Definition
You filled in a form at the One-stop shop, received a SIRET number a few days later, and you have been saying "I started a micro-enterprise" ever since.
In law, that is not quite what happened: you created an entreprise individuelle (sole proprietorship).
It is the only legal form that lets one person trade without setting up a company, and it is the one printed on your registration notice.
The Micro-enterprise is not a legal form at all: it is a tax and social-security regime bolted on top, with a flat-rate allowance, contributions calculated as a percentage of revenue and very light bookkeeping.
The sole proprietorship is the vehicle, the micro regime is the setting. Changing the setting does not change the vehicle, and that is the whole point of the distinction.
No separate legal person: what it changes
A company exists separately from its founder: it has capital, its own assets, its own accounts. A sole proprietorship does not. There is only one person, you, wearing two hats.
Three very concrete consequences follow from that.
First, tax.
Your profit is taxed in your own name, on your household income tax return. A freelance designer who collects 30,000 € during the 2026 calendar year falls under BNC income, the bénéfices non commerciaux category covering liberal activities.
She applies the 34% Standard allowance in force in 2026: 30,000 minus 10,200 leaves 19,800 € of profit added to the household's income.
That profit is taxed even if she never moved a euro out of the account.
The business pays no tax in her place, because it does not exist separately from her.
Second, partners. No capital, no shares, no co-owner: bringing someone else in means creating a company.
Third, assets.
Since the 2022 reform, the assets used for the business form Professional assets kept separate from your personal ones, and business creditors can in principle seize only those.
That separation is not a safe, and its holes are precisely the ones you are most likely to meet.
The tax office can seize both sets of assets for income tax, and URSSAF can do the same for your social contributions, as the official notice spells out: those two creditors, the ones every entrepreneur faces, are not stopped by the boundary.
A bank can also ask you to waive the protection for one specific commitment, and it gives way in cases of fraud or serious breach of tax and social-security obligations.
A waiver signed without reading it puts your home back on the table.
Sole proprietorship and micro-enterprise: clearing up the confusion
The difference shows on the day the regime stops. The Turnover threshold for services and liberal activities is 83,600 € for the years 2026 to 2028.
Many people read that as: one euro above and everything ends.
The micro regime stops only if the threshold is exceeded in two consecutive calendar years, and the switch takes effect on 1 January of the following year.
Our designer collects 90,000 € in 2026, then 95,000 € in 2027: two overruns in a row, hence Switching to the actual regime on 1 January 2028.
Had she come back down to 70,000 € in 2027, nothing would have happened.
What counts is the revenue, net of VAT, actually received during the calendar year, not invoices issued: a December invoice paid in January falls into the next year.
And on the day she leaves the regime, the sole proprietorship carries on: same SIREN, same SIRET, same clients. What disappears is the micro regime, and with it the auto-entrepreneur status.
Tax is then charged on the real profit, with actual expenses deducted instead of the flat-rate allowance, and contributions are calculated on that real income, with a yearly adjustment. The reassuring micro rule, nothing collected means nothing to pay, stops there.
If revenue drops back below the threshold, the micro regime applies again as of right the following year, as the official fact sheet confirms: leaving it is never final.
One more boundary not to be mixed up with the first: the VAT threshold.
In 2026, a service provider leaves the VAT exemption at 37,500 € of revenue, and in any case at 85,000 € across all activities, well before the micro ceiling.
Charging VAT does not cost you your micro-entrepreneur status: the two sets of thresholds are unrelated.
Frequently asked questions
Does the EIRL still exist?
No, it can no longer be created since the 2022 reform.
It used to ring-fence a dedicated pool of business assets, something the law now does automatically for every sole proprietorship, with no filing and no yearly formality to repeat.
Can one person run two entreprises individuelles?
No: an individual holds only one, under a single SIREN number.
Several activities live inside the same business, with one of them declared as the main activity, each keeping its own allowance and contribution rules.
Do you need share capital to set one up?
No capital is required, there are no articles of association to draft and no legal notice to publish.
That is what makes registration almost free, and also why the business cannot be sold the way company shares are: what changes hands is the goodwill or the client base.