ATVAI: The French Customs E-Service That Shows You Exactly What Import VAT You Owe

What ATVAI actually is (and is not)

"Données ATVAI" is a dashboard inside your douane.gouv.fr professional account. It consolidates every import declaration cleared under your French VAT number during a given month, and gives you the exact figures to drop into Box A4 of your CA3 return. The full VAT rules in France cover the legal basis for this mechanism.

It is not a VAT calculator. It is not a legal validation of your declarations. And it will not catch errors made by your customs broker at clearance.

Why it matters for non-French importers

If your company is established outside France and sells goods cleared in French territory, you almost certainly operate under the import VAT reverse-charge mechanism. No cash paid to Customs; the VAT is declared and deducted on the same CA3 line. Check the VAT in France guide for the applicable French VAT rates.

The risk: under-declaring (Customs will reassess) or over-declaring (you inflate your deductible VAT without basis). ATVAI gives you a single source of truth, directly from Customs' own systems, to reconcile against:

1. The commercial invoices from your supplier
2. The declaration summary (RDE / relevé de déclarations d'échanges) from your broker
3. The figures your accountant or fiscal representative intends to post on the CA3

What amounts you get — and when

ATVAI returns two levels of data.

Per declaration:

• Declaration number
• Date of the BAE (bon à enlever / release note)
• Clearance system used (DELTA G, XI or H7)

Per commodity line:

• Customs nomenclature (HS code)
• Net amount excluding VAT
• Breakdown by applicable VAT rate (20%, 10%, 5.5%, 2.1%)

The reference period is the BAE date, not the invoice date or the arrival date. A container released on 31 March appears in the March dataset, available from 14 April. This directly feeds Box A4 of your CA3 return for the relevant period.

Getting access (three paths)

Path 1 — Automatic. You already clear goods through DELTA G and your company is linked to an active douane.gouv.fr account. ATVAI data appears automatically in your dashboard from 14 February 2022 onwards.

Path 2 — Company director. Create your professional account on douane.gouv.fr/mon-compte/creer, authenticate via ProConnect, and declare your SIREN. Request the ATVAI authorization inside your space.

Path 3 — Delegated access (non-director). This is the most common case for foreign importers working with a fiscal representative in France. Sign the official membership convention, attach your Kbis extract (or a formal mandate if the signatory is not the legal representative), and submit the package to [email protected] — or to your regional Pôle d'Action Économique (PAE).

The five blind spots of ATVAI

Five situations are not pre-filled. You must post the VAT manually on Box A4 — and document why: See how importing goods in France works.

1. Simplified declarations not regularized before the 14th of M+1
2. Corrections booked after the 14th of M+1 (they land in the next month's dataset)
3. Declarations invalidated after the 14th of M+1
4. Non-taxable imports (exemptions, specific regimes)
5. Exits from suspensive customs regimes (customs warehousing, inward processing, etc.)

Miss one of these, and your CA3 is either under-declared or out of sync with your broker's RDE. Both trigger questions during a tax audit. See our guide on the VAT return in France.