What is an on-site tax audit (vérification de comptabilité) in France?

In practice, in France

It needs to be distinguished from the remote accounting review (examen de comptabilité), which is carried out at a distance: the inspector works from their own office on the accounting entries file that has been submitted. Same purpose, different procedure, different safeguards.

The on-site audit opens with a notice, which must leave the business time to be assisted by the adviser of its choice — denying that time invalidates the procedure. It comes with the charter of rights and obligations of the audited taxpayer, and it rests on an oral, adversarial exchange: the business must be able to discuss findings as they arise, not only discover them at the end.

These are procedural safeguards, and they carry real weight: their breach is one of the few ways to get a reassessment cancelled on procedural grounds, regardless of the substance.

In Odoo

What plays out during an audit was decided long before: the irreversible sequence of entries, supporting documents kept attached to each entry, and consistency between the general ledger and the filed returns.

Testing your accounting entries file once a year, outside of any deadline pressure, is the best preparation exercise there is.

Common mistakes

• Giving up the right to assistance, or letting the audit start too early.
• Responding case by case without keeping a record of the exchanges.
• Discovering, during the audit, that the accounting entries file is rejected by the tax authorities’ own tool.