Here’s an explaination of what you need to do as a Profession Libérale to complete all of the required paperwork, updated for 2021 as they changed the system slightly.
Generating the 2035 form
As I’ve mentioned in some of my previous posts, I am affiliated with an Association Agréée for Profession Libérale and had registered for a training day with them on the 2035 form that needs to be generated for the taxman at the end of the financial year. Unfortunately I was the only person who wanted to attend, so it was cancelled, so I made an appointment to see the director of the Association who was holding a “permanence” in Perpignan. Doubly unfortunately, she is not an accountant, and of the 3 things that I asked her, she told me 2 wrong, as I am working on a cash accounting basis and she was talking about the other system where you enter invoices etc as they are issued. I guessed it wasn’t right and rang an accountant, who assured me that the way I was accounting for VAT was correct, and that the way I had done the UK VAT entries was also fine.
She was right that I had put the fees for the Association Agréée under the wrong code, so that they were appearing in the wrong column on the final form.
As I use BNC Express the process is fairly straightforward:
1. The first thing is to make sure that your books are reconciled with your bank statements and receipts.
2. You need to wait until all of the updates to the software have been sent through, as otherwise the amount that you reclaim for mileage will be wrong. I find it baffling that the French Government publishes these rates at the end of a year and not the beginning but I guess they must be basing it on the actual cost of fuel or something. The updates tend to happen in April. Don’t carry across the entry for mileage until this has happened or it will be wrong, and if you have make sure you delete the old entry and add the new.
3. Once the software is up to date and the books reconciled go to the BNC Express site and follow the instructions on how to finish off the accounts. You will need your URSSAF contributions breakdown to hand for this so that you can fill in the various entries required.
4. Next you can go ahead and generate the 2035 form which is on the Etats Comptables tab of the BNC Express software. Fill in the information on the front page and it should automatically fill in the other pages through the form, but check them. Then look at the Examen page and click on Afficher. If there is an anomaly it will appear here and you can go back into the accounts and fix it. Finally generate the EDI file ready to send it off.
5. Then go to your account on the Association Agréée account and upload the file, press send and wait to see if it is accepted.
6. They will check it and may ask you to send across a dump file from your accounts for them to check whether you have done them right. When the green light appears on the “Liasse”, it means that your paperwork has been accepted and sent to the Service des Impots, but it can take a few days.
TVA Declaration
However it doesn’t stop here if you are VAT registered, you need to find the Etats de TVA in BNC Express and head for the Impots site to file your VAT return. Once there it’s pretty much as question of filling in the boxes from the form that you have, and either sending payment or claiming a refund, although small refunds will just be offset against the account and not repaid into the bank account.
Then download the declaration and send it to your Association Agréée with your 2035.
DSI Declaration
The DSI declaration on Net-entreprises has been abolished from 2021. There is now an extra page in your tax return where you need to fill in the compulory social contributions that you have paid “Cotisations sociales obligatoires” which go in box DSCA. The tax office send it and your profit figure to URSSAF and CIPAV to let them know how much you made last year, so that they can calculate what you should have paid and adjust contributions accordingly. It can be scary if you’ve paid too little the year before, as they want you to make it up and pay the same amount again for this year in the 6 months that are left, so it’s a good idea to salt some money away in readiness if you have an inkling that you are under paying. You can also let them know via the online accounts if you are expecting to make a lot more or a lot less than the year before and they will adjust your contributions accordingly.