Definition
You register your freelance developer activity at the guichet unique (the one-stop shop for business formalities), and a screen asks you to pick a category.
You tick "activité libérale", without thinking about it twice.
Six weeks later your first payment schedule arrives, and the rate on it is not the one the article you read the day before promised. You have just met the BNC.
Bénéfices non commerciaux, or BNC, non-commercial profits, is a tax category of the French tax code.
It is not a legal status, not a company form, not a pension fund: it is the box the administration files your earnings in. It covers liberal professions, regulated or not, and more broadly whatever is neither trade, nor craft, nor farming.
The commercial and craft side of the fence is called BIC.
Under the micro scheme this box has a name of its own, micro-BNC, and it lives in article 102 ter of the tax code. It settles four figures in one go.
Four figures, worked through on €30,000
For a non-regulated liberal activity attached to the general scheme, four figures set the frame in 2026. The Turnover threshold is €83,600 excluding tax for the years 2026 to 2028.
The Standard allowance is 34%. Social contributions are due at an overall rate of 25.6%. And the Flat-rate income tax option costs 2.2% of the turnover you collect.
A consultant collecting €30,000 in 2026 therefore pays €7,680 in contributions, plus €60 of vocational training contribution, set at 0.2% of turnover for liberal professions and payable only if turnover was declared in the previous calendar year.
On the tax side, the allowance removes €10,200, and €19,800 of profit joins the household's other income on the scale.
The 25.6% rate covers neither that training contribution nor income tax: reading it as the total deduction means under-budgeting every single quarter.
A rate that moved three times in three years
The BNC rate has not always been 25.6%. A phase-in raised it step by step, and a great many pages online stopped at one of those steps.
| Period | Overall BNC contribution rate |
|---|---|
| Until 30 June 2024 | 21.1% |
| 1 July to 31 December 2024 | 23.1% |
| Year 2025 | 24.6% |
| Since 1 January 2026 | 25.6% |
The 2026 step is set by décret n° 2025-943 of 8 September 2025, which URSSAF relays in its news item on contribution rates.
One detail is read backwards almost everywhere: for BNC, the share of the flat-rate contribution allocated to the basic pension falls in 2026, from 47.60% to 46.40%. It is the euros paid in that rise, because the overall rate moves from 24.6% to 25.6%, not the percentage set aside for the pension.
Two wrong rates are still doing the rounds.
The first is 21.1%: correct until 30 June 2024, and the "12.3 / 21.2 / 21.1%" trio copied from site to site now understates a BNC contributor's bill by 4.5 points.
The second is 26.1%: décret n° 2024-484 of 30 May 2024 did announce it for 2026, but it was replaced before it ever took effect.
An accurate figure published without its date always ends up becoming a wrong one.
BNC, BIC and Cipav: what actually separates them
The same €30,000 collected as BIC services would carry, in 2026, 21.2% of contributions, so €6,360, and a 50% allowance, so €15,000 of taxable profit.
The ceiling draws no line at all between the two: BIC services and BNC activities share the same €83,600. What really separates them is the allowance, 34% against 50%, and the contribution rate.
Third word, third confusion: CIPAV is not a tax category but a pension fund.
An architect or a ski instructor, regulated liberal professions attached to Cipav, contributes at 23.2% in 2026 while still declaring BNC.
Quoting 25.6% to every liberal professional overstates that bill by 2.4 points.
One last border, the most expensive of all: your €83,600 ceiling has nothing to do with the VAT threshold.
In 2026 a service provider leaves the VAT exemption scheme far earlier, at €37,500 of turnover in the previous year or €41,250 during the current one.
Frequently asked questions
How do I know whether my activity is BNC or BIC?
What you sell decides, not the name you give your job. Buying to resell, manufacturing, transforming, repairing: those are BIC.
Selling intellectual, artistic or advisory work that you carry out yourself is in principle BNC.
If you are unsure, your service des impôts des entreprises (local business tax office) will confirm the category in writing.
Will I pay 25.6% from my very first year?
Not if you are granted the Acre (start-up contribution relief).
For an activity created up to 30 June 2026 the BNC rate drops to 12.8%; for one created from 1 July 2026 it stands at 19.2%, the relief having dropped from half the full rate to a quarter of it.
The benefit runs until the end of the third calendar quarter following the one in which you started, and the vocational training contribution stays payable throughout.
Since 2026 the relief is no longer automatic: you must apply to URSSAF within 60 days of the start date declared at the guichet unique, and once that deadline passes it is lost.
Can I take the flat-rate tax option at 1.7%?
No: in 2026 the 1.7% rate applies to BIC services. For BNC the flat-rate income tax payment is 2.2% of the turnover you collect.
The option also requires that you stay within the micro scheme, and a revenu fiscal de référence (reference tax income) per household share of no more than €29,315 for a 2026 application, the 2024 figure shown on your 2025 tax notice.