French VAT - making payments
Has anyone out there registered for French VAT and if so how do you make the payments.
I am having great difficulty finding a way to make the SEPA B2B payments via my bank which is the HSBC
French VAT - making payments
Has anyone out there registered for French VAT and if so how do you make the payments.
I am having great difficulty finding a way to make the SEPA B2B payments via my bank which is the HSBC
24 replies
Seller_iYCrwoyqEYtxD
hi we are, and its a complete PITA to set up- we have been registered for a few years and happily sent BACS payment over - until we were slapped with a €60 fine. - as the SEPA DD is now compulsory.
-(I am not on the right computer, so I cannot log in and get you the correct wording, doing this from memory) - my wording makes it sound worse than it is… a little 
have you been onto the French TVA portal and put all your bank details in? - I remember we had to set it up in the portal after getting the bank details from our bank SWIFT / IBAN etc . - This has to come from a EURO account as well, not GBP account unless you can set yours to send in Euro automatically.
Once you have the details from the bank, you put it in the portal, this spills out a few pages that need signing and sending to France (we also had to send a copy to our bank, we are with Barclays, where the Euro accounts are done differently) .
- You also then have to use the id / etc that are created on the pre printed forms from the portal and put this in your bank sepa DD request. (so they know who sent the money)
Then you sit, wait and keep your fingers crossed. Our payments are 1/4 , and even though we had sent all the info in plenty of time, and it was set up in our bank the French authorities did not collect, so we sent the payment .
Hopefully this 1/4 will be different as we can see payee TVA in the portal home page, which we could not before (I believe once you confirm the TVA form, then you go to the payee and press something in there - this will then generate the DD request
Seller_u6oFsCplnc2yu
We’ve been vat registered in France since 2011. We file online monthly at https://www.impots.gouv.fr/portail/
We had to open a bank account in France to make payments as they wouldn’t allow us to register for vat without a bank account in France. I don’t know if this has changed but this was the case in 2011. We are with HSBC and they opened us a HSBC account in Paris. It was a faff to arrange but we’ve had no problems since opening it and registering on the ‘services des impots’ website.
We imputted our French bank account details into their website and filing and paying is a 5 minute job every month.
If you need help they also have a department for foreign vat registrants. I’ve contacted them a couple of times in the past and they were very helpful - they communicated in English which was a bonus. Their email is sie.entreprises-etrangeres@dgfip.finances.gouv.fr
Seller_iYCrwoyqEYtxD
Aaahhh… I hope not… as this is the only reason I set up this Euro account - my french 1/4 end is this month, so due to pay the TVA next month - will let you know if I get smacked with another fine (we had one in April hence the reason for setting it up - we did not get one last 1/4, even though I sent the bacs from the EURO account rather than DD,- it was all set up our end , but the French did not get their bit in order in time)
Seller_Sp0MDHOM1olT2
Did you ever sort this out? I’m with HSBC and they don’t seem to support SEPA B2B. Could do with an account that is quick and easy to set up (online if possible!) which supports SEPA B2B
Also, side slightly off topic but someone mentioned it in the thread. When I withdraw Euro payments from Amazon (and USD for that matter of fact) I’m taking them out into a UK account so Amazon does the conversion. What’s the best way to avoid this and get the best rate?
Seller_t9Cc34bPP0XjO
Hi, I’ve spent much of the morning looking into this issue and am not getting very far. With Lloyds you can’t pay a B2B Sepa Direct Debit either (unless you are a relatively large business). Worldfirst can’t do it either. So, it seems the only option left could be to open a bank account in France. Has anyone found a relatively easy way to do this?
