An agricultural equipment dealer in the Loiret has been invoicing Moroccan and Ivorian customers free of VAT for ten years. The statement appears on every invoice, the accounts are kept, the auditor never raised anything. In April 2026 an audit covered three financial years and asked, for a sample of forty consignments, for proof that the goods actually left the territory of the Union. The company produced delivery notes, receipted invoices and email exchanges. None of those documents is among the ones the text accepts. The assessment covered the whole sample, then the extrapolated period.
The VAT exemption on export is not a regime chosen according to where the customer lives. It is a right conditional on proof, the content of which is fixed by a precise and exhaustive regulation. This page sets out what proof is required, who is deemed to export, where the border with an intra-EU supply lies, and why every one of your references will have to change on 1 January 2027.
1. The exemption is not declared, it is proved
Exempt supplies are supplies of goods dispatched or transported by the seller or on its behalf outside the European Union, as well as services directly linked to exportation, and supplies of goods dispatched or transported outside the Union by a purchaser not established in France, or on its behalf (general tax code, article 262, I, 1 and 2). The principle is simple; applying it is not.
The standard evidence is the electronic certification of exit, a message issued by the office of export once the office of exit has confirmed that the goods have left the customs territory of the Union, a mechanism organised by Union law (Implementing Regulation (EU) 2015/2447, article 335). Under domestic law the exporter must hold, for each consignment, the export declaration and copy No 3 endorsed by the customs authority or, under the electronic procedure, that certification of exit (general tax code, annex III, article 74, 1, c). The administrative guidance confirms this and ranks the supporting documents.
What is at stake here is evidence and not substance. The Loiret company had indeed exported. It simply could not show it by the accepted means of proof, which in tax matters produces exactly the same effect as not having exported at all.
2. The five alternative proofs, and the one nobody knows about
Where there is no certification of exit, the text accepts one of the five items of evidence it lists exhaustively (general tax code, annex III, article 74, 1, d). The first is the customs declaration authenticated by the administration of the country of final destination, or a certificate from that administration. The second is any transport document for the goods to the third country, or any document relating to the loading of the means of transport leaving the Union. The third is a customs document endorsed by the customs service for goods subject to specific controls. The fourth concerns excise goods and rests on the movement documents endorsed by the office of exit.
The fifth deserves to be set apart, because it takes almost every accounts department by surprise. For non-excise goods, and only where the supply is to a purchaser not established in France, proof consists of a statement from the carrier or freight forwarder that took the goods in charge, together with proof of payment for the goods by the customer established outside the Union. It is the only means of proof that requires a financial element. A company that grants payment terms and does not keep the record of settlement loses that route without knowing it.
A useful point for light consignments: postal shipments are evidenced by a copy of the CN23 customs declaration, to which the single administrative document may be added above eight thousand euros (same article, 2). Many exporters of spare parts or samples do not know about this route and believe they have no proof when in fact they hold it.
Where proof of exit is missing or customs disputes that the goods were actually exported, see our pages on customs law and on challenging a customs reassessment.
3. Who exports, for tax purposes, and why the question is still open
A common belief has it that the exporter for tax purposes is whoever appears in the exporter box of the customs declaration. That is wrong. The administrative guidance accepts that commission agents acting in their own name but on behalf of others are deemed to carry out the transactions personally and take on the capacity of exporter, unlike disclosed intermediaries. The regulation expressly organises the case where the tax exporter does not appear in that box and then requires it to produce a copy of its invoices endorsed by the person authorised to make customs declarations, annotated with the references of the corresponding declaration (general tax code, annex III, article 74, 1, c, last paragraph).
An uncertainty has to be flagged here rather than hidden. The administrative guidance grounding that analysis is still dated 18 November 2013 and has not been updated since the customs notion of exporter was redefined by Union law. Union law now reserves that capacity to the person established in the Union who has the power to determine, and has determined, that the goods are to leave the territory, or, failing that, to any person established in the Union who is a party to the contract under which the goods are to leave (Delegated Regulation (EU) 2015/2446, article 1(19), as amended by Delegated Regulation (EU) 2018/1063).
The interplay between the customs exporter and the tax exporter has therefore not been clarified by the administration. In a structure involving a commission agent, a purchaser not established in France or a chain sale, this is a point to settle before the transaction, by organising contractually who declares, who holds which document and who passes it to the other. Settling it after the audit means arguing about a characterisation on which the text is silent, which is never a comfortable position.
4. Export or intra-EU supply, two evidence regimes
A sale to a German, Italian or Spanish customer is not an export in customs terms and falls under the regime of intra-EU supplies, whose substantive conditions were tightened by the so-called quick fixes. The exemption requires the acquirer to be a taxable person or a non-taxable legal person identified in another Member State, to have given the supplier its VAT identification number, and the supplier to have filed the recapitulative statement containing the required information (general tax code, articles 262 ter, I, 1, and 289 B).
Those last two requirements are no longer formalities punished by a fine. They are substantive conditions: an unfiled recapitulative statement defeats the right to exemption, unless the failure is duly justified to the administration. Proof of transport follows a rebuttable presumption, which requires two items of non-contradictory evidence issued by parties independent of each other, of the seller and of the acquirer, or, where the acquirer arranges transport, a written statement from the acquirer together with the same combinations (Implementing Regulation (EU) No 282/2011, article 45a, inserted by Implementing Regulation (EU) 2018/1912).
For chain transactions, the transport is ascribed only to the supply made to the intermediary operator, except where the latter has given its supplier a French VAT number (Directive 2006/112/EC, article 36a, and general tax code, article 262 ter, I, 1 bis). The triangular simplification finally requires the invoice to state expressly that article 141 of the directive applies (same code, article 258 D). These rules look technical until the day goods transit through two Member States before leaving the Union, where the characterisation of each link determines who bears the tax.
5. What changes on 1 January 2027
Every article of the general tax code cited in this page disappears. Ordinance No 2025-1247 of 17 December 2025 repeals, with effect from 1 January 2027, articles 262, 262 ter, 258 D and 289 B, transferred into the code des impositions sur les biens et services. The exemption for intra-EU supplies will be read at article L. 213-13, exports at article L. 213-14, goods carried in travellers personal luggage at article L. 213-15, and services directly linked to export at article L. 213-16.
The substance of the law is not changed. What changes is every reference in your general terms of sale, your invoice statements, your accounting procedures, your commission agency contracts and your internal notes. An invoice statement citing a repealed article does not invalidate the exemption, but it tells an inspector that the company documentation has not been maintained, which colours the rest of the audit for a long time.
One caveat is required. Article 49 of the ordinance, as amended by Ordinance No 2026-671 of 27 July 2026, sets entry into force at 1 January 2027, while the display of some of those new provisions mentions a version in force since 1 September 2026. That apparent contradiction will have to be resolved. It has no bearing on the right to exemption; it does have a bearing on any documentation citing an article, one more reason to prepare the switch during 2026 rather than discover it in January.
At EU level, see also our article on Regulation (EU) 2026/2108 and what it changes in the Union Customs Code.
6. What to keep, and for how long
Three periods overlap and the longest governs. The books, registers, documents and records subject to the tax administration rights of communication, inquiry and audit are kept for six years (book of tax procedures, article L. 102 B, I), a period which also applies, from the date of the transaction, to the documents needed to draw up the recapitulative statement (general tax code, article 289 B, IV, B). Accounting documents and supporting records are kept for ten years (commercial code, article L. 123-22), and obligations arising between traders are time-barred after five years (same code, article L. 110-4, I).
The operational rule follows from the longest period: ten years, for the whole file. And the whole file means the export declaration and its certification of exit, the transport document, the invoice, proof of payment where it serves as alternative evidence, and the correspondence explaining the structure where an intermediary is involved. Archiving the accounts alone means keeping the conclusion without the premises.
The firm advises and litigates in tax and customs matters as part of its international trade law practice.
The national recodification is only one step: Regulation (EU) 2026/2108 repeals the 2013 Union Customs Code from 21 September 2027 and phases in a single data platform until 2034. See Le nouveau code des douanes de l’Union : ce qui change concrètement pour les entreprises (Village de la Justice, 22 September 2026, in French).
This analysis is part of a set on exporting from France: start with the legal checklist before you sign, and see also preferential origin and the checklist before you sign.
Frequently asked questions
My customer collects the goods himself. Who exports?
The text expressly provides for this and exempts supplies of goods dispatched or transported outside the Union by a purchaser not established in France, or on its behalf (general tax code, article 262, I, 2). The exemption is therefore available, but the burden of proof stays with the seller, in a situation where it controls neither the transport nor the declaration. That is precisely where the fifth alternative proof becomes valuable, since it combines a statement from the carrier or freight forwarder with proof of payment by the customer established outside the Union. The contract must organise the handover of those documents.
I have lost the certification of exit. Can I still justify the exemption?
Yes, provided you produce one of the five items listed exhaustively (general tax code, annex III, article 74, 1, d). These are not free-form proofs: a delivery note signed by the customer, a photograph of the container or an exchange of emails are not on the list and are worth nothing on their own. The reflex to develop is to check, before shipment and not after, which of those five routes will be available for the transaction, and then to organise collection of the corresponding document from the freight forwarder.
Does transit through another Member State change the applicable regime?
The characterisation depends on where the goods leave the territory of the Union and on how the transport is ascribed, not on the route taken. Goods leaving France, loaded at Rotterdam and bound for Brazil remain an export, but the certification of exit will be issued in the State of the office of exit, which changes the documentary circuit and not the regime. A chain transaction involving an intermediary operator, on the other hand, calls for the rules ascribing transport (Directive 2006/112/EC, article 36a), and there the characterisation of each link really does change.
What if the goods stay in France for assembly before shipment?
What triggers the exemption is the actual exit of the goods from the territory of the Union, not the date of the sale. A gap between legal delivery and physical dispatch is not in itself disqualifying, the Court of Justice of the European Union having held that the classification of a transaction as an export supply cannot depend on compliance with a specific period within which the goods must have left the Union (judgment of 19 December 2013, Case C-563/12). The end of the third month period often quoted concerns only goods carried in travellers personal luggage.
Does the French declaration of exchange of goods still exist?
Not in that form. Since the January 2022 reference month it has been replaced by two distinct obligations: a statistical one, the monthly survey on intra-EU trade in goods, answered only by companies selected in the sample and notified individually, including to report a nil flow, and a tax one, the recapitulative statement, filed spontaneously under article 289 B of the general tax code. Confusing the two leads either to reporting when not required or, more seriously, to failing to file the recapitulative statement on which the exemption depends.