Definition
On Friday a marketplace transfers €2,700 to you. Your customers paid €3,000: the platform kept €300 in commission on the way through. The URSSAF form expects one figure, and only one.
It is €3,000.
A platform payment is a payment your customer sends you through a third-party service: that service receives the money, takes its cut and passes on the balance.
Stripe, PayPal, SumUp, a marketplace, a ticketing service, a delivery app, the mechanism never changes, and neither does the rule.
Your Turnover is the amount the customer paid, commission not deducted.
The transfer that lands in your account settles a matter between the platform and you; it never replaces the sale price.
What the commission really costs
An illustrator working in an unregulated liberal profession (BNC, non-commercial profits) collects €3,000 of orders over one quarter through a platform that keeps 10%. She declares €3,000.
At the rate applying in 2026 to liberal professions under the general scheme rather than the Cipav, 25.6%, her social contributions come to €768, plus the CFP (contribution à la formation professionnelle, the vocational training levy), 0.2% of turnover for a liberal profession in 2026, which is €6.
She pays €774.
Neither rate covers income tax, which is settled separately, nor the chamber levy owed by traders and craftspeople.
Out of the €2,700 actually transferred she is left with €1,926 before tax: the €300 commission is indeed gone, but it is gone on top of the contributions, not instead of them.
Declaring €2,700 would have produced €696.60 of levies, that is €77.40 less per quarter, which is precisely the size of the fraud, and the reasoning that leads to it always sounds sensible.
Commission is not a deductible expense: in a micro-enterprise no actual cost ever reduces the turnover you declare.
Copying the transfer amount into the declaration is the single most common mistake in this regime, and it shows.
Platforms send the tax authority an annual statement of the sums paid to their sellers, and you receive a copy of it: the gap with your own declarations is spotted at a glance, and the correction covers every year still open to review, not just the quarter that raised the flag.
Two dates, only one that counts
A platform juggles the date the customer pays and the date the balance leaves for your bank, and the gap sometimes straddles 31 December.
The Cash receipt rule picks neither of them as a principle: it picks the day the sum is placed at your disposal, the day you can actually use it.
On most payment services the balance becomes available before it is transferred, and it is that availability which dates the receipt, not your click on the withdrawal button.
Money held back until a condition is met, delivery confirmed or a cooling-off period expired, is by contrast not yours yet.
The price of that rule is one habit: download the platform statement every month, read off the gross sales figure, the commission withheld and the date funds became available, then carry those lines into your Income ledger.
A statement kept as you go beats a reconstruction attempted two years later.
Transfer received, turnover, income
Three amounts circulate and keep passing for one another. The price paid by the customer is the turnover. The transfer received is only a balance after commission.
Income arrives much further down, once contributions and tax are settled.
Every threshold in the regime is measured on the first of the three, and on money received, never on invoices issued.
The micro Turnover threshold, €83,600 in 2026 for services and liberal professions, is therefore measured on gross sales: with a 20% commission you reach it while your bank has only seen €66,880 go by.
Crossing it once does not push you out of the regime: the micro scheme only ends if the threshold is exceeded two years running, and the switch takes effect on 1 January of the year following the second.
The VAT threshold is measured on the same gross figure, but not with the same counter, and that is where it bites: a single overrun is enough.
A service provider becomes liable above €37,500 of previous-year turnover in 2026, reached when the cumulative transfers show only €30,000.
That sub-threshold does not remove the overall €85,000 ceiling, unchanged in 2026, set by article 293 B of the French tax code, which covers total national turnover, service providers included.
Frequently asked questions
Can I deduct the platform's commission?
No, nowhere at all. On the social side nothing is deducted from the turnover you declare.
On the tax side the Standard allowance, 34% for a BNC liberal activity in 2026, stands in for all your costs: commission, software, equipment and travel are deemed covered by it, whether you have a great many of them or almost none.
Can the platform pay my contributions on my behalf?
A scheme allowing platforms to withhold contributions directly has been announced: it is not yet generalised, and URSSAF will set out the details.
Until then, declaring your turnover and paying the contributions remain entirely your responsibility, whichever service collects the money for you.
Must I issue an invoice when the platform already produces one?
Yes, and they are not the same document.
The platform's paperwork invoices its commission or summarises your sales; your own invoice carries your Mandatory invoice details and the price the customer paid.
While you remain under the VAT exemption it states one of the accepted wordings, for instance "TVA non applicable, article 293 B du CGI", the form in force until 31 December 2026, then "TVA non applicable, article L. 233-3 du CIBS" from 1 January 2027.
A customer refunded by the platform: what do I declare?
Only what stays yours for good. If the refund happens before you file, report just the balance actually collected over the period.
If it happens afterwards, correct the declaration already filed from your online account, issue a credit note and keep the platform's document, which will date the operation should you ever be audited.