Definition
One Sunday evening, three screens, a scanned ID and a sworn statement: your business is registered. Then nothing. No letter, no number, nobody to talk to.
A week goes by, you look for someone to chase, and you find no one, because the site where you filled in the form is not an administration.
The guichet unique des formalités des entreprises (the single portal for business formalities) is the channel through which every registration, amendment and closure declaration now travels, whatever the legal form.
It is run by INPI, the French industrial property office, and it replaced the former centres de formalités des entreprises, which used to be split between chambers of commerce, URSSAF and court registries.
It decides nothing and registers nobody: it collects your file and forwards it to each competent body. By declaring a micro-enterprise you are in fact creating a Sole proprietorship: the micro scheme then sits on top of it.
What the form actually decides
Two fields weigh more than all the others.
The first is the description of your activity: it leads to a tax and social category, and INSEE, the national statistics office, derives your APE code from it.
A freelance developer falls under BNC, the non-commercial profits category, under the general scheme, and therefore a contribution rate of 25.6% in 2026.
A bike repairer falls under BIC services, the industrial and commercial profits category, at 21.2% the same year.
An architect, a regulated liberal profession, goes to Cipav and its 23.2% in 2026.
On 3,000 € collected in a quarter, at the full rate, the developer pays 768 € in contributions and the repairer 636 €, so a 132 € gap for the same hours worked.
None of these three rates covers the CFP vocational training contribution, the chamber levy or income tax, and the category is not a choice: the real nature of the activity dictates it.
The second field is the start date of the activity. That date, not the day you fill in the form, is the starting point of most of the deadlines that follow.
ACRE lowers those contribution rates for the first quarters, but it is never granted automatically: the claim must be filed with URSSAF within 60 days of that declared date, and it has been compulsory for every self-employed worker since 1 January 2026.
The name of the portal suggests everything is done in one go. That is wrong on the most expensive point: nothing in the form triggers ACRE.
Without a claim filed with URSSAF within 60 days of the declared start date, the relief is lost, with no way of claiming it back.
And do not wait for your affiliation certificate, which arrives several weeks later: the clock runs from the declared date, not from the day post finally reaches you.
What it does not do for you
The CFE, the local business property tax, follows a separate route: the initial return n° 1447-C-SD is filed with the business tax office by 31 December of the year of creation, and the one-stop shop does not forward it.
No CFE is due for that year of creation.
But the year of creation in CFE terms is the first year in which you generate turnover, not the year you registered: declaring your activity in October 2026 and invoicing for the first time in January 2027 shifts the exemption to 2027 and the first bill to 2028.
The DGFiP answer for micro-entrepreneurs confirms that shift.
The portal does not send you an invoice either.
Letters demanding payment for a supposedly compulsory entry in some register, often received within days of registration, are Fraudulent register letters: they feed on public data and commit you to nothing.
One-stop shop, RNE and INSEE: who does what
The most common mix-up is about the word register.
The one-stop shop is a filing channel; the National business register, the RNE, also held by INPI, is the database your business is entered into once the formality is validated, searchable on data.inpi.fr.
INSEE, for its part, issues your SIREN number and your SIRET number. You file in one place, you are registered in a second, and you are identified by a third.
A second trap sits in the vocabulary itself: the former centres de formalités des entreprises were abbreviated CFE, exactly like the cotisation foncière des entreprises, the business property tax.
The two have nothing in common, and plenty of articles still online point you to "your competent CFE" for a step that now goes through formalites.entreprises.gouv.fr.
Frequently asked questions
Can I still register my activity with URSSAF or a chamber of commerce?
No. Registration, amendment and closure all go through the one-stop shop, whatever the legal form of the business.
The former centres de formalités des entreprises no longer take files: the various bodies receive yours by transmission, without you having to contact each of them separately.
Does the one-stop shop issue my SIRET number?
No, and that explains the wait that follows your declaration.
The portal forwards your file, then INSEE issues the SIREN and SIRET numbers, URSSAF opens your contributor account and the tax administration records your business.
Each body moves at its own pace, which is why the letters arrive at different moments.
Did I claim ACRE by filling in the registration form?
No. The claim is filed separately with URSSAF, within 60 days of the start date declared to the one-stop shop, and it has been compulsory for every self-employed worker since 1 January 2026.
Without that step, the full contribution rate applies from your very first declaration.
I described my activity wrongly, how do I correct it?
Through an amendment declaration filed on the same portal.
That is the normal route for changing an activity, an address or a date, and it is forwarded to the same bodies as the original filing.
The correction is not requested from URSSAF or the tax office, as both will send you back to the one-stop shop.
Only the APE code follows another route: if it does not match the activity already declared, INSEE is the one that fixes it.