Definition
Your last client paid in March, you signed an employment contract in April, and nothing has come in since.
In November a business property tax notice is waiting for you in your professional account on impots.gouv.fr, with no letter to warn you, and URSSAF is separately chasing declarations you never filed.
Nothing switched itself off: the business still exists, because nobody was ever told it had stopped.
Deregistration, radiation in French, is the formality that legally closes your business.
It is filed through the One-stop shop for business formalities as a déclaration de cessation d'activité (closure declaration), free of charge, with a closure date that you choose yourself.
The portal then passes it on to INSEE, the statistics office, which closes your SIRET number, to URSSAF, which closes your contributor account, and to the tax administration.
Until that declaration is filed, every obligation keeps running, nil turnover declarations included.
What still has to be paid once the door is shut
Deregistration stops the clock, it does not erase what has already run.
Take a bicycle repairer trading since 2024, under BIC (bénéfices industriels et commerciaux, commercial and craft profits) services and registered as an artisan outside Alsace-Moselle, who closes on 30 June 2026 after collecting €9,000 since 1 January.
The turnover he declares for 2026 therefore comes to €9,000, spread across the first-half deadlines up to his final Turnover declaration.
On that amount the social contribution rate is 21.2% in 2026, to which the same year adds 0.3% of CFP (contribution à la formation professionnelle, the vocational training levy) and 0.48% of chamber of trades levy, so 21.98% in all: €1,978.20 to pay.
In the spring of 2027, the same €9,000 go onto the income tax return, where the 50% flat-rate allowance applying in 2026 to BIC services brings the taxable income down to €4,500.
The CFE, the local business property tax, follows a rule worth remembering: where the business ceases, no CFE is due for the remaining months of the year, but the reduction is not automatic: it has to be claimed from your local business tax office.
The asymmetry catches people out: if you hand the business over to someone else instead of stopping it, the previous operator stays liable for the whole year.
The balance of the 2026 CFE, for its part, is payable on 15 December.
Do not count on silence to close anything.
A micro-enterprise that stops declaring is not a closed micro-enterprise: the deadlines keep coming, every missing declaration carries a penalty, and the CFE remains due until the closure is registered.
One more reflex before deregistering: get paid.
What counts is the Cash receipt and not the invoice date, and money arriving after the closure is still turnover of the business, to be reported on the final declaration.
Closing down, in the right order
The order of the steps matters more than people expect, because each one closes over the previous one.
Collect what you are owed first, chase the outstanding invoices and wait for the money to land in the account. Then file the closure on the formalities portal, choosing your date.
File your final turnover declaration at the usual deadline, and pay what it calls for.
Finally, claim the CFE reduction from your local business tax office through your professional account, and keep written proof of that request.
Two points are regularly missed.
A closure can be temporary: a déclaration de cessation temporaire d'activité (temporary closure declaration) is filed through the same one-stop shop, for a limited period set by regulation, and it leaves the business alive, with its reporting duties intact.
And closing does not cut off your health cover overnight: continued entitlement is provided for while your affiliation moves to your new situation, employed or otherwise.
Tell your insurer too, if you had taken out professional liability cover, and tell your clients, since nobody else will announce your closure to them.
Deregistering, stopping work, leaving the micro scheme
Three situations that get mixed up, with neither the same cause nor the same consequence. Stopping invoicing is a fact, with no legal effect whatsoever.
Deregistration is a decision, and it removes the business.
Switching to the actual regime closes nothing at all: when turnover exceeds the ceiling two years running, it is the tax and social regime that changes on 1 January of the following year, while the business carries on.
Leaving the micro scheme is not closing your business, and it is not final: if turnover drops back below the threshold, the micro scheme applies again as of right the year after.
One last thing outlives the closure: your paperwork.
Invoices, income ledger and bank statements are kept for the periods set for Document retention, because an audit can still cover years when the business was alive.
Closing is not throwing away.
Frequently asked questions
How much does deregistration cost?
Nothing at all. The closure declaration is filed free of charge on the official formalities portal, at formalites.entreprises.gouv.fr.
Sites offering to handle it for a fee are private providers, and letters demanding compulsory deregistration charges are a well-known scam.
A client pays me after the closure date, what do I do with it?
Declare it. The date that counts is the date the money is received, and a payment for past work is still turnover, even when it lands after the business has closed.
It goes on your final declaration, your account staying open long enough to settle it. Hence the order to follow: collect first, deregister afterwards.
Can I open a micro-enterprise again later?
Yes, nothing prevents it, with a fresh start-of-activity declaration on the same portal.
ACRE, however, cannot simply be claimed again: you must not have benefited from it during the previous three years, that period counting from the end of the previous benefit, and restarting an activity involves a waiting period of one calendar year.
It is also worth less than it used to be: for a business created on or after 1 July 2026, the exemption has dropped to 25% of contributions, against 50% for earlier start-ups.
Do I still file an income tax return the following year?
Yes.
The turnover collected up to the closure date goes on the déclaration 2042-C-PRO (the self-employed income form) in the spring of the following year, alongside the rest of the household income.
Deregistration closes the business, it does not excuse you from declaring what the business earned before it closed.