INSEE firm tax and accounting files (restricted access)

Restricted administrative microdata: not exercised here

The French firm tax/accounting files are confidential administrative microdata (INSEE, from DGFiP tax filings). They are not for sale and not publicly downloadable: they carry no provenance badge because there is no access path we can run here. Researchers reach them only through an approved project at the CASD secure data centre, with output subject to statistical-confidentiality review. The page documents what the collection is and the gotchas; treat it as unverified. This is the honest grade under the institute’s Verified discipline.

The French firm tax and accounting files are the administrative firm-level financial statements that INSEE compiles from corporate tax filings collected by the DGFiP (the French tax authority). In the BIC (Benefices Industriels et Commerciaux) regime and its INSEE products (historically BRN/FICUS, later FARE), they provide balance sheets, income statements, and standard accounting items for essentially the universe of French firms. They are the French administrative analog of a firm-fundamentals database, with near-complete coverage rather than a listed-firm sample. A paper we distill uses them: Beaumont, Hebert & Lyonnet use the French tax files (BIC) for subsidiary-level balance sheets and income statements as firm-level controls, alongside DADS workforce data and LIFI ownership links.

• Cost: not for sale. Restricted administrative microdata.
• Producer: INSEE, compiled from DGFiP tax filings; access via CASD.
• Coverage: essentially all French firms filing the relevant tax regimes, annual; the product name and exact scope change across the FICUS/FARE vintages.

Access (restricted)

• Through the CASD secure data centre. Approved researchers connect via the secure SD-Box; the data never leaves the secure environment and outputs are checked before release.
• Project approval required. Access requires an approved research project and the relevant French confidentiality authorization, granted per project.
• INSEE publishes documentation of the accounting variables and the FICUS-to-FARE transition, so the schema can be read even though the data cannot be pulled.

Gotchas (the ones that bite pipelines)

These are the failure modes to expect; they are documented, not verified here.

• A regime break sits in the middle of the panel. INSEE switched from the FICUS product to FARE around the early 2010s, with definitional and source changes; a series spanning the break needs explicit reconciliation. Do not splice naively.
• Tax regime determines who appears. Firms in different tax regimes (BIC versus others, micro-regimes, simplified filings) report different items or are absent; the sample depends on the regime, not on economic size alone. Check the regime for your population.
• Legal unit, not group. Statements are at the legal-unit (SIREN) level; to study a group you must consolidate using LIFI, or you will double-count intra-group flows. Decide consolidation explicitly.
• Accounting concepts are French GAAP. Items follow the French chart of accounts; mapping to Compustat-style fields is not one-to-one. Map carefully before any cross-country comparison.
• Identifier joins. Linking to DADS (SIRET) and LIFI (SIREN) requires the SIREN/SIRET mapping and care with restructurings. Verify the join.
• Output is disclosure-reviewed and cannot be redistributed. Results leave CASD only after confidentiality checks, and the microdata itself cannot be shared.

Citation

Cite the producer and access route, e.g.: French firm tax/accounting files (INSEE, from DGFiP), accessed via the CASD secure data centre under approved project, YYYY-MM-DD. State the product (for example FICUS or FARE), the years, and the consolidation level.