Definition
A few weeks after you start trading, a message from URSSAF asks for your turnover.
On screen sits a form with two or three boxes, each carrying an activity label, and no explanation of what belongs in them: the amount invoiced, the amount that reached your account, or the amount before the commission withheld by the platform that pays you.
The turnover declaration, déclaration de chiffre d'affaires, is the form on which you tell URSSAF, at every monthly or quarterly deadline, what you collected during the period.
It is the base of the calculation: the figure you enter is multiplied by the rate for your activity, and the result becomes your Social contributions.
No expense is deducted, no receipt is attached.
Your first deadline does not fall at the end of your first period, URSSAF pushes it back and folds your opening months into it: the exact date appears in your compte auto-entrepreneur (your URSSAF online account), along with every deadline that follows.
What goes in the boxes
The split matters as much as the total, because each box carries its own rate.
In 2026, the sale of goods is at 12.3% and services taxed as BIC, the industrial and commercial profits category, at 21.2%.
Other services taxed as BNC, the non-commercial profits category, under the general scheme, are at 25.6%.
Regulated liberal professions affiliated to Cipav are at 23.2%, and classified tourist furnished rentals at 6%, still in their LMTC box.
Three lines changed on 1 January 2026. The BNC rate was raised from 24.6% to 25.6%.
Chambres d'hôtes, the French bed and breakfasts, are no longer declared as sales but as BIC services, at 21.2%.
And non-classified tourist furnished rentals have no box left at all, the activity having dropped out of the auto-entrepreneur scheme into the standard self-employed regime.
That exit is a social-security one: on the tax side a micro-BIC regime stays open to them up to 15,000 € in 2026.
What stays out of the box are Disbursements, the costs you advance in your client's name and that they repay to the cent.
The commission a payment platform withholds before transferring your money, by contrast, is still turnover: what you declare is the sum the client paid, not the sum that landed in your account.
A period with no income is declared as zero, it is not skipped.
You declare what you collected, not what you invoiced. An invoice issued in December and paid in January belongs to the following year, and an invoice never paid is never declared.
This is the Cash receipt rule, and it governs everything: contributions, ceilings, VAT thresholds. Declaring what you billed means paying contributions on money you never received.
The calculation, over one quarter
Take a freelancer taxed as BNC under the general scheme who collected 4,000 € in one quarter of 2026. They enter 4,000 € in the BNC services box.
Social contributions come to 25.6% of that, or 1,024 €.
On top sits the contribution à la formation professionnelle (vocational training contribution), 0.2% for a liberal professional in 2026, or 8 €, owed once a positive turnover has been declared over the previous calendar year: in your first year it does not fall at all.
The total taken reaches 1,032 €, which is 25.8% of the turnover declared. No chamber levy here: that one applies only to traders and craftspeople.
A craft service provider based outside Alsace-Moselle adds 0.3% of CFP and 0.48% of chambre de métiers levy to their 21.2%, which makes 21.98% in 2026.
That chamber levy only starts in your second year of activity. Below 5,000 € of turnover it is not due, but check which reference year applies in your URSSAF account.
If that same freelancer opted for the Flat-rate income tax, the declaration carries a further 2.2% for income tax in 2026, or 88 €, and the total taken rises to 1,120 €.
The headline rate shown on the URSSAF home page therefore never describes everything that leaves your account.
Two declarations not to confuse
This one goes to URSSAF, at every deadline, and funds your social protection. The other goes to the tax administration, once a year, and works out your income tax.
The versement libératoire does not replace the annual income tax return: turnover is reported on Form 2042-C-PRO in every case.
That entry triggers no second taxation, it feeds the effective tax rate, the revenu fiscal de référence (reference tax income) and your pension savings allowance.
What you declare is not what you earn. Turnover is a gross receipt: the administration applies a standard allowance to it before calculating tax, and your real expenses are deducted nowhere.
That running total also acts as the counter for two limits that have nothing to do with each other.
The first is the micro scheme Turnover threshold, 83,600 € for a service provider and 203,100 € for a seller of goods over the 2026-2028 period.
The second is the VAT exemption threshold, which reads on two levels at once in 2026: 37,500 € for the services share, inside an overall ceiling of 85,000 € of national turnover, all activities combined.
Both conditions apply together, and that second figure spares nobody: a micro-entrepreneur with 80,000 € of sales and 10,000 € of services respects the 37,500 € and still loses the exemption.
A freelancer at 45,000 € remains a micro-entrepreneur and becomes liable for VAT.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to declare if I collected nothing during the period?
Yes. The declaration is due at every deadline, including at zero: it is what triggers the calculation, and a period left blank counts as a missing declaration, not as an absence of activity.
A nil amount is simply entered as zero.
Do I declare the amount invoiced or the amount received?
The amount received, in the period when it arrived. An invoice issued in December and paid in January is declared in January, and an invoice that stays unpaid is never declared at all.
Collected turnover is what counts in a micro-enterprise, from the first calculation to the last.
What happens if I miss a deadline?
URSSAF applies a penalty for each missing declaration, and the period is then regularised.
Being late also costs entitlements: they are calculated on contributions actually paid, so on identical turnover someone up to date validates a pension quarter where someone in arrears validates none.
With the versement libératoire, do I still file an income tax return?
Yes. Turnover is reported on form 2042-C-PRO even when the tax has already been paid to URSSAF.
That entry does not tax you twice: it feeds the effective rate applied to your other income, as well as your reference tax income.