Hi all,
I have a naive question, because I am new to this self-employed lark. I set up a scientific consultancy as a micro-entreprise and have now been contacted to do some work in a legal proceeding, It is time to get serious and get some protection. Can I charge these as business expenses to my enterprise?
Thanks,
Tim
If you are on réel, why not. You will have to find out the appropriate expenses codes. There is def a category for insurances. I imagine the declaration could come under the Fees category since it is a fee to the notaire.
If you are on the simplified setup, you do not claim any kind of actual expenses. You say AE does that stand for Auto Entrepreneur? If it does you will be in the simplified scheme with a flat rate expenses allowance. You declare your turnover and everything is based on that as I understand it.
Thanks for the quick response. I am indeed on the simplified AE and not on the régime réel. Right then, I will pay for these from my personal bank account.
Good question, I think the answer is no but maybe someone can provide information to the contrary, I will stand happily corrected 
@fabien ?
I just got a reply from my accountant. According to her, I can’t deduct my expenses from ME, but I can apply for a 50% reduction of my taxable income. I am not quite sure if I follow my accountant’s description. It might be lost in translation. Does anyone know what this tax reduction is called?
An abattement forfaitaire pour les frais professionnels of 50% for services or 34% for bnc is applied to your turnover to give your taxable income. Eg if you provide a service and your turnover is 40k your taxable income is 20k. You do not have to apply for this it happens automatically.
Could that be what she meant.
Accountants tend to not understand how the auto entrepreneur works because auto entrepreneurs do not normally use accountants. So it is possible she thinks you have to apply for it somehow.
In practice all you do is declare your turnover online and the software does the rest.
I think it’s automatic, you should see it when you fill in your first ME declaration online.
Pay for them from your business account, as even on the simplified AE it is useful to have the backing paperwork just in case there are ever any queries. It is also worth one year actually sitting down and working out what your expenses and charges actually add up to to make sure that using the simplified regime works for you. If you happen to have very high costs then might be better to swap to réel (when you could offset these costs).
We get an automatic 50% allowance for materials and expenses. Just be aware that AE’s and ME’s have smallish turnover limits before you are obliged to registered for TVA.
Hi Tim, only if you are an “Entreprise individuelle” or SARL, or SAS / SASU. So if you are a “micro entreprise” I can confirm you can’t claim on those expenses (but the lower taxes massively compensate that small setback as you’d be paying 23%ish instead of 45% if not 80%+ 
)
The tva threshold is the tva theshold. It makes no diiference what kind of company you are!
I didn’t see it happen at URSAAF, but I should check the accounts submitted this year. We used an accountant because we moved to France in 2019 and the mixed incomes seemed like too much of a headache to sort out.
If you are likely to earn more than 34K pa (the TVA turnover limit for services) then you should not be part of the AE scheme!
No not claim Fabien, we’ve been running a Micro Enterprise for 13 years and get an automatic 50% allowance which is supposed to cover materials etc to run the business.
34 k, that’s a nice goal to aim for. Finding clients as a newbie at consultancy has been hard, and the pandemic certainly hasn’t helped.
Others have said it but just to add; as an auto-entrepreneur you can’t claim any expenses. It’s a very simple set up compared to standard ones, the big advantage is that you don’t pay anything if you don’t earn anything. In a “normal” set-up you’ll have a forfait for your charges sociales (several thousand € a year) to pay even if you don’t earn anything
Are you sure that is the limit for everyone under the micro-entrepreneur regime?
Actually I should phrase that better, must a service provider under ME register for TVA if their turnover exceeds 34k?
Does that include the EI and EIRL regimes?
Actually that’s not exactly how it goes Timothy… You’re partially right but depending on your “stutus” the taxation doesn’t work the same for Micro Entreprise. Basically it’s 23% (more or less 2%) but the percentage of the revenue that’s taxed (nation taxes) varies.
For gite owners or traders they only pay taxes based on 29% of their revenue.
For Micro Entreprise registered as “BIC” this is 50%.
For Micro Entreprise registered as BNC (like consultants usually) this is 66%.
So, not everyone gets au automatic 50% and this is not an allowance as you are paying social taxes on 100% of the revenue no matter what, that deduction only applies to the national taxes.
Hope this can help?
Voici les plafonds en dessous desquels, l’entrepreneur est exonéré de TVA.
Une même entreprise peut donc être à la fois au régime du réel en matière de TVA et au micro-fiscal en matière de bénéfice.
Les plafonds majorés à prendre en compte en matière de TVA sont de :