Does an SCI Have to Keep Accounts?

Does an SCI have to keep accounts?

The short answer is that an SCI (société civile immobilière) is not, by the letter of the law, required to keep formal commercial accounts - but in practice almost every SCI must keep proper accounts, for three separate reasons that together leave little room to do without them. The gérant has to render an annual account to the members and cannot do so credibly without at least a minimal record; the tax rules require the members to be able to justify the company's real profit and to produce documents on request; and for an SCI at corporation tax, or with a company among its members, or above certain size thresholds, full commercial accounting is mandatory. This guide sets out the starting position, the obligation to account to the members, the tax requirements, and when full commercial accounting is compulsory - so that a gérant knows exactly what their SCI must do.

The subject matters because "an SCI doesn't have to keep accounts" is a common and dangerous half-truth. It is true that there is no general accounting obligation of the kind that binds a trading company, and a very simple family SCI can be run on a light touch - but a gérant who treats that as permission to keep no records at all exposes themselves to a removal claim, leaves the members unable to defend the company's tax position, and forfeits the protections that proper accounts provide. Knowing the difference between the strict legal minimum and what a prudent SCI actually needs is what keeps a company both compliant and defensible.

The starting point: no general accounting obligation

It is correct that no general legal provision directly requires civil companies to keep accounts conforming to the laws and usages of commerce. The obligation to keep commercial accounts is imposed only on the natural or legal persons who have the status of trader (C. com. Art. L. 123-12), and an SCI, a civil company managing property, is not a trader. The General Chart of Accounts (Plan comptable général) applies to those obliged to establish annual accounts - a balance sheet, a profit-and-loss account and notes - and, read against the texts, keeping accounts is not, in itself, a necessity for an SCI. So the bare legal starting point is that a civil company is not under the trader's accounting obligation.

That is where the half-truth comes from, and also where it stops. In practice, keeping accounts is a management tool for the gérant and makes the annual presentation of the accounts to the members far easier - and, as the following sections show, a combination of company-law, tax and size-related rules turns what is not a general obligation into a practical necessity for almost every SCI. The absence of a general duty means an SCI need not keep the elaborate commercial accounts of a trading company where it is not otherwise required to; it does not mean an SCI can keep no records at all.

But the gérant must account to the members

The first practical requirement comes from company law. When the gérants render account of their management to the members - as they are bound to do at least once a year - they must, in their written report on the company's activity over the past year, indicate in particular the profits realised or foreseeable and the losses incurred or foreseen (C. civ. Art. 1856). The members also have the right to obtain, once a year, communication of the company's books. A gérant cannot give that account, or answer for those figures, without keeping records that support them.

The courts have made the consequence concrete, and it is a removal risk. Any member of a civil company can seek the judicial removal of the gérant for a legitimate cause (C. civ. Art. 1851, paragraph 2), and it has been held that a gérant cannot free themselves from keeping at least a minimal cash accounting, establishing a balance of the expenses and the receipts; sending the members the form relating to the fiscal distribution of the results does not satisfy that obligation. Nor does the family character of the SCI help: the mere fact that the company is a family one does not establish that the members were regularly informed of the management where there was no annual report at all (Cass. com., 23 October 2019, no. 17-31653). So a gérant who keeps no accounts and renders no annual account exposes themselves to removal - the family setting is not a shelter, and a minimal record of receipts and expenses is the floor, not a nicety.

And the tax rules require accounts in practice

The second practical requirement comes from tax. The fiscal rules in effect impose the keeping of accounts on civil companies, because even where the company is not itself subject to corporation tax, its members - who are taxed on the share of the company's profits corresponding to their rights - must be able to justify the amount of the real profit to the administration, which necessarily implies keeping accounting documents. An SCI's members cannot substantiate their own tax returns on the company's income without records behind the figures.

Two specific tax duties reinforce this. Property companies are required to present, on any request of the tax service, the company documents and, where relevant, the accounting documents and other records of receipts and expenses relating to the activity they carry on (LPF Art. L. 94 A) - so the records must exist and be producible on demand. And any civil company subject to VAT that does not keep accounts allowing its turnover to be determined must keep a book, with numbered pages, on which it records day by day, without blank or erasure, the amount of each operation, distinguishing where necessary its taxable operations from those that are not (CGI Art. 286, I, 3°). Between the need to justify the members' taxable share, the obligation to produce records on request, and the VAT book where the company is registered, the tax rules leave an SCI little practical choice but to keep proper accounts.

Does your SCI need to keep accounts?

The requirement depends on the SCI's regime and membership. Pick yours - the check shows what applies.

When commercial accounting is mandatory

For some SCIs the question is settled: full commercial accounting is compulsory, not merely prudent. The obligation to keep commercial accounting is imposed on civil companies that are subject to corporation tax, whether de plein droit or on option, and on those of which one of the members is a legal person subject to corporation tax or an enterprise. So an SCI that has opted for corporation tax must keep full accounts - and, since only commercial accounting allows the depreciation of the building, that accounting is both a compliance duty and the very mechanism through which the corporation-tax regime's main advantage is obtained. Equally, an SCI that has a company or a business among its members must keep commercial accounting, so that the corporate member can bring its share into its own accounts - a trigger that catches many group and holding structures whose owners assume a civil company can stay informal.

A size-based obligation completes the picture, though it rarely reaches a typical family or investment SCI. The commercial-code accounting principles are extended to non-commercial private legal persons carrying on an economic activity - which includes civil companies used to build, market or manage property - where they exceed, at the end of the calendar year or the accounting period, two of three thresholds: a balance-sheet total of €1,550,000, a net turnover or resources of €3,100,000, and fifty employees (C. com. Arts. L. 612-1, R. 612-1). An SCI crossing two of those must keep commercial accounting, and can be required to appoint a statutory auditor and to prepare forward-looking financial documents (C. com. Art. L. 612-2). These figures are current for 2026, and a substantial property-holding SCI approaching them should take advice, but most SCIs sit well below them and are governed by the practical requirements set out above rather than this size threshold.

Why keep proper accounts even if not strictly required?

Beyond compliance, proper accounts protect the company and the members. Pick the point that matters to you - the check explains it.

The practical case for double-entry accounting

Even where an SCI is not obliged to keep full commercial accounts, there is a strong practical case for double-entry accounting, and it goes well beyond ticking a compliance box. Commercial accounting serves as evidence in the event of a dispute: it allows the company's assets to be identified clearly against those of its members, and it avoids the dangerous imbrications between a civil company and other companies linked to it by a common interest - the familiar case of an SCI that lets premises to the family's trading company, where confused records invite an argument that the two estates are one. Clean accounts keep the SCI visibly separate, which is much of the reason for holding property through a company at all.

Double-entry accounting also does two things nothing lighter can. It determines the balance of each shareholder's current account and lets the gérant monitor the calls for funds made on the members - essential in an SCI funded by members' advances, and important on a transfer of shares, where the current account is a separate asset that does not pass with the shares. And it is the only form of accounting that permits depreciation: an SCI that wishes to depreciate its building, which is central to the corporation-tax regime, can do so only by keeping commercial accounts. So the practical recommendation, for all but the simplest cash SCI, is to keep proper double-entry accounts regardless of the strict legal minimum - they satisfy the members' right to information, support the members' tax position, protect the gérant against a removal claim, keep the company's assets distinct, and provide the depreciation an income-tax SCI cannot otherwise claim. The legal minimum is low; the prudent standard is a proper set of accounts.

Accounting obligations of an SCI - at a glance

Frequently asked questions about SCI accounting

This article is for general information only and states French law and tax rules as published in the sources available at the date shown above, including the accounting thresholds current for 2026. It does not constitute legal or accounting advice. An SCI's accounting obligations depend on its regime, its members and its size. Always seek qualified advice on your SCI's accounting duties.