French tax raids under Article L. 16 B: what the taxpayer can do during the search, and the two appeals to lodge within fifteen days.
It is shortly after six in the morning. Officers of the French tax authority (Direction générale des finances publiques, DGFiP) arrive at the home of a company director, or at the company's premises, together with a judicial police officer. They hand over an order signed the previous day by a liberty and custody judge, walk in, open drawers, copy computers and phones, and question whoever is present. The operation lasts several hours. It ends with the signature of a report and an inventory, often in a state of fatigue and haste, by someone who has not yet spoken to a lawyer.
This is what practitioners call a tax raid, and what the French Tax Procedure Code (Livre des procédures fiscales, LPF) calls a home visit and seizure (visite domiciliaire). It is not a tax audit: it prepares one. Nor is it a criminal search, although it borrows its forms and may lead to one. Everything is decided within a very short window: a few hours during the raid, then fifteen days to file the appeals. The steps taken in that period shape the rest of the case, on the tax side as on the criminal side. For foreign groups and internationally mobile individuals, the stakes are often higher still, because the raid is frequently used to prove that a foreign company is in fact run from France, or that a declared non-resident still has the centre of his or her affairs there.
We first set out the legal framework and what distinguishes a tax raid from other procedures. We then describe the taxpayer's rights during the operation, followed by the two appeals available before the First President of the Court of Appeal. Finally, we examine how the tax authority may use the documents seized, in the tax audit that follows and, where relevant, before the criminal courts.
I. What is a French tax raid and when can the tax authority use it?
A. The framework of Article L. 16 B of the Tax Procedure Code
A procedure reserved for presumed serious fraud. Article L. 16 B of the Tax Procedure Code allows the judicial authority, on application by the tax authority, to authorise tax officers holding at least the rank of inspector, and specially empowered, to search for evidence of certain conduct by visiting "any premises, even private ones" [en tous lieux, même privés] and seizing the related documents "whatever their medium" [quel qu'en soit le support]. The text targets presumptions that a taxpayer is evading the assessment or payment of income tax, corporate tax or turnover taxes by buying or selling without invoices, using or issuing invoices that do not relate to real transactions, or knowingly omitting accounting entries or recording inaccurate or fictitious ones. It also covers inaccurate returns filed in order to obtain business tax credits.
The liberty and custody judge as safeguard. Each raid must be authorised by an order of the liberty and custody judge (juge des libertés et de la détention, JLD) of the court in whose jurisdiction the premises are located. The text requires the judge to verify "in a concrete manner" that the application is well founded, and requires the tax authority to submit all the information in its possession that may justify the raid. The order must state the factual and legal elements that, in the case at hand, give rise to a presumption of fraud. It specifies the address of the premises, the name of the authorised officer, any authorisation to gather information on site, and the taxpayer's right to call on a lawyer of his or her choice. In practice, the order is issued ex parte, without any adversarial hearing: the taxpayer discovers it when it is served on the doorstep.
A text amended in 2026 and rewritten on 1 January 2027. Article L. 16 B is in force in the version resulting from Law No. 2026-534 of 25 June 2026 on combating social security and tax fraud (Article 88). It will be rewritten on 1 January 2027, under the same number, by Ordinance No. 2025-1247 of 17 December 2025 recodifying VAT into the Code of taxes on goods and services (Article 14). This article describes the law applicable on 12 November 2026; we will update it once the consolidated version for 1 January 2027 is published, flagging any substantive change.
B. How a tax raid differs from other procedures
Neither a tax audit nor a criminal search. A tax raid is an evidence-gathering procedure. It cannot, on its own, give rise to an assessment: the tax authority may rely on the information gathered only after returning the seized documents and opening either a personal tax audit or an audit of the accounts (LPF, Art. L. 16 B, VI). The French Supreme Court (Cour de cassation) draws a practical consequence: since the raid is distinct from the assessment procedure, the tax authority is not bound, during the raid, by the safeguards specific to an audit of the accounts (Cass. com., 26 April 2017, No. 16-12.857). The Council of State (Conseil d'État), for its part, treats the raid and the subsequent audit as two stages of one assessment procedure, which is why the annulment of the former affects the latter (CE, opinion, Section, 1 March 1996, No. 174245, SARL France Finibéton).
The boundary with the tax police. A raid under Article L. 16 B is carried out by tax officers under the supervision of a civil judge. It must not be confused with a criminal investigation conducted by tax officers empowered to act as judicial police, at the request of the public prosecutor or under a letter rogatory from an investigating judge (Code of Criminal Procedure, Art. 28-2). In that second case, the search is governed by criminal procedure, with its own safeguards (police custody, voluntary interview, defence rights before the criminal judge). The first reflex, when officers arrive, is therefore to read the document on which they rely: a JLD order referring to Article L. 16 B opens the procedure and the appeals described here; a prosecutor's request or a letter rogatory opens the criminal field, where we act alongside a criminal defence lawyer.
A procedure common in cross-border cases. Published decisions show that tax raids are frequently used to establish that a foreign company actually carries on its business from France without reporting its profits there, or that a taxpayer presented as non-resident keeps the centre of his or her business interests in France. The two Supreme Court judgments discussed below concerned Luxembourg and Dutch companies suspected of corporate tax and VAT fraud in France. The raid then targets the French premises where evidence of effective management may be found: offices of a subsidiary, a director's home, the office of a service provider.
II. What should you do during the raid?
A. Check the order, call a lawyer, observe the operation
Formal rules binding on the officers. A raid may not begin before 6 a.m. or after 9 p.m. It takes place in the presence of the occupant of the premises or his or her representative; failing that, the judicial police officer requisitions two independent witnesses (LPF, Art. L. 16 B, III). The order is served orally on site, and the occupant receives a full copy against a receipt or signature on the report. It is enforceable on production of the original. The judicial police officer, appointed under the judge's authority, attends the operation, keeps the judge informed, and ensures that professional secrecy and the rights of the defence are respected. The judge who authorised the raid may attend in person and may suspend or stop it at any time.
The right to call a lawyer, which suspends nothing. The order mentions the taxpayer's right to call on a lawyer of his or her choice, but exercising that right "does not suspend the operations". The tax authority infers that the inability to reach the lawyer, or the lawyer's late arrival, has no effect on the validity of the raid (BOI-CF-COM-20-20-20120912, § 70 and 80). The call must therefore be made immediately, before any discussion with the officers. The lawyer present does not direct the operation; he or she advises the client, helps formulate observations and ensures they are recorded. Our recommendation is never to wait for the end of the raid to seek advice: the grounds for the appeals are built during the operation itself.
What to watch and note. Only the occupant, his or her representative, the judicial police officer and the authorised officers may examine documents before seizure. It is useful to note the time of arrival and departure, the rooms searched, the devices copied, the documents taken, the persons questioned and any incident. These notes, taken as events unfold, are often the only way to show, fifteen days later, that a seizure exceeded the scope of the authorisation or that a protected document was taken.
B. To answer or not: questioning requires consent
A strictly framed power. Where the order so provides, officers may gather information and explanations on site from the occupant or his or her representative and, if present, from the taxpayer named in the order, "after informing them that their consent is required" (LPF, Art. L. 16 B, III bis). Statements are recorded in a written account appended to the report, signed by the officers, the person questioned and the judicial police officer. Consent is noted, as is any refusal to sign. According to the tax authority's own guidelines, officers may not question other persons present, such as employees, and questioning may take place neither by summons nor elsewhere (BOI-CF-COM-20-20, § 160 and 190).
Our position. Consent is not a formality: it is the legal condition for questioning. A person woken at dawn, without advice, is in no position to answer questions on invoicing flows, the management of a foreign company or the origin of funds. We recommend politely declining the interview until the lawyer has been consulted, and having that choice recorded. Declining does not prevent the raid and is not an obstruction of a tax audit. It preserves the ability to explain matters later, in writing, within the adversarial tax audit that follows, with full knowledge of the documents seized.
C. Electronic data, seals, report and inventory
Seizure of data. Seizures now mostly concern data: mailboxes, accounting files, remote storage, phones. Where the occupant obstructs access to electronic data, "including remote" data, this is recorded in the report and the officers may copy and seize the device, placed under seal; they then have fifteen days, which the judge may extend, to access the data in the presence of the judicial police officer, the occupant being informed that he or she may attend (LPF, Art. L. 16 B, IV bis). The Supreme Court allows the tax authority to seize an indivisible medium in full, such as an email mailbox, where some of its contents relate at least in part to the suspected conduct; it is then for the taxpayer to identify and produce, item by item, the documents claimed to be protected, stating the reason for each (Cass. com., 8 March 2016, No. 14-26.929).
What to have recorded. A report describing the operation is drawn up on the spot, with the inventory of seized documents appended; it is signed by the officers, the judicial police officer and the occupant or representative, any refusal to sign being noted (LPF, Art. L. 16 B, IV). Signing the report does not mean approving its content. We recommend signing with precise reservations: seizure of correspondence with a lawyer, of personal documents unrelated to the authorisation, of third-party documents, of files copied wholesale, or of statements taken without informed consent. Such reservations are not a precondition for appealing, but they fix the facts at the moment they occur.
Documents handed over. A copy of the report and inventory is given to the occupant, and another is sent by registered mail to the presumed author of the conduct (LPF, Art. L. 16 B, V). These documents state the time limit and the means of appeal. The date on which they are handed over or received starts the fifteen-day period for the appeal against the conduct of the operations: it must be noted, and the envelope or receipt kept.
III. Which appeals must be filed within fifteen days?
A. The appeal against the authorisation order
A remedy born of a judgment against France. Until 2008, the JLD's order could only be challenged by an appeal on points of law to the Supreme Court. The European Court of Human Rights held that this alone did not secure effective judicial review, in fact and in law, of the lawfulness of the decision ordering the raid, and found a violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention (ECtHR, 21 February 2008, Ravon and Others v. France, No. 18497/03, § 28). The legislature responded with Article 164 of Law No. 2008-776 of 4 August 2008 on the modernisation of the economy, which introduced the appeal before the First President of the Court of Appeal and the separate challenge to the conduct of the operations. The same text provides that these remedies exclude any review, by the court hearing the tax dispute on the merits, of the regularity of the operations.
Time limit, form and effect. The order may be appealed before the First President of the Court of Appeal within whose jurisdiction the judge authorised the measure, by a declaration lodged with or sent to the court registry, by registered mail or electronically, within fifteen days of the order being handed over, received or served (LPF, Art. L. 16 B, II). The parties are not required to be represented by a lawyer. The appeal does not suspend the operations. The first-instance registry forwards the file to the Court of Appeal, where the parties may consult it: this is often the first opportunity to read the tax authority's application and the evidence it put before the judge.
What can be challenged. The First President rules afresh on the facts and the law. The appeal makes it possible to challenge the lawful origin of the documents produced to the judge, the reality of the presumed fraud, the inadequacy of the reasoning, or the lack of concrete review of the application. It also allows the argument that the raid was disproportionate in light of the right to respect for one's home under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. In our experience, such appeals are not won on generalities: they are won by a close reading of the application, identifying the document whose origin is not established or the reasoning that does not withstand the facts.
B. The challenge to the conduct of the operations
A second, separate remedy. The First President also hears challenges to the conduct of the search and seizure operations, filed in the same form within fifteen days of the report or inventory being handed over or received (LPF, Art. L. 16 B, V). This challenge does not suspend anything either. It addresses irregularities committed during the operation: breach of the time limits, absence of the judicial police officer, seizure of documents outside the scope of the authorisation, statements taken without consent, an incomplete or unsigned inventory.
Lawyer-client privilege. This is one of the most frequent grounds. The Supreme Court quashed an order that had upheld the seizure of lawyers' fee notes on the ground that they were mere accounting documents, whereas it was argued that the fee notes were attached to a lawyer's letter: documents attached to privileged correspondence are protected by professional secrecy just as the correspondence itself (Cass. com., 6 December 2016, No. 15-14.554). The same judgment holds that the addressee of seized correspondence, even if seized at a third party's premises, has standing and an interest to challenge the seizure, even if not named in the order. This directly concerns directors and advisers whose communications are seized at a company's offices.
The burden of identifying documents. The challenge only succeeds if the taxpayer enables the judge to review the documents in dispute. In the judgment of 8 March 2016 cited above, the request for annulment failed because the company did not produce the documents it sought to exclude. The useful work therefore consists in exploiting the inventory and the copies handed over, extracting protected documents or those outside the authorisation, classifying them, and giving reasons item by item. It is demanding work, and it must start the day after the raid to fit within fifteen days.
C. Appeal to the Supreme Court and the fate of annulled seizures
Fifteen days, again. The First President's order may be appealed to the Supreme Court, again within fifteen days (LPF, Art. L. 16 B, II and V). Before the Supreme Court, representation by a member of the Supreme Court bar (avocat aux Conseils) is mandatory.
The effects of annulment. Where the authorisation order is set aside, or the seizure of some or all documents is annulled, copies of the documents concerned are destroyed; if a further appeal is lodged, they are kept by the tax authority, which may neither consult, use nor rely on them until a final decision (LPF, Art. L. 16 B, II and V). On the tax side, the Council of State holds that annulment of the authorisation bars the tax authority from relying on the information gathered, and affects the assessment to the extent that it derives from that information; it has no effect on adjustments based on information obtained independently (CE, opinion, Section, 1 March 1996, No. 174245, cited above). The value of an appeal is therefore measured by the share of the reassessment that actually rests on the seized documents.
IV. After the raid: the tax audit and the criminal risk
A. Return of documents and opening of the audit
Six months to return documents. Seized documents are returned to the occupant within six months of the raid; where criminal proceedings are brought, their return is authorised by the competent judicial authority (LPF, Art. L. 16 B, V). The tax authority may rely on the information gathered only after that return and after opening a personal tax audit or an audit of the accounts (LPF, Art. L. 16 B, VI). If the documents could not be returned because of the taxpayer, they become usable thirty days after a formal notice listing the steps taken to return them. Refusing to collect the documents is therefore not a strategy: it means giving up knowledge of the file the tax authority is building.
Data processing. Where computerised accounts were seized, the tax authority must disclose to the taxpayer, at the latest with the proposed reassessment, the nature and results of the data processing carried out on them that support the adjustments (LPF, Art. L. 16 B, VI). This disclosure is a useful checkpoint: it makes it possible to test the method used to reconstruct turnover and to challenge extrapolations.
B. Criminal complaint and mandatory referral to the prosecutor
The shift to criminal proceedings. A tax raid often precedes reassessments carrying 80% penalties for fraudulent practices or undeclared activity. Where the tax reassessed exceeds EUR 100,000 and carries certain penalties, the tax authority must report the facts to the public prosecutor (LPF, Art. L. 228). For other cases, a criminal complaint still requires the binding opinion of the tax offences commission (commission des infractions fiscales), except where there are strong presumptions combined with a risk that evidence may disappear. The tax and criminal proceedings then run in parallel, before different judges and on different timetables. Like Article L. 16 B, Article L. 228 will be rewritten on 1 January 2027 by Ordinance No. 2025-1247.
A coordinated defence. Positions taken in the tax audit weigh on the criminal case, and vice versa. An explanation given too early to an auditor can become an admission; a settlement or an acceptance of reassessments has effects before the criminal court. We defend the tax side of these cases together with a criminal defence lawyer, from the raid onwards, so that every written submission is designed for both proceedings. Our page on tax fraud and criminal tax law describes this organisation, and our page on tax litigation covers the subsequent proceedings before the tax courts.
Conclusion
The tax raid is the most intrusive procedure available to the French tax authority. It is supervised by a judge, but that supervision only becomes effective if the taxpayer invokes it, within fifteen-day time limits that leave no room for hesitation. The remedies introduced after the Ravon judgment make it possible to challenge the legitimacy of the raid and the regularity of each seizure, provided that the material needed to do so has been preserved from the first day.
Our conviction is that the outcome of these cases is largely decided in the first hours. An interview accepted without advice, a report signed without reservation, a mailbox seized without anyone noting that it contained lawyer correspondence: each is a lost opportunity that later litigation will not always recover.
Our recommendation is clear: call a lawyer as soon as the officers arrive, read the order to identify the legal basis of the raid, decline the interview until advice has been taken, have precise reservations recorded in the report, note the date each document is handed over, then prepare the appeal and the challenge without delay. If a raid took place in recent days, time is already running: contact us without delay.
Frequently asked questions
Can I refuse a French tax raid?
No. When the tax authority produces an order of the liberty and custody judge issued under Article L. 16 B of the Tax Procedure Code, the raid goes ahead, even in the occupant's absence, in the presence of two witnesses. The taxpayer may, however, call a lawyer, decline to answer the officers' questions, record reservations in the report, then challenge both the order and the conduct of the operations before the First President of the Court of Appeal within fifteen days.
Do I have to answer the officers' questions during the raid?
No. Officers may only gather information from the occupant or the taxpayer concerned after informing them that their consent is required, and statements are recorded in a written account appended to the report. We recommend declining the interview until a lawyer has been consulted and having that choice recorded; this does not prevent you from explaining matters later, in writing, during the tax audit.
What is the deadline to challenge a French tax raid?
Fifteen days for each of the two remedies. The appeal against the authorisation order must be filed within fifteen days of the order being handed over, received or served; the challenge to the conduct of the operations must be filed within fifteen days of the report or inventory being handed over or received. Both are brought before the First President of the Court of Appeal and neither suspends the operations.
Can the officers seize my correspondence with my lawyer?
No. Correspondence between a lawyer and a client is protected by professional secrecy, and the French Supreme Court holds that this protection extends to documents attached to it, such as fee notes. If such documents were seized, this should be recorded in the report and their annulment requested, item by item, in the challenge to the conduct of the operations.
What happens to the tax assessment if the raid is annulled?
The tax authority can no longer rely on the information gathered during the annulled raid, and reassessments derived from it are irregular. Reassessments based on other information, obtained independently of the raid, remain possible. The value of an appeal is therefore measured by the share of the tax case that actually rests on the seized documents.
Does a French tax raid lead to criminal prosecution?
Not necessarily, but the risk is real. Where the tax reassessed exceeds EUR 100,000 and carries certain penalties, the tax authority must report the facts to the public prosecutor. The defence must then be conducted on both the tax and the criminal fronts, with a tax lawyer and a criminal defence lawyer, from the raid onwards.
