French overseas territories

Date: 2026-08-14 · Status: verified — no change needed, and a correction

The conclusion

Charging 0% on a supply from an EU member state to Martinique, Guadeloupe, Réunion, French Guiana or Mayotte is correct. The engine already does this, and nothing needs to change.

An earlier version of this page said the opposite

It claimed three of the five were under-charged at 8.5% and called it a P0. That was wrong. The reasoning that produced it is worth keeping, because the mistake is an easy one to make twice.

TEDB states, under its REGION heading: "The standard VAT rate in Martinique, Guadeloupe and Réunion is 8.5%." That is true. CGI art. 296 sets exactly that rate, and the French tax administration's own doctrine (BOI-TVA-GEO-20-10) confirms it.

The error was inferring from "a VAT of 8.5% exists there" that an EU seller shipping there charges it. It does not follow.

What the Directive actually says

Article 6(1) of Directive 2006/112/EC excludes the French overseas departments from the Directive entirely — alongside Mount Athos, the Canary Islands, the Åland Islands and the Channel Islands. They are outside the EU VAT territory.

So a supply from a member state to any of the five is an export, zero-rated under art. 146. The Commission puts it plainly: goods leaving to these territories are subject to export formalities and are treated as transported outside the EU.

France's 8.5% is a national VAT levied under its own law on supplies made within those territories, or on importation into them — paid by a seller established there, or by the importer at the border. It is not an obligation on an EU seller selling across the border.

This is the same shape the engine already gets right

The Canary Islands charge IGIC. Ceuta and Melilla charge IPSI. Neither is EU VAT, and the engine correctly stops charging Spanish VAT and reports the local tax by name instead — a fix made earlier the same day, on exactly this reasoning.

The failure here was not applying it to France.

What remains genuinely open

Corsica. Unlike the overseas departments, Corsica IS inside France's VAT territory, and it applies special rates under CGI art. 297 — TEDB reports 0.9% and 13%, with 2.1% and 10% on other categories. A Corsican supply currently takes mainland France's rates, and for the categories with a special rate that is wrong. It has no entry in StaticEuTerritories at all.

That one is a real gap, and it is the opposite case: a territory inside the VAT area whose own rates the engine does not carry — the same shape as Madeira and the Azores, which are now handled.

A seller established in one of the five. If this engine ever has to price a local supply inside Martinique, that is a domestic French-overseas regime and not an EU VAT question. Nothing about the current behaviour blocks adding it later.

Sources

Council Directive 2006/112/EC, art. 6(1) and art. 146
CGI art. 294, 296, 296 bis, 297, 298 septies
BOI-TVA-GEO-20-10 and BOI-TVA-GEO-20-40, French tax administration doctrine
European Commission, Territorial scope (VAT Directive guidance)
TEDB REGION heading, captured 2026-08-14