Understanding the micro regime: simple, not simplistic

Sofiane, a developer, goes freelance under the micro regime: €4,000 invoiced per month, €48,000 a year. His neighbour promises "almost no charges"; his cousin predicts "half gone in contributions". Both are wrong: his contributions will be €12,288 (25.6%), his taxable income €31,680 after the allowance — and all of it is readable in advance, because the micro regime knows a single number: revenue collected.

A regime built on revenue

Under the micro regime, no actual expense is deducted: contributions and tax are percentages of revenue collected. The flat-rate system replaces full bookkeeping — that is the regime's strength, and its limit. Every number in this course follows from that single principle.

Direct consequence: the regime favours low-cost activities (consulting, development, intellectual services) and penalises those that buy a lot — the flat rate never sees your actual spending.

Put numbers on it: a developer with €300 of monthly costs keeps most of the 34% allowance as a genuine bonus. A caterer spending half their revenue on ingredients gets the same 50% services allowance — and effectively pays contributions on money already spent.

Social contributions, by activity

The activity sets the rate: Sofiane, a BNC developer, contributes at 25.6%. An online seller of goods would contribute at 12.3% — on much bigger volumes for the same income, goods costs oblige.

Contributions are settled as you declare, period by period: no year-end regularisation, no surprise catch-up two years later. That predictability is one of the regime's quietest advantages over the self-employed real regimes.

These contributions fund your social protection: health, benefits, retirement — proportional to declared revenue. Coverage exists, thinner than an employee's, and is completed by personal provisioning.

The regime combines easily with a salaried job, retirement or studies — its most common use. Micro contributions then add to the main status's own; each activity follows its own rules.

One entrepreneur, one micro-enterprise: the regime attaches to the person, not to projects. Several activities live inside the same enterprise, each declared in its own category — with the mixed-activity ceiling rules seen below applying across them.

Income tax: the allowance stands in for expenses

Read the allowance as a bet: the State assumes your costs are 34% of revenue (for BNC). Spend less and you win; spend more and you lose. Sofiane's real costs run near 10% of revenue — the flat rate is clearly his friend, for now.

The regime's ceilings

Beyond these ceilings the micro regime ends: switch to a real regime, full bookkeeping, another logic. Ceilings are assessed on annual revenue — a crossing is watched during the year, not the following January. Module 3 turns that watch into a monthly routine.

A mixed activity (goods AND services) tracks both ceilings at once: the total under the goods ceiling, and the services share under its own. Each category also keeps its own rate and allowance — the lines never blend.

Sofiane falls under BNC because he sells an intellectual service in his own name. The point deserves ten minutes at creation: the chosen category sets the contribution rate, the allowance and the ceiling — three parameters at once.

VAT follows its own franchise thresholds, separate and lower: while you stay within them, invoices carry "TVA non applicable, art. 293 B du CGI" — no VAT charged or deducted. The linked VAT course takes over the day you leave it.

Even in franchise, invoices remain formal documents: numbering without gaps, date, client identity, service description, amount, and the article 293 B wording. A clean invoice trail is also what proves your revenue figures if anyone asks.