French VAT Recodification

With effect from 1 January 2026, the provisions relating to value added tax (VAT) have been legally transferred from the French Tax Code (Code général des impôts – CGI) to the Code of Taxes on Goods and Services (Code des impositions sur les biens et services – CIBS).

Published in the Journal officiel on 20 December 2025, the VAT recodification results from Ordinance No. 2025-1247 of 17 December 2025. This ordinance also transposes into French law certain aspects of the European “VAT in the Digital Age” (VIDA) reform, adopted in March 2025, and introduces various editorial and drafting adjustments to the CIBS.

Created in 2022, the CIBS was designed to consolidate all taxes relating to goods and services in France within a single code. The integration of VAT into the CIBS therefore represents a major milestone in this legislative project and aims to improve the readability of tax rules by centralising the applicable statutory provisions in one single body of law. The introduction of new terminology, intended to clarify or supplement certain VAT-specific concepts, also seeks to reduce the frequent misunderstandings encountered by taxpayers.

From 1 September 2026, VAT-specific references appearing on sales invoices and referring to provisions of the CGI will have to be updated in order to refer to the corresponding articles of the CIBS. Businesses will benefit from a transitional period and must comply with this new requirement no later than 31 December 2027, which marks the end of the tolerance period. Other accounting and commercial documents may also be affected by this update (quotations, contracts, general terms and conditions, etc.).

It is important to note that French Tax administrative guidelines previously published in the BOFiP remain binding on the tax authorities, even if the legal references have not yet been updated.

In this context, taxable persons are encouraged to identify, at an early stage, the references requiring adjustment, in particular within the settings of their accounting systems and ERP tools, in light of the VAT recodification. The correspondence tables between the provisions of the CGI and those of the CIBS were published and are available on the Legifrance website.

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