Registering as a self-employed tutor in France

The auto-entrepreneur status, also called micro-entrepreneur, is the simplest way to register a private-tutoring activity in France and invoice your students legally. It gives you a SIRET number, a clear tax framework, and social contributions charged only on what you actually collect. Here are the concrete steps to get started, and what happens once the registration is done.

Why register at all

Teaching for pay is a professional activity. Without registration you cannot issue a valid invoice, your students cannot claim the tax credit, and the money you take in stays invisible to the tax office. The micro regime settles all three at once.

Private lessons fall under non-commercial profits (BNC in French), as a service activity. The micro-regime turnover ceiling for this kind of work is €77,700 per year. Below €37,500 in receipts you stay under the VAT exemption (franchise en base): you charge no VAT, and your invoices carry the line "TVA non applicable, art. 293 B du CGI".

The registration steps

Registration is done online and free of charge, through the single business-formalities portal. Budget about thirty minutes if your documents are ready.

1. Gather your documents: ID, proof of address, and a sworn declaration of no relevant conviction.
2. Complete the start-of-activity declaration on the single window, choosing a teaching and academic-support activity.
3. Receive your SIRET, issued by INSEE within one to four weeks.
4. Open your online account on the URSSAF portal to declare your turnover each month or each quarter.

Open a dedicated bank account from day one. It is only mandatory once you pass €10,000 in receipts two years running, but it keeps your money separate and makes chasing late payments far easier to read.

Micro-entreprise or another status?

For teaching part-time or alongside another income, the micro-entreprise is the default choice: no starting capital, no annual accounts, and bookkeeping reduced to a receipts ledger. Salaried employment through an umbrella company (portage salarial) or setting up a company only become worthwhile above the ceilings, or the day you start hiring other tutors. As long as you work solo and stay under €77,700 in receipts, the micro regime is cheaper and takes a few minutes a month to run.

Contributions, tax, and ACRE

Under the micro regime you pay social contributions only on what you collect. For a BNC liberal activity, the rate sits around 24 to 26 percent of turnover in 2026. A month with no lessons costs nothing: you declare zero, you pay zero.

Two schemes lighten the start:

• ACRE cuts your contributions by 50 percent for the first four quarters of activity, subject to conditions.
• The flat-rate income-tax option (versement libératoire) adds a small percentage to each declaration so income tax is settled as you go, if your reference tax income allows it.

Your first turnover declaration is due after a 90-day window following the start of activity, then on a fixed schedule. Put the date in your calendar: a missed declaration triggers a penalty, even when turnover is zero.

For the up-to-date rules of the regime, the micro-entrepreneur page on service-public.fr is the reference.

The tax credit, a real selling point

At-home lessons fall within the scope of personal services (services à la personne). By registering as a personal-services provider, your students recover 50 percent of what they pay as a tax credit, up to an annual cap. A €30 lesson then costs the family €15 net. That is often what sets you apart from an undeclared tutor. The ceiling of expenses eligible for the credit is €12,000 per year, raised in some cases (dependent children, a disabled member of the household), which easily covers a full year of regular tutoring. The terms are set out on impots.gouv.fr.

This declaration is done online and stacks with the micro status. Once you have it, you issue each family a tax attestation every year. We covered that step in the tax attestation guide.

After registration: keeping your books

The status is simple, but it asks for monthly discipline: declaring turnover, issuing numbered invoices with no gap in the sequence, tracking payments, and preparing attestations. A spreadsheet does the job for a few weeks, then turns into a drag as soon as students pile up.

Kadrella brings invoicing, payment tracking, and student management together in one place, with the legal notices already set on every invoice. You handle the paperwork at launch, and the tool takes over from there. See the pricing.

Sources

• URSSAF – Auto-entrepreneur
• Single business-formalities window (INPI)
• service-public.fr – Micro-entrepreneur regime
• Personal services (services à la personne)
• impots.gouv.fr – At-home employment and tax credit