Bringing a foreign employee into France and what the procedure costs
The French prefecture has two months to decide a work authorisation, and the employer tax reaches 2,506.67 euros on a twelve month contract.
The employer, not the worker, applies for the work authorisation in France. The application is filed on the Administration numérique pour les étrangers en France, the Interior Ministry's digital service, and the administration has two months from a complete file to decide. The tax the employer then owes is fixed by article L. 436-10 of the CESEDA.
The procedure is called introduction when the worker is still abroad. It differs from a change of status, which concerns someone already in France on another permit, and it governs the whole mobilisation calendar, from signed contract to arrival on site.
The steps and the real timings
The first question is whether the employment situation can be raised against the application. If the occupation and the geographic zone appear in the annex to the arrêté of 21 May 2025, published in the Journal officiel of 22 May 2025, the administration cannot rely on the state of the labour market. Otherwise the employer must have advertised the vacancy with the public employment service for three consecutive weeks within the preceding six months and show that no suitable application came in.
The foreign labour service then examines four sets of cumulative conditions: the employer's standing on its declaration and social security obligations, the absence of any sanction for illegal work, the conformity of the contract with employment law, and pay at least equal to the SMIC or to the applicable collective agreement minimum.
| Step | Who acts | Calendar marker |
|---|---|---|
| Advertising the vacancy (occupation not listed) | The employer, with France Travail | Three consecutive weeks within the preceding six months |
| Filing the work authorisation application | The employer, on the ANEF service | Before recruitment is concluded |
| Examination | The prefecture's foreign labour service | Two months from a complete file |
| Long stay visa application | The worker, at the French consulate | After a favourable decision |
| Medical examination | Office français de l'immigration et de l'intégration | Within three months of the hire |
The two months are a legal period, not a forecast. The clock starts only once the file is complete, and the item most often missing is an unsigned contract annex or an incomplete pay statement. A file returned as incomplete resets the period without anyone announcing the reset, which is the main gap between the calendar promised to the worker and the calendar that applies. The order of magnitude from one country to the next is compared in the corridor by corridor timeline.
The employer tax, line by line
Hiring a non-EU worker on a contract of three months or more triggers the tax under article L. 436-10 of the CESEDA. Since 1 January 2023 it is no longer collected by the Office français de l'immigration et de l'intégration but by the Direction générale des finances publiques, and it is declared once a year, in arrears, under the rules that apply to value added tax.
The 2026 scale reads from a gross monthly SMIC of 1,823.03 euros.
| Contract length | Gross monthly pay | Tax |
|---|---|---|
| Three to twelve months | Up to 1,823.03 euros | 74 euros |
| Three to twelve months | 1,823.03 to 2,734.55 euros | 210 euros |
| Three to twelve months | Above 2,734.55 euros | 300 euros |
| Twelve months and over | Below 4,557.58 euros | 55 per cent of gross monthly pay |
| Twelve months and over | 4,557.58 euros and above | 2,506.67 euros |
The ceiling is 55 per cent of two and a half times the monthly SMIC. For a skilled operative paid around 2,200 euros gross on a permanent contract the tax comes to 1,210 euros, to be provisioned alongside the ticket and the settling in costs.
The tax falls on the employer. It cannot be passed to the worker, directly or through a deduction from pay, and any arrangement that recovers it from the payroll contradicts both the tax rule and the zero fee principle that governs corridors from Nepal, India and the Philippines.
What makes a start date slip
Recruitment cannot be concluded before the authorisation is issued. A start date announced to a candidate in Kathmandu before the prefecture has decided is a date the employer does not control, and booking flights against it produces avoidable cancellations every year.
The second trap is geographic. The shortage occupation list is organised by region, and the assessment follows the address of the workplace rather than the registered office of the company. A group opening one site in Toulouse and another in Lille runs two different files for the same job title. How the list itself is built is set out in France work authorisation and the shortage occupation list.
France sets no numerical ceiling for economic immigration, unlike Italy or Greece. What bounds the volumes is regional processing and the two month period, as explained in what actually limits the volumes in France.
An employer planning a season or a site opening is better off fixing the region and the exact job title before writing the job description, because that drafting decides which regional annex the file is read against. What Werklist takes on at that stage, and what stays with the company, is set out on our employers page.
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