France postpones mandatory B2B e-invoicing to September 2026, and to September 2027 for SMEs

What changed in detail

Article 91 of Loi n° 2023-1322 du 29 décembre 2023 de finances pour 2024, published in JORF n°0303 of 30 December 2023, rewrites the commencement rules (III of Article 26 of the amending finance law for 2022) for the generalisation of B2B electronic invoicing and e-reporting.

• E-invoicing (III, A): the obligations apply to invoices issued from 1 September 2026. A decree may set a later date, no later than 1 December 2026.
• SMEs and micro-enterprises: for invoices issued by businesses in those categories that are not members of a VAT group (assujetti unique, Art. 256 C CGI), the date is 1 September 2027, which a decree may defer to no later than 1 December 2027.
• Size category: assessed for each legal person at 1 January 2025, on the last financial year closed before that date, using the categories of Article 51 of the 2008 economic modernisation law.
• The first date applies once the EU authorisation under Article 395 of the VAT Directive has been obtained.
• E-reporting (III, B): the transaction-data reporting obligations follow the same two dates, 1 September 2026 and 1 September 2027, each deferrable by decree to 1 December.

Article 91 also amends VII of Article 289 CGI.

What it means

These two dates held. No decree used the deferral, and on 1 September 2026 every business had to be able to receive e-invoices, while large and mid-sized businesses also started issuing them (fr-einvoicing-generalisation-confirmed-2026). The issuing date for SMEs and micro-enterprises, 1 September 2027, is still ahead.

Because the size category was fixed at 1 January 2025, a business that has grown since then keeps the category it had at that date for these deadlines.