France BSPCE & AGA (RSU) Calculator

BSPCE (bons de souscription de parts de créateur d'entreprise) are warrants: you pay a strike price to buy shares at a value fixed when they were granted, the classic startup-options mechanic. AGA (attribution gratuite d'actions) are free shares that vest with no strike price, France's direct equivalent of an RSU grant. They're taxed on completely different mechanics: BSPCE has one flat-rate exercise tax that depends on your tenure at grant, AGA has a barème-progressif acquisition tax with a 50% abattement up to €300,000/year. Both then use the same 31.4% PFU rate for any later sale gain.

It's a statutory incentive to reward early, long-tenured employees: if you had 3 or more years of service at the company on the date your BSPCE were granted, the exercise gain is taxed at a flat 12.8% (or you can opt into barème progressif if that's lower for you). Under 3 years, the rate jumps to 30%. In this calculator's default example, 2 000 shares exercised at a 1 € strike against a 40 € value creates a 78 000 € exercise gain, taxed at 9 984 € in income tax alone at the 3+ year rate, before the 18.6% prélèvements sociaux on top.

It's a cumulative, per-beneficiary, per-calendar-year cap across all your AGA plans, not a per-grant limit. The portion of your acquisition gain up to €300,000 gets a 50% abattement before barème progressif applies (after a minimum 1-year holding period, no separate conservation period required since the 2018 reform). Any acquisition gain above €300,000 in that calendar year is taxed as ordinary salary with no abattement at all. In the default example, 500 shares at 45 € creates a 22 500 € gain, comfortably under the threshold, so the full amount gets the 50% abattement.

It's a payroll-style levy unique to actions gratuites, 10% on the full acquisition gain, on top of ordinary income tax and the 18.6% prélèvements sociaux. BSPCE has no equivalent charge on the exercise gain. This is one of the real structural differences between the two instruments, not a modeling choice, an AGA grant of identical pre-tax value can carry a meaningfully higher acquisition-tax bill than an equivalent BSPCE grant.

Yes. Once you've exercised (BSPCE) or vested (AGA), any further gain from that point to your eventual sale price is an ordinary plus-value de cession de valeurs mobilières, taxed at the standard 2026 PFU rate of 31.4% (12.8% income tax + 18.6% prélèvements sociaux) for both instruments alike. The two instruments only differ in how the first tax event, exercise or acquisition, is calculated.

Yes for both, and it's the single biggest cash-flow risk with illiquid startup equity. BSPCE exercise tax is due when you exercise, based on the value that day, regardless of whether there's a market to sell shares into. AGA acquisition tax is due when the shares vest, again independent of any sale. Unlike India's DPIIT startup deferral, France has no equivalent standard deferral mechanism for either instrument modeled here, so plan for the cash need before you exercise or before shares vest.

No. Holding eligible shares inside a Plan d'Épargne en Actions (PEA) can exempt cession gains from income tax entirely (social levies still apply) after a 5-year holding period, a materially better outcome than the 31.4% PFU shown here. That wrapper eligibility and mechanics are out of scope for this calculator; if your equity plan supports a PEA transfer, that's worth exploring separately with an expert-comptable.

Yes. The 18.6% prélèvements sociaux rate (up from 17.2%) and the resulting 31.4% PFU took effect 1 January 2026 after a CSG increase in the loi de finances pour 2026, which also adjusted BSPCE tenure-calculation rules for corporate group subsidiaries (not modeled here). BSPCE's 12.8%/30% exercise rates and AGA's €300,000 threshold and 50% abattement are unchanged from prior years. Single-filer baseline (1 part), no quotient conjugal/familial.