E-Invoicing: The Hidden Toll on France’s Dormant Businesses
One in two French micro-entrepreneurs reports no revenue at all: half the scheme is an intermittent France of trial ventures, side income, and businesses in transition. To that dormant half, the e-invoicing reform says: pick a private operator and appear in the directory, not in order to invoice, but in order to be capable of it someday. The mandatory-subscription argument is wrong, though: thirteen of the nineteen offerings audited by l0g include a genuinely free tier. The real toll lies elsewhere, in a cognitive barrier to entry and in the precariousness of a free tier that has no reason to survive for customers who generate nothing. By scrapping in 2024 the free public gateway promised in 2020, the state locked in the intermediary requirement and put a price on its entrepreneurs’ sleep.