In a liberal profession collecting €60,000, the actual-expenses regime overtakes the micro-entreprise from €8,084 of annual business spending. Your flat-rate allowance, on the other hand, is €20,400.
The gap opens this early because of contributions: under actual expenses you pay them on your profit, under the micro-entreprise on everything you collect.
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It sets the micro-entreprise allowance, and your contribution rates.
Information verified on October 16, 2026. Indicative calculator with no legal force. The figures it applies are taken from official sources and dated: only your tax notice and the tax authorities are binding.
The official pages where we read the rules and amounts applied here.
Your contributions are calculated on your entire turnover, before a single expense. Under actual expenses, they are calculated on what is left once your costs are paid. Two entrepreneurs collecting the same amount therefore do not pay the same contributions if one spends and the other does not.
You often hear: «as long as my costs stay below my allowance, I stay in the micro-entreprise». That rule makes you switch too late, because it only looks at income tax and forgets contributions. On €60,000 collected in a liberal profession:
Corporate tax is 15% up to €42,500 of profit and 25% beyond, and it is the same in an EURL and in a SASU. The gap comes from the director's status: self-employed in an EURL, treated as an employee in a SASU. For the same amount spent on their pay, a SASU president pays noticeably more in contributions, in exchange for fuller social cover.
It assumes the director pays themselves everything, with no dividends. Yet the salary-dividend trade-off is precisely what makes a company worthwhile, and it depends on your capital, your current account and how much you want to contribute towards your pension. The « Salary or dividends » tool calculates it, and an accountant confirms it on your accounts.
Moving to actual expenses means full accounts and a balance sheet. Moving to a company means articles, accounts to file, and fees no official source puts a figure on. And in both cases, what changes for your pension and your health cover weighs as much, over twenty years, as the annual gap shown here.
| Turnover | Liberal (BNC) | Services (BIC) | Selling goods |
|---|---|---|---|
| €30,000 | €3,333 | €8,048 | €17,193 |
| €45,000 | €6,216 | €13,284 | €25,769 |
| €60,000 | €8,084 | €18,478 | €35,010 |
| €80,000 | €10,913 | €25,118 | €47,294 |
Single, no other income, taxed on the sliding scale. These are annual expenses: above them, a sole trader on actual expenses keeps more than a micro-entreprise. All of them are far below the regime's flat-rate allowance.
Camille is a freelance graphic designer, single, collecting €45,000 a year.
With €3,000 of expenses, the micro-entreprise still wins: no other structure would leave her more.
With €8,000 of expenses, the micro-entreprise leaves her €23,376 where actual expenses leave €24,204: leaving the micro-entreprise would earn her €1,251 a year.
With €18,000 of expenses, the micro-entreprise drops to €13,376 and actual expenses hold at €18,701: the gain from changing rises to €5,640.
Her tipping point sits at €6,216 of expenses, well before the €15,300 of her flat-rate allowance.
Stay in the micro-entreprise. No other structure would leave you more today.
Run this again every year, your expenses creep up unnoticed.
Watch the VAT threshold instead, which you will cross long before the regime's ceiling.
Start with the sole trader on actual expenses: it is the lowest step, with no articles and no capital.
Have an accountant cost out the three scenarios before changing anything.
Look at what the change does to your pension and your health cover too.
The tipping point between the micro-entreprise, actual expenses and a company is not the same for everyone. It depends on your activity, and therefore on your allowance, on your turnover, and on your household's other income, which raises your tax band. That is why the tool asks for them rather than showing a single threshold.
Actual expenses take the lead over the micro-entreprise before your costs reach the allowance, because the allowance only affects income tax, whereas your contributions are based on your entire turnover under the micro-entreprise. Under actual expenses, they are based on your profit. It is that part, the heavier of the two, that tips the comparison sooner.
The comparison refuses to name a winner when the gap between two regimes falls below a thousand euros a year, because it is then smaller than a company's accounting costs and than this calculation's own margin. Naming a winner in that zone would give false precision to a decision that then rests on something else.
The SASU cost shown by the comparison is almost complete: every contribution of a SASU president is counted, supplementary pension and balancing contributions included, except the workplace accident contribution, whose rate is notified to each company, and vocational training and apprenticeship levies. The cost shown is therefore a floor, and the resulting net a ceiling. The transport levy only applies from eleven employees.
The « Micro, actual expenses or company » comparison assumes the director takes everything as pay, with no dividends. The split with dividends is calculated in the « Salary or dividends » tool: in a SASU, where dividends only pay the 31.4% flat tax, it often leaves more, at the cost of your pension; in an EURL, the share of dividends above 10% of capital, premiums and current account carries contributions like pay.
You can give up the micro tax regime by opting for an actual-expenses regime, and the option renews itself tacitly. The deadlines and consequences depend on your situation: make that decision with an accountant.
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