Definition
You started your business last year, collected your first invoices, and your income tax return has arrived. Nowhere are you asked about your purchases, your subscriptions, your equipment.
One thing only is requested: what you collected. That is not an oversight, that is the regime.
The micro-tax regime, the régime micro-fiscal, is the simplified way your taxable profit is worked out.
The administration takes the turnover actually collected during the calendar year, removes a percentage set in advance, and treats the remainder as your profit.
It does not calculate your tax: it only sets the base on which tax will then be calculated. That profit joins the rest of your household income and is taxed on the progressive scale, exactly like a salary.
There is nothing to apply for: the regime applies automatically as long as your turnover stays within the ceiling for your category.
The only decision that belongs to you is the opposite one, giving up the micro regime for an actual-profit regime.
The calculation, on €60,000
A jewellery maker sells online and collects €60,000 in 2026. Sale of goods: the Standard allowance is 71% in 2026, so €42,600 is removed automatically.
That leaves €17,400 of taxable profit, and it is this figure, not the €60,000, that goes onto the Form 2042-C-PRO.
If the same €60,000 came from creative workshops run for individuals, so from services, the allowance would drop to 50% in 2026: €30,000 of taxable profit, a gap of €12,600 in taxable base for identical earnings.
The rates of 71%, 50% and 34% applicable in 2026 are published on the official micro-regime fact sheet.
Those €17,400 are neither your income nor what you have left. Your Social contributions are calculated on the €60,000 collected, with no allowance at all.
And if that jewellery maker genuinely spent €50,000 on raw materials, the administration still recognises only €42,600: she pays tax on €17,400 having actually earned €10,000.
A business with heavy purchases should seriously look at Switching to the actual regime, where costs are deducted for their exact amount.
How long you stay in it
The regime holds as long as you stay within the Turnover threshold for your category: €203,100 for the sale of goods and hotel accommodation, €83,600 for services and liberal activities, for the years 2026 to 2028.
The word hotel matters: a classified gîte, a bed and breakfast or a residential furnished rental do not come under the €203,100 ceiling but under the €83,600 one.
A BIC service provider and a BNC liberal professional therefore share the same ceiling; what really separates them is the allowance, 50% against 34% in 2026.
A single overrun costs you nothing: the threshold has to be exceeded two years in a row, in N-1 and in N-2. A trader at €220,000 in 2025 but €160,000 in 2024 stays in the micro regime in 2026.
When both years are over, the move to the actual-profit regime takes effect on 1 January of the following year, and it drags the micro-social scheme with it.
The auto-entrepreneur status is lost. The logic of paying nothing when nothing comes in gives way to contributions calculated on real income, with an annual adjustment.
Two points are reassuring. In the year you set up and the year after, the micro regime applies automatically whatever your turnover, since there is no reference year to compare.
And leaving is never permanent: in the year turnover falls back under the threshold the actual-profit regime still applies, but the micro regime returns automatically the year after.
What the micro-tax regime does not settle
It covers income tax, and income tax alone.
The Flat-rate income tax is its optional variant.
Instead of the progressive scale, tax is paid as a percentage of turnover with each declaration, 1%, 1.7% or 2.2% depending on activity in 2026.
The option requires that your 2024 revenu fiscal de référence, your reference tax income, does not exceed €29,315 per household share.
That percentage covers income tax alone: social contributions are added on top, at the usual rate.
Even then, turnover must still be reported on the 2042-C-PRO: the option does not remove the filing duty.
The micro-tax regime says nothing about VAT. The two sets of thresholds are unrelated, and the gap is brutal for a service provider: the VAT exemption scheme stops in 2026 at €37,500 of turnover collected in the previous year, while the micro ceiling runs to €83,600.
A freelancer who collected €45,000 in 2025 remains fully a micro-entrepreneur in 2026 and still has to charge VAT to clients.
And that €37,500 is a sub-threshold, not a stand-alone one: in 2026 you must also stay under €85,000 of total turnover, all activities combined.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to apply for the micro-tax regime?
No, there is no form and no box to tick: it applies automatically from the day you set up, as long as turnover stays within the ceilings.
The only available option is the reverse one, leaving the micro regime for an actual-profit regime, and that choice commits you for the full year.
Are the micro-tax regime and the micro-social scheme the same thing?
No, they are two separate strands, one for tax and one for contributions.
They are linked in one direction only: losing the micro-tax regime also costs you the micro-social scheme and the auto-entrepreneur status, whereas becoming liable for VAT changes neither of them.
I rent out a non-classified tourist furnished property: am I still in the micro regime?
For tax purposes yes, but in a reduced form: the French tax code keeps a micro-BIC regime up to €15,000 of receipts, with a 30% allowance for 2025 income declared in 2026.
For social security purposes no, since from 1 January 2026 businesses whose main activity this is fall under the actual-profit regime for the self-employed.