France, the status of an agency, what the official pages say on mandate, contract and VAT

Nothing on the French administration's pages names creator management. One possible status for what an agency does is the commercial agent; whether it fits a given agency is not something these pages decide. The page "Devenir agent commercial indépendant", verified on 6 February 2026, defines it as a mandatary charged, permanently and independently, with negotiating and possibly concluding contracts of sale, purchase, hire or services in the name and on behalf of a principal. The agent has no employment contract and no subordination to the principal.

On the contract, the page is explicit: a written contract is not compulsory. It adds that in the absence of a written document it can be useful to set down, in a simple document, at least the object of the mandate and the agent's remuneration. Remuneration is freely set by the parties, most often a commission calculated as a percentage of the turnover the agent generates. The page also distinguishes the commercial agent from the "apporteur d'affaires", who only introduces clients and, unlike the agent, has no right to the end-of-contract indemnity, which the page gives as equal to two or three years of commission.

Registration depends on the legal form. A sole trader, including a micro-entrepreneur, registers with the RSAC within 15 days of starting; a company registers with the RSAC and the RCS before starting, both online through the guichet des formalités des entreprises.

On VAT, two regimes are described separately. The franchise page, verified on 1 January 2026, sets two conditions for services: previous calendar year turnover of 37,500 euros or less, and current year turnover of 41,250 euros or less, the raised threshold; above the first, VAT applies from 1 January of the following year, above the second from the first day of the overrun. For the sale of goods the two figures are 85,000 and 93,500 euros. The regimes page, verified on 21 February 2026, adds that the 2026 thresholds are unchanged and that the single 25,000 euro threshold proposed in the 2025 finance law was abandoned. Above the franchise, impots.gouv.fr describes the simplified regime: turnover between 37,500 and 254,000 euros for services, between 85,000 and 840,000 euros for goods, and VAT due below 15,000 euros, with two half-yearly instalments and an annual return.

This dispatch reports what the official pages say. Whether a given agency is a commercial agent, an employer, or something else is a question of facts and of advice, and neither page answers it.