Definition
A two-day assignment in Lyon. You pay for the train and the hotel yourself, €600, you add them to your invoice on a separate line marked "expenses", and the client settles the lot.
You earned nothing on that €600: it left your account before coming back. URSSAF, however, will read it as turnover, and you will pay social contributions on a train ticket.
Débours (disbursements) are the only mechanism that avoids this.
A débours is a sum you advance in the name of and on behalf of your client, not for your own business: you are buying nothing, you are paying in their place.
The reimbursement they send you is therefore not the price of a service, and so not Turnover: no contributions, no tax, no threshold applies to it.
This comes from article 267 of the French tax code, and everything hangs on the conditions attached to it.
Four conditions, and the one that trips people up
Tax doctrine lists them in bulletin BOI-TVA-BASE-10-10-30. First, you need a prior and explicit mandate from the client, written into the devis (quotation) or the contract.
Second, the expense must be incurred in their name: the Invoice from the carrier, the hotel or the supplier carries the client's name, not yours.
Third, you must account for it to the euro, with no margin and no rounding. And fourth, the sum must stay separately traceable, in what accountants call a pass-through account.
That last condition is the one that trips people up in a micro-enterprise, where there is no full bookkeeping, only a livre des recettes (Income ledger).
A sum received as a débours is not entered there as revenue: it is tracked in a separate table, with the supporting document made out in the client's name kept alongside.
In an audit, the burden of proof is on you, never on the administration to prove the opposite.
Two days in Lyon, invoice in hand
A freelance trainer in an unregulated liberal profession (BNC, non-commercial profits) invoices €4,000 in fees and rebills €600 of train and hotel costs paid with her own card.
The client transfers €4,600 in March 2026, and that is the figure that goes on her declaration.
At the 25.6% rate applying in 2026 to unregulated liberal professions under the régime général, outside the Cipav fund, Social contributions come to €1,177.60.
On top comes the CFP, the contribution à la formation professionnelle or vocational training levy.
It is due because turnover was declared in the previous calendar year, at 0.2% of turnover for a liberal profession in 2026, which is €9.20.
Total paid: €1,186.80.
That €600 of expenses therefore costs her €153.60 in contributions and €1.20 in training levy, so €154.80 taken straight out of her fees.
And it does not stop there: after the flat-rate allowance of the micro-BNC scheme, 34% in 2026, the same €600 adds €396 to her taxable income.
As a genuine débours, with tickets booked in the client's name and a signed mandate, she would have declared €4,000 and paid €1,024 in contributions plus €8 of training levy, so €1,032.
Same assignment, same money kept, a gap of €154.80.
What decides is not the line on your invoice, it is the name on the supplier's. Isolating costs under a heading that says "débours" changes nothing if the ticket was bought in your name: the sum stays turnover.
It then counts towards the Turnover threshold, €83,600 for a service provider in 2026, and above all towards the VAT threshold, €37,500 in 2026 on the previous year's turnover and €41,250 on the current year's.
That is not a standalone threshold either: you must also stay under €85,000 of total turnover in 2026, all activities combined.
A freelancer who rebills a lot of travel can become liable for VAT without having earned a single euro more.
Débours, rebilled costs and travel expenses
Three expressions circulate for what looks like one situation, and only one of them leaves your turnover. A débours requires a mandate and an invoice in the client's name.
Rebilled costs are your own purchases resold to the client: equipment, software licences, tolls, meals. A reimbursement of expenses is turnover like any other, whatever the line is called.
Travel expenses follow exactly the same rule: you either build them into your price or you rebill them, but either way they go through the till.
And since turnover is counted on receipt, it is the day the client's transfer lands that dates them, not the day you booked.
Which leaves the most expensive confusion of all: believing that a business cost can be deducted.
The micro regime deducts no costs at all, the flat-rate allowance is meant to cover them, and it applies in exactly the same way whether your expenses are nil or enormous.
Under the VAT basic exemption you cannot reclaim VAT on those purchases either: a ticket bought for €600 is rebilled at €600, tax included, and you pay contributions on the whole of it.
Frequently asked questions
Must a débours appear on the invoice?
Yes, but in a section separate from the price of the service, for its exact amount, with no VAT added and the original supporting document attached.
It is not added to the base on which contributions are calculated: it is presented as an advance being repaid.
Most invoicing software provides a dedicated line that sits outside the taxable total.
Can you take a margin on a débours?
No, and that is precisely what separates it from a service.
The moment one euro more than the actual expense stays with you, the exact accounting disappears and the qualification falls away: the whole sum becomes turnover again, costs included.
If you want to be paid for the time spent organising a trip, invoice that time openly as a separate service.
How do you get an invoice made out in the client's name?
With most suppliers and most booking platforms, the name that appears on the invoice is chosen at the moment of ordering, provided you think of it before paying.
When that is impossible, the expense will not be a débours: it is better to let the client pay the supplier directly, or to build the cost openly into your selling price.
Is an expense claim enough to keep these sums out of turnover?
No. The expense claim is an employee practice, reimbursed by an employer, and it carries no weight between two independent businesses.
A client who reimburses you against an expense claim is paying you business income: it belongs in your turnover, unless the four conditions of a débours happen to be met as well.