form covers all three.

It feeds the register. The entries required by the Criminal Code are collected at the counter, not reconstructed the next day: the seller's identity taken from an official document, a description identifying the device unambiguously including its serial number or IMEI, the date of the transaction and the price paid.

It underpins the VAT position. The purchase price on the form is the one that will serve as the basis for computing the margin on resale. If it is approximate, so is the taxable base. And if provenance cannot be established, it is the regime itself that becomes contestable.

It protects the shop. A device bought back may be stolen, remotely blocked, or tied to an account that was never deactivated. The procedure is worth extending with a blocking check before payment and a statement in which the seller confirms owning the device and having unlinked it from their accounts.

The buy-back form that protects you legally is also the one that produces the reliable purchase price your accounts need.

This is one of the most widespread confusions in the sector, and it circulates even in professional content.

The French tax code provides no domestic reverse charge for supplies of mobile phones, tablets, laptops or consoles between taxable persons established in France, whereas several other EU Member States made that choice to fight carousel fraud.

The domestic reverse-charge cases set out in article 283 cover something else:

The confusion often comes from 2 octies, which does mention telephony, but concerns electronic communication services rather than the supply of the handsets themselves. A shop reselling prepaid top-ups to other businesses may therefore be caught by that case; the same shop selling handsets to a business is not.

Invoicing without VAT by invoking a reverse charge that does not exist means failing to collect a tax that is due, with the assessment and penalties that follow. Conversely, ignoring 2 octies when you do sell top-ups to businesses exposes you to the mirror criticism.

These references move to the code des impositions sur les biens et services with no change of substance, on a date that has been pushed back (see below).

This is a direct charge on margin, and it is regularly discovered after the fact.

Law no. 2021-1485 of 15 November 2021 extended the private copying levy to refurbished devices. The applicable scale had a turbulent judicial history: decision no. 22 of the Private Copying Commission was annulled by the Conseil d'État on 19 December 2022, and decision no. 23 was adopted on 12 January 2023 for the same purpose.

The principle retained is a specific scale, reduced compared with new devices, reflecting differences in storage capacity, in usage and in how long the devices are used.

For a refurbisher there are two practical consequences. The first is budgetary: the levy must enter the unit cost calculation alongside parts, failing which reported margin is overstated on every device. The second is procedural: the amount depends on the product category and its storage capacity, and the scale in force must be checked as at the placing-on-market date.

The most common model runs three activities in the same outlet. They do not follow the same rules.

The difficulty is not legal, it is operational: the till has to know, at the moment of payment, which family the transaction belongs to. A shop that settles this configuration at opening will never meet the problem; a shop that settles it after three years will have to reconstruct three financial years.

A refurbished tech shop almost always sells online too, often on specialist marketplaces.

The nature of the goods belongs to this page: provenance and traceability of devices, margin scheme, register, warranty, stock valuation. Channel mechanics belong to our marketplaces page: settlement reports, commissions, remote stock, distance-selling VAT. The margin mechanism itself is detailed in our guide to the VAT margin scheme on second-hand goods.

Rotation deserves particular attention in this trade: a model's value falls every month it sits on the shelf, regardless of its condition.

Ordinance no. 2025-1247 of 17 December 2025 transfers VAT rules from the general tax code to the code des impositions sur les biens et services. The recodification is made on a constant-law basis: the margin scheme is unchanged.

Watch the date, it changed recently. Entry into force of Book II of the CIBS was set for 1 September 2026. Ordinance no. 2026-671 of 27 July 2026 postponed it to 1 January 2027, notably to avoid it coinciding with the start of mandatory e-invoicing on 1 September 2026.

What changes are the references. A second-hand reseller almost always cites a general tax code article on its invoices to justify the absence of visible VAT. Those references will have to point to the new text. Former references remain admissible until 30 June 2028, a date also pushed back by the July 2026 ordinance, which leaves time to do it properly, provided you have identified where they appear: invoices, terms and conditions, POS configuration and buy-back forms.

Situation. A phone shop turns over 500,000 EUR net: sales of new devices and accessories, buy-back and resale of refurbished devices, and invoiced repairs. The owner sees revenue growing while cash does not follow, and cannot say which activity actually makes money.

What bringing it under control reveals. The three activities fell into the same till family, which made the margin-scheme VAT base impossible to reconstruct. Refurbishment cost was tracked nowhere: it was buried in parts purchases, so that some models were resold at a loss once refurbishment was accounted for. Scrap rate was not measured. The register of movable objects did not exist.

What is put in place. Separation of the three families at the point of payment and a rebuild of purchase and sales accounts; opening of the register and a buy-back procedure recording identity and price; computation of a unit margin after refurbishment by model; inclusion of the private copying levy in unit cost; an audit of invoice wording ahead of the CIBS deadline. The owner then sets buy-back policy on real margins rather than on selling prices.

The figures above are modelled for illustration and do not reproduce any client file.

No fixed package: a complete service from 258 EUR excluding VAT per month, adjusted case by case to your actual volumes. On this type of file the budget drivers are very identifiable: the volume of trade-ins to trace, the number of sales channels, the coexistence of several VAT regimes in one till, payslips, and whether repair is invoiced. Firm quote within 24 to 48 working hours.

1. Applying the margin scheme without being able to evidence its conditions. The French tax authorities publish a fraud awareness note devoted to the VAT margin scheme and second-hand goods: the topic is watched, and evidence of provenance is the first thing requested.
2. Believing in a reverse charge on phones. It does not exist in French domestic law for supplies of devices between taxable persons established in France.
3. Treating the margin as a month-end computation. It is a data entry architecture: without separation at source, the taxable base can no longer be reconstructed.
4. Forgetting the register of movable objects. Six months' imprisonment and a 30,000 EUR fine, and above all the loss of the evidence that secures your VAT position.
5. Leaving the private copying levy out of unit cost. Reported margin is then overstated on every device sold.
6. Not measuring refurbishment cost or scrap. A shop can grow in volume while losing money on specific models.

✅ One contact, registered with the French Order of Chartered Accountants. Samuel Hayot, chartered accountant and statutory auditor, handles your file personally.

✅ A trade treated for what it is. Margin scheme, register, private copying levy and three regimes coexisting in one till: framed at the outset, not discovered in an audit.

✅ Accounts that give the real margin, after buy-back, refurbishment and scrap, model by model.

✅ Responsiveness. An answer within 24 to 48 working hours, by email or on the firm's direct WhatsApp line.

✅ Transparent pricing. From 258 EUR excluding VAT per month, adjusted to your actual volumes, firm quote within 24 to 48 working hours.

Hayot Expertise, 58 rue de Monceau, 75008 Paris. Phone and WhatsApp: +33 6 51 47 43 92. First scoping call with no commitment, firm quote within 24 to 48 working hours.