Definition
A developer based in Lyon lands his first European project: €2,000 for an agency in Brussels.
He asks for his intra-EU VAT number, gets it within days, sends an invoice with no VAT on it, gets paid, and considers the matter closed.
One step is missing, and nobody will come and ask for it: the following month, a declaration is waiting for him, not on impots.gouv.fr, but on the French customs portal.
The déclaration européenne de services (European services declaration), known as the DES, is the monthly recap of the services you have invoiced to business clients established in another member state of the European Union.
For each client you enter their EU VAT number and the amount invoiced during the month.
It is filed online through the DES service run by the French customs administration, which gives it two jobs: producing France's foreign trade statistics, and checking how services are taxed for VAT.
That second job explains the whole mechanism. When you invoice a European business, VAT is not due in France: the client declares it at home, through the VAT reverse charge.
Your DES is what allows their administration to match what they claim to have bought against what you declare to have sold.
It therefore pays no tax at all: it is a recapitulative statement, not a VAT return.
Who files it, and above what amount
There is no threshold.
In 2026, services exchanged with a business in another member state require an intra-EU VAT number from the very first euro, and the DES follows exactly the same line: a €300 invoice triggers it just as much as a €30,000 one.
The VAT exemption scheme changes nothing here, and this is the point most content leaves out.
The tax administration states that a micro-entrepreneur under the exemption has "no VAT return to file, as a general rule": that quiet reservation, on the DGFiP fact sheet covering micro-entrepreneur obligations, carries precisely the European transactions, and the DES is one of them.
The rhythm is monthly and it follows your activity: one declaration for every month in which you invoiced a European service, none for the months in which you invoiced none.
It is filed at the start of the following month, within the deadline that customs publishes on its calendar of recapitulative statements.
Three Belgian invoices in a year: what actually gets filed
Back to our developer, running a liberal activity taxed under the BNC (non-commercial profits).
In 2026 he works for the same Brussels agency three times, in March, June and October, for €2,000 each time. Here is what his year produces in formalities.
| Month in 2026 | What he invoices the Belgian agency | What he files afterwards |
|---|---|---|
| March | €2,000, no VAT, reverse charge | One DES on the customs portal |
| April and May | No European invoice | No DES |
| June | €2,000, no VAT, reverse charge | One DES on the customs portal |
| October | €2,000, no VAT, reverse charge | One DES on the customs portal |
Three declarations in the year, one per invoiced month, and no VAT return whatsoever.
On the social side nothing moves either: those €6,000 go into his Turnover declaration like the rest of his activity and bear the BNC rate under the general scheme, that is 25.6% in 2026, which comes to €1,536 of contributions for those three projects.
That rate covers neither the vocational training contribution nor income tax: both come on top, exactly as they would on a French invoice.
The DES itself weighs nothing in that calculation: it is a tax and statistical formality, it creates no contribution, no tax and no extra line to pay.
The trap fits into a sentence everyone repeats: "under the exemption I have no VAT return to file, so I have nothing to send".
That is wrong from the first European invoice onwards, and two things explain how common the omission is.
First, the DES does not live where you are looking: it is not filed in your professional account on impots.gouv.fr, but on the customs portal, with a separate account to create.
Second, no letter, no reminder and no form field flags the obligation: it is born from your invoice, silently.
The cross-check, however, will happen at your client's end, where their reverse charge is set against what you declared.
What it is not
Three confusions come back again and again, and each one sends the reader to the wrong form.
The first sets the DES against the VAT return: the latter settles a tax and leads to a payment, the former merely recaps amounts. Filing a DES makes you liable for nothing.
The second concerns the direction of the transaction. The DES covers the services you sell to a European business, never the ones you buy.
A software subscription taken out with an Irish publisher, an advertising campaign paid to a European platform: those purchases do not belong in your DES, but they do make you liable in France for the reverse-charged VAT on them, which calls for a separate return, exemption or not.
That is the other half of the DGFiP's "as a general rule".
The third separates services from goods.
The DES only knows about services; goods dispatched to another member state fall under a different recapitulative statement and a different statistical survey, also filed with customs, with rules of their own.
Selling goods online to European consumers does not belong there either: that case is triggered above €10,000 of distance sales per year in 2026, and is reported through the VAT one-stop shop, which is not the INPI one-stop shop where you registered your business.
A micro-entrepreneur selling both consulting and physical items can therefore fall under several systems at once, as the Invoicing abroad entry sets out.
Frequently asked questions
Is a DES really needed for a €300 invoice to a German client?
Yes. Services supplied to a business in another member state fall under the system from the very first euro, with no threshold and no grace period.
The size of the project makes no difference to the obligation: a small one-off invoice calls for the same declaration as an annual contract, only the amount reported differs.
Does filing a DES end the French VAT exemption?
No, the two matters are independent.
What ends the exemption are the thresholds in article 293 B of the CGI (the French tax code): in 2026, total national turnover of €85,000 for the previous year and €93,500 for the year in progress, with a sub-threshold of €37,500 and €41,250 for services.
Your French invoices keep carrying the Article 293 B notice.
Does a Swiss, British or American client belong in the DES?
No, the system only covers member states of the European Union.
Since the United Kingdom left the Union on 31 January 2020, a service invoiced to London no longer appears there, and a Swiss or American client never did.
Those clients fall under other place-of-supply rules, to be checked country by country with your service des impôts des entreprises (your local business tax office) before the invoice goes out.
Should an empty DES be filed for months with no European client?
No. The obligation arises from the services invoiced during the month in question: a month with no European invoice calls for no declaration at all.
The customs online service also lets you view, amend and save your declarations, which makes it possible to put right a month that was missed. This page is up to date as of 5 September 2026.