What is Siege Social and domiciliation?

By Valérie Aston on 29 March 2011 · Viewed 13106 times · Questions

When registering a business in France, you will have to use a legal address for your business called siege social or headquarter. All business types whether entreprise individuelle, auto entrepreneur, SARL or EIRL have a siege social. This address will figure on your extrait Kbis or INSEE attestation for auto-entrepreneurs.

Domiciliation refers to the rental of a trading address for your siege social. According to the type of contract you sign, domiciliation will include redirection of your postal mail, taking phone calls and sending you messages or redirecting calls.

How to use a domiciliation?

If you are renting a property it is always best to get a written authorisation from your landlord to use their property’s address as your legal business address or siege social. Your landlord may not approve of your project by fear of his/her property to be damaged or reluctance to have potential customers coming to the premises. 

In this scenario you can either stop your project, look at renting an office which may be too expensive to start with, or you may look into taking a domiciliation. Domiciliation can cost from 400 euros per year for the address and postal mail redirection. Some companies also offer domiciliation for as little as 9 euros per month for auto entrepreneurs. Here is a list of companies providing domicialition services in Paris: 

Most Pepinieres d’Entreprises in province offer a similar service.


Valerie Lemiere: Start Business in France

About the author: Valérie Aston

I've been helping people who want to start or already have a small business set up in France since 2009. After graduating from a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree, I worked as a senior marketing consultant in the UK and France for various International companies. I worked as a conseillère en création d'entreprises (senior business advisor) for BGE here in France and run this independent business on a daily basis.