Definition
Your first big client sends three lines: "Please send us your Kbis before we sign." You dig through your registration letters, your URSSAF account, the court registry website. Nothing.
You end up assuming the administration forgot something, when everything is perfectly normal: you have no Kbis because you are not listed in the registre du commerce et des sociétés (the trade and companies register), the RCS.
The RCS is the register of individual traders and of companies.
It is kept by the greffes des tribunaux de commerce, the commercial court registries, registry by registry, under the supervision of the court president.
Declaring a micro-enterprise means creating a Sole proprietorship, and that business is entered in the RCS only if the declared activity is commercial.
A liberal profession never appears there, and neither does a purely craft activity: neither has a Kbis, and that is not a mistake.
Trader, craftsperson, liberal profession: what decides
The split does not follow your preference but the nature of the activity described to the One-stop shop.
Buying to resell, running a shop, serving meals, running a hotel: that is commercial, so the RCS applies.
Making, repairing or transforming with manual skill: that is craft work, and craftspeople used to sit in a separate trades directory.
Advising, developing, writing, training: that is a liberal profession, and none of it opens an RCS entry; regulated professions have a professional body, which is not a trade register.
One person can belong to the first two families at once.
A baker who makes bread and sells it over the counter is both a craftsperson and a trader: that is double immatriculation, dual registration, and it shows up in what you pay every quarter.
A client, a bank or a marketplace asking for "your Kbis" is following a checklist written for companies.
Do not go hunting for one: a Kbis extract is issued only to businesses listed in the RCS, and no procedure will get you one if you are not.
The proof of existence for a non-commercial micro-entrepreneur is the SIRENE status notice, issued free of charge by INSEE, the national statistics office.
Sending it upfront, with one line of explanation, saves a fortnight of emails.
What being listed in the RCS changes every quarter
Being in the RCS attaches you to a chamber of commerce and industry, and that attachment shows on your URSSAF return.
The social contribution rate covers neither the CFP vocational training contribution nor the Chamber of commerce levy: both are added on top.
Take a micro-entrepreneur trader who has been in business for more than a year and collects 20,000 € from goods sold in 2026.
For that same year 2026, social contributions come to 12.3%, so 2,460 €; the trader's vocational training contribution to 0.1%, so 20 €; the chamber of commerce levy on sales of goods to 0.015%, so 3 €.
Total paid to URSSAF over the year: 2,483 €.
In a first year those last two lines are missing, for two separate reasons: the vocational training contribution assumes revenue declared over the previous calendar year, and the chamber levy is only payable from the second year of activity.
Compare with a craftsperson providing services, on the same 20,000 € in 2026, outside Alsace-Moselle: 21.2% in contributions, 0.3% in training contribution and 0.48% in chamber of trades levy, which is 21.98% in total, or 4,396 €.
Where a craftsperson is also listed in the RCS, the chamber of commerce levy comes to 0.007% in 2026.
One rate is copied the wrong way round almost everywhere: article 1600 A of the tax code sets, for 2026, 0.044% on services and 0.015% on sales of goods, not the other way round.
The official page on chamber levies adds two useful limits: below 5,000 € of revenue the levy is not due, and it only starts from the second year of activity.
Which year of revenue that threshold looks at, on the other hand, is not described the same way from one official page to the next: your URSSAF account is what settles it.
RCS, RNE and Kbis: what the word register covers
Three things carry similar names and do different jobs. The one-stop shop is a filing channel: you file a case there, it keeps no register.
The National business register, the RNE, held by INPI and searchable on data.inpi.fr, lists every business whatever its activity.
The RCS is a specialised register: traders and companies, nothing else.
The RCS was not absorbed into the RNE, but it stopped being the reference register for all businesses: the trades directory for craftspeople was.
An article telling you to "register with the RCS" for consulting or development work is mistaking a specialised register for the general one.
Frequently asked questions
How do I know whether I am listed in the RCS?
Search your name or your SIREN number on the commercial court registries website: if no record comes up, your activity is not commercial and you are not listed.
The national business register, on the other hand, will find you in every case, since it lists every business without distinction.
My client insists on a Kbis, what do I answer?
That your activity is not listed in the RCS and that the equivalent document is the avis de situation SIRENE, issued by INSEE.
That notice carries your SIREN, your SIRET, your address and your APE activity code: it covers every check your client was trying to run with a Kbis.
I received a letter asking for payment to appear on an official register. Is it compulsory?
No. The registration formality is filed with the one-stop shop, and no paid entry becomes compulsory afterwards.
These Fraudulent register letters reuse the public data from your registration and imitate the names of official registers so that they look like an administrative notice.
Can I choose to be a trader rather than a craftsperson?
No: the classification follows the activity actually carried out, not a box ticked at declaration time.
If you got it wrong, the fix is an amendment declaration on the same portal, and it changes both the chamber you belong to and the levy rate taken from your revenue.