Meeting the five conditions

An illustrator invoices €14,000 of drawings to three publishers and €6,000 of workshops in schools. The first fall under the artist-author scheme, the second do not. The line turns neither on the trade nor on the client: it turns on five cumulative conditions, and one missing condition shifts the whole scheme.

Five conditions, every one of them needed

The scheme requires being a natural person, receiving pay directly linked to the artistic activity or to its extension, creating a work of the mind, not being an employee for that activity, and being tax resident in France.

These conditions are cumulative. A company exploiting rights does not qualify, for want of being a natural person. Nor does an employee whose contract already covers creation, because their pay then falls under the general scheme by virtue of that contract.

The most argued condition is the extension of the activity. A talk given by an author about their own work attaches to it; a regular teaching workshop in a school does not, being a teaching service with a scheme of its own.

The distinction is not theoretical, since it governs where contributions go and on what base. One person may therefore fall under two schemes in the same year, and must keep the two income streams apart rather than adding them in a single return.

Tax residence in France is assessed as it is for income tax purposes, and never by reference to nationality. A foreign author settled in France for the long term satisfies it; a French author living abroad no longer does, even where every one of their publishers happens to be French.

The fields covered

The scheme covers authors of literary and dramatic works, musical and choreographic works, audiovisual and cinematographic works, graphic and plastic works, photographic works, and authors of software. The list is wide, but it is a list: a creative activity not on it falls outside.

Since the first of January 2019 the collection bodies of the social contributions network have collected these contributions. Since the first of April 2026 they also rule on membership: the two historic bodies of the sector no longer perform either task.

That transfer changes the first move of an author starting out. Applications, questions about rates and returns are now handled in one place, which simplifies the path but makes many guides still in circulation out of date.

Membership is triggered by the first artistic income declared, with no step required before the first invoice. An author therefore need not register before selling their first work, which clearly sets this scheme apart from setting up an ordinary business.

• Be a natural person, never a company
• Receive pay linked to the artistic activity or to its extension
• Create a work of the mind within the meaning of copyright
• Not be an employee for that same activity, and be tax resident in France

What stays outside the scheme

Income from a commercial activity of buying and reselling works falls outside: that is trading, subject to the ordinary rules of commerce. An artist reselling a colleague's pieces carries on two distinct activities, and declares them separately.

Services with no creation of a work follow the same logic. Retouching images supplied by a client, executing a commission to instructions leaving no creative latitude, or running a workshop fall outside, even where the person is otherwise an artist-author.

Carrying on both is therefore common, and perfectly regular. What is not regular is pushing the whole of one's income under the more favourable scheme without distinguishing what genuinely belongs to each in the records kept.

Separating the two streams at the invoicing stage is the only method that holds. Two series of numbers, two distinct descriptions, and a tracking table totalling each category: the work is done when the invoice is issued, never at the annual return.