VAT recodified: administrative guidance stays binding, and the BOFiP publishes its glossary

Dates to remember

• 17 December 2025: ordonnance n° 2025-1247 recodifying VAT in Book II of the CIBS, published in the Journal officiel of 20 December 2025.
• 18 February 2026: rescrit BOI-RES-TVA-000253 on the transitional provisions, put to public consultation until 15 April 2026.
• 19 February 2026: loi n° 2026-103, the Finance Act for 2026, several VAT measures of which amend the CGI before the switch.
• 27 July 2026: ordonnance n° 2026-671 (Journal officiel of 28 July 2026). Its article 17 postpones the entry into force to 1 January 2027, extends to 30 June 2028 the acceptance of references to the CGI, and adds paragraph III of article 46 on binding guidance.
• 7 October 2026: ACTU-2026-00126, updated rescrit BOI-RES-TVA-000253 and glossary BOI-ANNX-000514.
• 1 January 2027: the legislative VAT rules leave the CGI for Book II of the CIBS.
• 30 June 2028: the rule of correspondence for references to the CGI applies to deeds, invoices and contracts capable of producing effects until that date (ordonnance n° 2025-1247, art. 46, II). According to the rescrit, a deed that also produces effects beyond that date remains valid for those effects.

The timetable and the article-by-article correspondence table are set out on our reference page, VAT recodified in the CIBS: what changes for real estate. This note deals only with what the publication of 7 October 2026 adds.

Guidance based on the CGI protects under the CIBS too

The protection against changes of administrative position rests on article L. 80 A of the LPF. Its third paragraph is the one used most in practice: "Where the taxpayer has applied a tax provision in accordance with the interpretation that the administration had made known through its published instructions or circulars and had not withdrawn at the date of the transactions concerned, it may not pursue any reassessment by arguing for a different interpretation" (LPF, art. L. 80 A, our translation). Article L. 80 B extends the protection to formal positions on a given set of facts, that is, to individual rescrits, and article L. 64 B rules out the abuse-of-law procedures (articles L. 64 and L. 64 A) where the taxpayer consulted the central tax administration in writing before concluding the deed, supplying all relevant information, and received no reply within six months.

The difficulty was easy to state. Guidance comments on a text. When that text is repealed and rewritten elsewhere, under another number and sometimes in other words, a taxpayer could fear being told that the guidance relied on concerns a provision that no longer exists. The rescrit of 18 February 2026 already answered in the negative, asserting that the guidance remained binding under articles L. 80 A and L. 80 B on the basis of the rule of correspondence of references (art. 46, I, 1°). That was then the position of the tax authorities.

Since the ordonnance of 27 July 2026, the solution appears in the recodification ordonnance itself. Article 46, III of ordonnance n° 2025-1247 provides: "For the purposes of articles L. 64 B, L. 80 A and L. 80 B of the Tax Procedure Code, the administration's interpretation of the provisions of the General Tax Code relating to value added tax transferred to the Code of Taxes on Goods and Services by this ordonnance constitutes an interpretation of the provisions relating to value added tax appearing in that same code" (our translation). The publication of 7 October 2026 restates, in the rescrit itself, that the binding guidance is unchanged.

In practice, according to point 2.1 of the updated rescrit, the following are covered: all BOFiP commentary, answers to parliamentarians' written questions, and positions taken in individual rescrits, provided they have been neither withdrawn nor lapsed before 1 January 2027. A recent example is the guidance on VAT on the margin, which the Government confirmed on 1 October 2026 (our commentary on the ministerial answer): it continues to protect resellers after the switch, even though article 268 of the CGI becomes, in the numbering resulting from the ordonnance of 27 July 2026, articles L. 231-18 to L. 231-20 of the CIBS (the ministerial answer still cites the December 2025 numbering).

For transactions and disputes straddling 1 January 2027, the practical rule follows from the text of article L. 80 A: the binding guidance is the guidance not withdrawn at the date of the transactions concerned. A 2026 supply remains governed by the CGI and by the guidance then published; a 2027 supply falls under the CIBS, but the same guidance continues to protect it until withdrawn. In a claim or a brief, it is prudent to cite the CGI article commented on, the CIBS article that restates it, and article 46, III. The differences between the two versions that we have identified (leases conferring a right in rem, promises to sell) are set out in the section on the recodification that is not strictly substance-neutral of our reference page.

Two decisions that clarify the scope of the protection

To our knowledge, no decision yet concerns article 46, III, whose effects begin on 1 January 2027. Two judgments of the Conseil d'État (France's supreme administrative court) nonetheless set the rules that will govern it.

• Administrative guidance is a safeguard, assessed in its latest state. Article L. 80 A does not give the tax authorities a rule-making power: it creates a safeguard for the taxpayer. A taxpayer may rely on an interpretation, even an unlawful one, as long as the authorities have not formally abandoned it, in its latest formally admitted state; the taxpayer may not rely on it, however, for a tax whose chargeable event follows the annulment of the instrument containing it (CE, Section, 8 March 2013, n° 353782). The date of the chargeable event therefore decides which version of the guidance protects: that is the whole stake of the BOFiP overhaul that will follow the switch.
• Substance-neutral codification is a limit that the court reviews. An enabling clause to codify without changing the substance of the law, subject to the changes needed, notably to respect the hierarchy of norms, does not allow the ordonnance to cure, for the past, breaches of the Constitution or of international commitments; the Conseil d'État annulled the article of the energy code's codification ordonnance that did so (CE, 21 March 2012, n° 349415, EDF). The recodification of VAT rests on a broader enabling clause (loi n° 2023-1322 of 29 December 2023, art. 111, VII), which notably authorises procedural harmonisation and adaptation to EU law. The judgment reminds us that compliance with the enabling clause is reviewed by the court: a change of substance is argued provision by provision, against the powers actually conferred.

The BOI-ANNX-000514 glossary and the new concordance tables

The glossary of the CIBS (in French) lists in alphabetical order the notions used by the new code and, in most cases, links them to the CGI provisions from which they derive. It is the tool that was missing for reading the CIBS with the vocabulary of the CGI: "intra-European" instead of "intra-Community", "inputs", "autonomous sector", "functional" and "derogatory" exemptions. Published in the BOFiP, it expresses the tax authorities' reading; it does not replace the text of the law.

For real estate, the useful entries are the following, with the CIBS article they comment on:

• Immovable property (bien immeuble, L. 231-2): definition taken from article 13b of Council Implementing Regulation (EU) n° 282/2011, autonomous and distinct from that of the French civil code.
• Building (bâtiment, L. 231-5), developed land and undeveloped land (terrain bâti and non bâti, L. 231-6), building land (terrain à bâtir, L. 231-7), the last notion restating point 1° of paragraph 2 of I of article 257 of the CGI.
• Age of a building (ancienneté d'un bâtiment, L. 231-9): the five-year threshold from completion that separates a new building from an old one (L. 231-8).
• Dwelling (logement, L. 231-10): premises used for residential purposes for at least half of their floor area are treated in full as residential premises.
• Accommodation services (prestation d'hébergement, L. 231-22 to L. 231-24): para-hotel services, for tourist or professional use, or residential use.
• Adjustment period for capital goods (période de déduction): twenty years for buildings (L. 231-31), five years for movable assets; and the deemed supply of article L. 231-40, formerly the "social self-supply" (livraison à soi-même sociale).

The concordance tables posted on Légifrance (Autour de la loi, Codification, Tables de concordance, Code des impositions sur les biens et services) are now completed by a table linking each judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union carried into the CIBS to the article that incorporates it. The rescrit notes in this respect that incorporating this case law makes the rights and obligations of taxpayers more visible, without changing the law as the court would have applied it. We check these tables against our CGI to CIBS correspondence table for real estate, which rests on the official table of 28 July 2026.

The VAT measures of the Finance Act for 2026 enter the CIBS

Loi n° 2026-103 of 19 February 2026, the Finance Act for 2026, amended the CGI when the text of the CIBS had already been published. The ordonnance of 27 July 2026 carries these measures into the new code so that they apply without a break on 1 January 2027. Three of them directly concern the firm's clients:

• Social housing: harmonisation of the income ceilings for eligibility to the reduced rates specific to social housing policy (art. 95).
• Intermediate housing: provisions allowing the rate specific to intermediate housing to be applied where housing is made available during the 2030 French Alps Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games (art. 97). The ordinary regime is presented on our page on intermediate rental housing.
• Tax-free shopping operators: stronger obligations on operators of VAT refunds for travellers (opérateurs de détaxe, art. 69, II, 1°).

The other measures carried over concern other sectors: a 5.5% rate for waste management services (art. 81, II) and for district cooling (art. 93), a professional qualification criterion for the 5.5% rate on solar panel installation (art. 94), extension of the 10% rate for forestry and fire-prevention works (art. 96), zero rates for overseas transport (art. 100) and the suspensive regime of octroi de mer (the overseas dock dues) in French Guiana and Mayotte (art. 99, II). Articles 92 and 98 of the Finance Act fall within regulatory powers and do not appear in the legislative part of the CIBS.

Lastly, the ordonnance brings together in title II of Book II the rules on the right to deduct, previously scattered, brings certain wording closer to case law and corrects clerical errors identified during the public consultation. This regrouping explains why the real estate articles move from L. 221-xx to L. 231-xx numbering.