As a freelancer or small business, you have made the choice of settling in France.
As you know, you will need a registered address in order to start to operate legally. If you were thinking about using your private address, as long as it’s located within the French territory, there is a series of things you’ll need to take into account.
If you register the address of your home in the Commercial Court, it means that your private address will be the address of your business too. In that regard, you can save yourself the time-consuming task of finding the right premises for your business..
While this option can appear as highly attractive if you don’t see the need to have a physical space for your company, as well as if you have a limited budget and don’t want to spend money on an office, it also entails a series of disadvantages:
Your personal address will be known by everybody. This means that perhaps your customers decide to show up in your own home, which can lead to uncomfortable situations and a lack of privacy. Moreover, nowadays with Google Street View, everybody can see where you live, and being based in a bad location won’t do any favour to your business.
If you are subject to a rental contract, there may be limitations concerning your rights to carry out a professional activity in the place, meaning that you’ll need an authorisation from your landlord. In addition, the reception of clients, hosting employees, and the storage of merchandises is strictly restricted in certain districts.
The maximum time to use your personal address is subject to the condominium regulations, and can be limited to 5 years, after which you’ll have to inscribe a new address in the registry of the Commercial Court. Likewise, this situation will occur in case of moving to a different place.
Is your company integrated by more than one member? If that’s the case, you can only register the address of one of you, which will be the one of the director compulsorily for it to be legal. You may not have more than one head office registered address.
CONCLUSION
Once you have made an analysis of the pros and cons of using your private address as your business registered address, it’s up to you to take the ultimate decision, bearing in mind that this option is not truly viable in the long run, in spite of being seemingly suitable for a beginning. However, if you choose to domicile your company in a business centre, you don’t even have to be physically based in France to enjoy a prestigious registered address in the country.