Micro-entrepreneur in France: from turnover to net income

Your client pays an invoice; that is not your salary. Between the turnover you receive and what you are left to live on, there are three levels: social contributions, income tax, and your costs. This guide goes down them one by one, with the rules of France's micro-entreprise scheme and amounts worked out by the site's engine, the one behind URSSAF's own simulator.

Contributions depend on your activity

Under the micro-entreprise scheme, social contributions are a fixed percentage of the turnover received, declared monthly or quarterly to URSSAF. They fund health cover, pension, disability and death cover, family benefits, the CSG-CRDS levies and vocational training. The rate depends on the type of activity. For €40,000 of yearly turnover, 2026 rates:

Calculation: modele-social publicodes engine, sole trader under the micro-social scheme, no Acre relief, mainland France. Overall rate: social contributions, the vocational training levy and, for traders and craftspeople, the chamber of commerce or trades fee. Regulated professions (with their own pension fund) have a different rate.

Selling goods carries the lowest rate because turnover includes the cost of the goods bought; intellectual services carry the highest because almost all of the turnover is margin. A month with no takings costs nothing: no turnover, no contributions.

Income tax: flat allowance or flat-rate option

The micro scheme does not deduct your actual costs. Instead, the tax office takes a flat allowance off your turnover before applying the income tax scale together with the rest of your household's income. The allowance also follows the type of activity:

The flat-rate option (versement libératoire) replaces that tax with a percentage of turnover, paid along with contributions. It is reserved for households whose reference taxable income from two years earlier stays below a ceiling of €29,579 per tax share, the upper limit of the scale's second band, and you opt in before the end of September for the following year or, in the year you set up, until the end of the third month after. In our professional-services example, for a single person: €1,468 of income tax a year on the scale, €880 with the flat-rate option. The more shares or dependants your household has, the more the scale wins.

Acre relief in your first year

Acre reduces contributions at the start if you are in one of the qualifying situations: a jobseeker receiving benefit or registered for several months, on RSA or ASS income support, some young people, among others, provided you have not had it in recent years. It is not automatic: you apply to URSSAF within 60 days of starting your activity. For an activity started since 1 July 2026, you pay 75% of the normal contributions until the end of the third calendar quarter after you start. In our example, the overall rate falls from 25.8% to 19.4% of turnover: over a full year, €7,760 of contributions instead of €10,316, a saving to scale down to the period actually covered.

The ceilings to watch

The scheme only applies below a yearly turnover ceiling: €203,100 for selling goods, catering and accommodation, €83,600 for services and professional activities. Going over once changes nothing; two years running above it, and you move to the standard regime the year after. VAT follows its own, lower exemption thresholds: above them you charge VAT, which changes nothing for a business client who recovers it but makes you dearer for private customers.

The oversights that cost money

• Declaring what you invoiced instead of what you received. Contributions are due on what you actually received during the month or quarter, not on the invoices you sent. Keep your receipts book up to date: it is the reference.
• Forgetting the CFE. The cotisation foncière des entreprises is a local business tax that micro-entrepreneurs also pay, even when working from home. There is nothing to pay in the year you set up, the base is cut by half the following year, and very small turnovers are exempt: the first full bill often arrives when you have stopped expecting it.
• Counting on deductible costs. Equipment, travel, software: nothing is deductible, the flat allowance is meant to cover it all. If your costs are well above that allowance, the standard regime or a company becomes more attractive.
• Assuming protection follows. Your pension and sick-pay rights depend on the turnover you declare: a small year earns few rights, and there is no unemployment insurance. A cash buffer replaces the safety net employment provides.

What you really keep

The full path for €40,000 of professional-services turnover, a single person with no other income, with €3,000 of costs a year (computer, software, insurance):

Out of €40,000 received, 63% is left to live on, and nothing has yet been put aside for holidays, a period without clients or pension savings. To see which salary this income matches and which day rate to aim for, the guide freelance or employee makes the full comparison, and the freelance day rate vs salary tool redoes it with your figures.

Your own calculation, with your activity, Acre relief, the flat-rate option and your household, is done in the micro-entrepreneur simulator. And if you are still weighing it against a salaried job, see what your profile is worth on the market with What am I worth?.