Add or remove French TVA at the 20% standard, 10%/5.5% reduced, or 2.1% super-reduced rate.
France's standard TVA rate is 20%. A 10% rate applies to restaurants and renovation work; 5.5% to groceries, books, and energy; 2.1% (super-reduced) to newspapers and certain reimbursed medicines.
Illustrative estimate only, using simplified/rounded 2026 French tax figures — not tax advice. Always confirm with impots.gouv.fr or a licensed tax/financial advisor.
TVA (taxe sur la valeur ajoutée) is France's VAT, charged at a standard rate of 20% on most goods and services. Three reduced rates apply to specific categories: 10% for items like restaurant meals and some transport, 5.5% for most food products, energy-saving home renovation work, and books, and a special 2.1% "super-reduced" rate reserved for a small list of items including certain prescription medicines and press publications.
Like VAT elsewhere in the EU, TVA is collected at each stage of production and distribution, with registered businesses reclaiming the TVA they paid on their own purchases (input tax) and remitting only the difference between that and TVA collected on sales (output tax) to the French tax authority. The end consumer ultimately bears the full cost, but the mechanism prevents TVA from compounding at each stage of a supply chain.
French VAT law assigns different rates by category — groceries fall mostly under the 5.5% reduced rate, while eating in a restaurant is generally taxed at the 10% rate, reflecting a policy distinction between food-as-goods and food-as-service that several EU countries make similarly.
Broadly yes for mainland France and Corsica (with some rate variations in Corsica), but France's overseas departments and territories (such as Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Réunion) have their own distinct, generally lower TVA rates and rules.
Businesses below the micro-enterprise turnover threshold benefit from the "franchise en base de TVA," meaning they neither charge TVA to customers nor reclaim it on their own purchases — useful simplicity for very small businesses, though it can be a disadvantage when most of their customers are TVA-registered and would rather deal with a business that can issue proper TVA invoices.
Import TVA is generally due at the French rate on goods brought in from outside the EU, typically collected at customs or through the seller's TVA registration for online purchases, depending on the value and how the transaction was structured.