SASU or EURL when you live abroad: the contest is not decided where you think

“SASU or EURL?” is the question most often asked by anyone setting up a company in France, and there is a ready-made French answer: the EURL costs less in contributions, the SASU protects better. That answer assumes something that is never said, because in France it goes without saying — that the director comes under French social security. If you live abroad, that is precisely what is not settled, and the whole reasoning shifts.

The two statuses, in one sentence each

The sole-shareholder gérant of an EURL is a self-employed worker. The president of a SASU is an assimilé salarié, treated as an employee for social security purposes: the code de la sécurité sociale expressly ranks the presidents and directors of sociétés par actions simplifiées among the persons attached to the general scheme (art. L. 311-3, 23°). The distinction is not a formal one: a gérant who is not the shareholder also comes under the general scheme (art. L. 311-3, 11°), and the opposition disappears.

A prior difference, which social security comparisons pass over in silence: an EURL whose sole shareholder is an individual falls as of right under income tax (CGI, art. 8, 4°) and reaches corporation tax only by election, whereas the SASU is subject to it from the outset. Everything that follows about the trade-off between remuneration and dividend assumes a company subject to corporation tax: an EURL left under its default regime does not distribute dividends, its profit being taxed directly in the shareholder's hands, whether or not it is drawn.

Everything else follows from that difference. The self-employed worker pays contributions on a base that has changed this year: since the adjustment of the 2025 contributions, opened in April 2026, it is a single base for the contributions and for CSG-CRDS, and is calculated on gross income, without deducting social security contributions, then reduced by 26% (CSS, art. L. 136-3, III) — distributions included above a threshold where the company is subject to corporation tax. The assimilé salarié, for his part, pays contributions on his remuneration, and on that alone. It also follows, and this is the point the comparisons spirit away, that the self-employed worker owes minimum contributions even on nil income, whereas a president of a SASU who pays himself nothing pays no contributions — and acquires no rights.

Remember the mechanism, not the winner: it is the mechanism that will behave differently depending on whether you are affiliated in France or elsewhere.

The question that governs everything: where are you affiliated?

Before comparing anything at all, you need to know which social security system you come under. It is not your nationality that determines it, nor the location of your company's registered office: it is, in substance, the place where you carry on your activity, and where applicable the fact that you carry on several of them in several States.

We will go no further here, and that is deliberate. Multiple activities, the certificate attesting to the applicable scheme, the existence or otherwise of a bilateral agreement outside the Union — since Brexit the United Kingdom has come under a separate protocol, Switzerland under an agreement of its own — all of this is settled case by case and is documented before you pay yourself, not afterwards. What we want to show is that the answer to this question shifts the comparison.

Two scenarios, then, and they have almost nothing in common. Their boundary is not, moreover, independent of your choice: article 13 of règlement (CE) n° 883/2004 makes a person who pursues an activity as an employed person in one State and an activity as a self-employed person in another subject to the legislation of the State of the employed activity, for all of his activities. Now, as far as French law is concerned, the office of president of a SASU is an employed activity and that of sole-shareholder gérant of an EURL a self-employed activity. The corporate form may therefore bear on the answer — all the more reason to settle the two questions together, and not one after the other.

First case: you are not affiliated in France

This is the situation of a director who lives and works in another State, comes under that State's own scheme there, and whose French company is one activity among others. The cost of French contributions then disappears, on both sides. It does not disappear for all that: it changes country. Article 21 of règlement (CE) n° 987/2009 requires an employer whose registered office is situated outside the competent State to fulfil there the obligations laid down by the legislation of that State, and in particular to pay the contributions there, as if its registered office were situated there. Depending on whether the State in which you are affiliated treats your office as an employed activity or as a self-employed activity, your French company will therefore be liable for contributions there, or you will come under the rules applicable to the self-employed there. The comparison between the two forms on the ground of social cost does not evaporate: it is transported into the law of your State of affiliation. It is in French law, and there alone, that the contest is now played out entirely on tax.

What becomes of a dividend

A dividend paid by a French company to an individual domiciled outside France does not follow the usual French route: it is levied at source and the matter stops there. It bears a withholding tax (CGI, art. 119 bis, 2), at the rate of 12.8% where the beneficial owner is an individual (CGI, art. 187, 1-2°, for income distributed since 1^st January 2018), and this withholding extinguishes the income tax: the dividend therefore enters neither the base of the minimum rate nor that of the average rate discussed below.

Two qualifications pointing in opposite directions. The rate is raised to 75% where the income is paid outside France in a non-cooperative State or territory within the meaning of art. 238-0 A of the CGI, unless the payer proves that the distribution neither has as its purpose nor as its effect the fraudulent location of income there (CGI, art. 187, 2) — the criterion is the place of payment, not your place of residence. Conversely, a tax treaty may provide for a lower rate; but for payments made on or after 1^st January 2026, the benefit is no longer obtained at the time of payment: the paying institution applies the withholding at the rate of art. 187 and the treaty benefit is granted afterwards by the tax authorities (BOI-INT-DG-20-20-20-30, published on 16 March 2026). Plan for the cash and for the delay.

One point deserves to be underlined because it comes as a surprise, and because it brings down a common line of reasoning. For a non-resident, the social levies — CSG, CRDS, solidarity levy — target French-source property income and property capital gains. That is not where the taxation of your dividends is decided.

And if you also hold property in France, be aware that persons who come, as regards health insurance, under the legislation of another State of the European Economic Area or of Switzerland subject to règlement (CE) n° 883/2004 and who are not chargeable to a compulsory French social security scheme are exempt from CSG and CRDS since 1^st January 2019 (CSS, art. L. 136-6, I ter); only the solidarity levy of 7.5% remains. The two conditions are cumulative: if you live abroad while still coming under the French scheme — the second case described below — the exemption is not open to you. The tax authorities further state that British residents continue to benefit from it despite the departure from the Union, and that the affiliation must be effective on 31 December of the year in which the income is received.

What becomes of remuneration

The remuneration you pay yourself is French-source income only if the activity it remunerates is carried on in France: art. 164 B, I, d of the code général des impôts covers “income derived from professional activities, whether employed or not, carried on in France”. And the treaty carries more weight here than elsewhere: the tax authorities state that, in the absence of an express clause covering directors' remuneration, the case law attaches it to the other-income clause, which generally reserves taxation to the State of residence — some treaties, including the France-Italy and the France-United Kingdom treaties, providing on the contrary for taxation in France. So check first that France may tax. If it may, three mechanisms apply that a resident does not encounter, and the first already separates the SASU from the EURL.

First, a withholding tax that the company must operate itself. If you are the president of a SASU, your remuneration is a salary: art. 182 A of the code général des impôts subjects French-source wages and salaries paid to persons not domiciled in France to a withholding tax of 0% up to €17,275, 12% from €17,275 to €50,112 and 20% above that, in its version in force since 1^st July 2026. The first two bands extinguish the income tax: art. 197 B removes the corresponding fraction from the computation of the tax and makes the withholding non-creditable. If you are the sole-shareholder gérant of an EURL subject to corporation tax, your remuneration falls under art. 62 of the CGI, and the tax authorities write that “the withholding tax provided for by art. 182 A of the CGI is not applicable”: taxation is then carried out by way of return. This is, on the tax side, the only truly structural difference between the two forms for a non-resident. The thresholds of the scale are re-indexed each year.

Next, a minimum rate of tax: 20% up to €29,579 of net taxable income and 30% above that, for income received in 2025 (CGI, art. 197 A; 14.4% and 20% for income from overseas sources). It bears on the whole of your French-source net taxable income — remuneration, but also French rents — with the exception of what has borne a withholding that extinguishes the tax. And the text does not fix an amount: it refers to the upper limit of the second band of the scale, re-indexed each year. The threshold applicable to your 2026 income will not be known until the finance act for 2027: treat €29,579 as an order of magnitude, not as a settled threshold.

Lastly, the possibility of applying for the average rate: if you show that the rate of French tax calculated on the whole of your worldwide income is lower than the minimum rate, it is that rate which applies. It is not automatic: it must be applied for, by ticking the corresponding option on the return. The application carries no risk, the tax authorities applying the average rate only if it is more favourable to you than the minimum rate. It does not, however, cover dividends, whose French taxation is extinguished by the withholding tax.

Second case: you are affiliated in France

This is the situation of a director who, while residing abroad, comes under the French scheme — because his activity is in reality carried on in France, or because the coordination rules so designate it. Here the classic comparison recovers all its force, and two traps open up.

A word on the timetable, because it falls this year. Article 18 of the social security financing act for 2024 recast the base of the contributions and levies of the self-employed: a single base for the contributions and for CSG-CRDS, calculated on gross income without deducting social security contributions, then reduced by 26% (CSS, art. L. 136-3, III). This switch is applied only from the adjustment of the 2025 contributions onwards, opened in April 2026 with the 2025 income return. A gérant of an EURL affiliated in France therefore receives, in 2026, a demand which combines the adjustment of his instalments and the change of base.

The trap of the floor

The self-employed worker owes minimum contributions even where his income is nil — but not on everything, and for a known amount. In metropolitan France, in 2026, only four contributions carry a minimum: daily sickness benefits (€96, on a base of €19,244), the basic pension (€967, on €5,409), invalidity-death cover (€72, on €5,527) and the vocational training contribution, which is a flat amount (€120 to €163) — that is, around €1,255 to €1,300 a year. Nothing of the kind for family allowances, CSG-CRDS or the supplementary pension, and recipients of the RSA or of the prime d'activité are exempt from them.

A dormant EURL, or one whose gérant pays himself nothing, therefore produces a contribution demand: for the first two years it is initially calculated on a flat-rate base, then adjusted against actual income, and that is where the floor takes over. The unremunerated president of a SASU, for his part, pays nothing: no floor strikes the assimilé salarié. But the reverse holds both ways. He then validates no quarter in respect of his office and acquires no contributory rights, whereas the EURL's floor is not a dead loss — Urssaf states that the minimum basic pension contribution “must make it possible to validate 3 quarters of pension”, and it comes with invalidity-death cover and daily sickness benefits. The choice is therefore not “paying for nothing” against “paying nothing”, but around €1,250 a year for three quarters and two covers against zero for zero.

One asymmetry of mechanism, finally, which the comparison of the amounts conceals: in an EURL, the gérant is personally liable for his contributions; in a SASU that pays remuneration, they are employee and employer contributions owed by the company on the remuneration paid, declared each month in the déclaration sociale nominative. For a non-resident director, this is not a detail: the form chosen does or does not entail a monthly reporting obligation in France.

The trap of the dividend — and an article that everyone cites wrongly

For a self-employed worker, part of the dividends is not merely investment income: it enters the base of the social security contributions. But the company must still be subject to corporation tax: II of art. L. 136-3 covers only “the contribution owed in respect of activities giving rise to liability to corporation tax”. Now an EURL whose sole shareholder is an individual falls as of right under income tax (CGI, art. 8, 4°), and the mechanism there is then quite different — and harsher: there is nothing to calibrate, since the whole of the profit, distributed or not, already enters the gérant's base (L. 136-3, I).

If the EURL has elected for corporation tax, only then does the 10% rule come into play. It bears on the share of the dividends and of the income mentioned in a and b of art. 111, in art. 111 bis and in 4° of art. 124 of the code général des impôts — hence also current-account interest and sums deemed to be distributed — received by the self-employed person, his spouse or PACS partner and his unemancipated minor children, which exceeds 10% of a reference amount made up of the share capital, share premiums included, held in full ownership or in usufruct by those same persons, and of the sums recorded in their shareholder current accounts.

Two points of detail that decide the amount. First, the reference amount cannot be steered on the eve of the general meeting: art. R. 131-7 of the code de la sécurité sociale, issued by décret n° 2025-708 du 25 juillet 2025, assesses it on the last day of the financial year preceding the distribution, takes into account only fully paid-up cash contributions and contributions in kind excluding intangible assets, and takes the current account at its average annual balance — the sum of the average monthly balances divided by the number of months in the financial year. Second, if you live abroad, the fraction above 10% bears the contributions but not CSG-CRDS: the latter is owed only by persons who are both domiciled in France for income tax purposes and chargeable to a compulsory French health insurance scheme (CSS, art. L. 136-1), two cumulative conditions the first of which you fail.

Here now is the find, and it is worth flagging: this rule is cited more or less everywhere under art. L. 131-6 of the code de la sécurité sociale. It is no longer there. The article was rewritten by loi n° 2023-1250 du 26 décembre 2023 and now refers, for the definition of the base, to art. L. 136-3. That is where the 10% rule is to be found — at II, 2° of art. L. 136-3, in its version in force since 28 February 2025 (loi n° 2025-199 du 28 février 2025, art. 13). If a comparison still cites L. 131-6 for this rule without dating what it describes, be wary: the reference holds only for the contributions of periods before 2025, still being adjusted. For those owed in respect of 2025 and subsequent years, it is II, 2° of art. L. 136-3 that applies.

The president of a SASU escapes this mechanism entirely: his dividends are not liable to social security contributions. It is the most solid argument in favour of the SASU for anyone intending to take his income mainly as distributions — subject, not to a tax treaty, which allocates the tax and does not decide liability to contributions, but to the social security scheme you actually come under.

One clarification that governs how this table is read: social security affiliation and tax domicile are two independent questions. Coming under French social security does not make you a tax resident. The two columns above describe your social security position; your tax position, for its part, remains that of a non-resident in both cases.

What neither of them gives you

A corporate office, on its own, does not give entitlement to unemployment insurance benefit. Neither for the gérant of an EURL, nor for the president of a SASU. There is, on the other hand, a narrow door, and it is the same for both: the allowance for self-employed workers, art. L. 5424-24 of the code du travail expressly covering the president of a SASU, by reference to 23° of art. L. 311-3 of the code de la sécurité sociale. The conditions, laid down in art. L. 5424-25, are restrictive and require in particular a cessation of activity that is not chosen.

Neither of the two forms settles the question of the registered office either. A company governed by French law must show a registered office in France when it is registered, whatever its form — and art. L. 210-3 of the code de commerce adds that the company may not rely on its statutory registered office against third parties where its real seat is situated elsewhere. That is the subject of our article on running a French company from abroad, and this constraint applies identically to the SASU and to the EURL.

How to decide, in order

The sequence counts as much as the criteria, because the first question directs all the others.

• Which social security scheme do you come under? Have it established before incorporating, not after the first payment of remuneration: within the European area, it is the certificat A1 that attests to the applicable legislation, and where that legislation is not French, article 21 of règlement (CE) n° 987/2009 places the obligations of that State on your French company — unless there is an agreement, notified to the competent institution, by which you yourself carry out the payment of the contributions on its behalf.
• Will the EURL be subject to income tax or to corporation tax? Without an election for corporation tax, there is no dividend to arbitrate: the whole profit is taxed and bears contributions in your hands, whether or not it is drawn.
• How do you intend to take the money out — remuneration, dividend, or nothing for two years? If it is “nothing”, measure the cost of the floor in an EURL and the absence of rights in a SASU.
• What does the tax treaty between France and your State of residence say about dividends and about directors' remuneration? It may lower the withholding tax, and above all it decides who taxes the remuneration.
• Do you have other worldwide income? That is what makes the average rate worthwhile or not — it being understood that it does not touch dividends.
• What social protection do you actually want to buy? The answer is often that one wants to buy nothing at all in France because one is already covered elsewhere — and that completely changes the ranking.

We will not name a winner, because there is none. What we can say, on the other hand, is that the comparison that circulates in French was written for a director who lives in France, and that it will mislead you if you read it as it stands.

The key points

• The sole-shareholder gérant of an EURL is a self-employed worker, the president of a SASU an assimilé salarié (CSS, art. L. 311-3, 23°). A gérant who is not the shareholder comes under the general scheme, and the opposition disappears.
• The EURL is subject to income tax by default (CGI, art. 8, 4°). Without an election for corporation tax, there is no remuneration / dividend trade-off to make.
• If you are not affiliated in France, the cost of French contributions disappears on both sides — but it shifts to your State of affiliation (règlement (CE) n° 987/2009, art. 21). In French law, the choice becomes a tax trade-off.
• Social security affiliation and tax domicile are two separate questions. Coming under the French scheme does not make you a tax resident: the withholding tax and the minimum rate apply in both cases.
• A dividend paid to a non-resident individual bears a withholding tax of 12.8%, which extinguishes the income tax — raised to 75% where payment is made in a non-cooperative State.
• The remuneration of a president of a SASU undergoes the withholding under art. 182 A; that of a gérant of an EURL subject to corporation tax falls under art. 62 and escapes it. It is the only truly structural tax difference between the two forms.
• If you are affiliated in France, the EURL calls for minimum contributions of around €1,255 to €1,300 a year even on nil income — but they validate three quarters, whereas an unremunerated SASU validates none.
• The 10% rule is no longer at art. L. 131-6 but at II, 2° of art. L. 136-3 of the code de la sécurité sociale, for the contributions owed in respect of 2025 and subsequent years.
• Neither of them opens entitlement to unemployment insurance benefit on the basis of the corporate office alone; the allowance for self-employed workers remains a narrow door, open to both.

Sources checked as at 18 August 2026: code de la sécurité sociale, art. L. 136-1, L. 136-3 (I, II, 2° and III, version in force since 28 February 2025, loi n° 2025-199 du 28 février 2025, art. 13), L. 136-6, I ter, L. 131-6 (version resulting from loi n° 2023-1250 du 26 décembre 2023, art. 18), L. 311-3, 11° and 23°, R. 131-7 (décret n° 2025-708 du 25 juillet 2025); code du travail, art. L. 5424-24 and L. 5424-25; code général des impôts, art. 8, 4°, 62, 111, 111 bis, 119 bis, 2, 124, 164 B, 182 A, 187, 197 A, 197 B, 238-0 A; code de commerce, art. L. 210-3; règlements (CE) n° 883/2004, art. 13 and n° 987/2009, art. 21; BOI-INT-DG-20-20-20-30 of 16 March 2026; Urssaf, contribution scale updated on 27 February 2026; impots.gouv.fr, “non-residents” sections. The maintenance of the CSG-CRDS exemption for the benefit of British residents rests on a position published by the tax authorities, and not on I ter of art. L. 136-6, which covers only règlement (CE) n° 883/2004. This article does not deal with the determination of the social security scheme applicable to a non-resident director, nor with the location of effective management: these questions are settled case by case. No bilateral tax treaty has been consulted: no treaty rate is cited. This article does not replace an examination of your situation.