Foreign Perspectives

Things were working out quite well with them but the girl that had been specifically recommended to us left the accountancy firm late last year. As she spoke quite fluent English and knew how accountancy worked in the UK, the firm had used her to attract a lot of English speaking clients.

Unfortunately, when she left they found themselves with a whole lot of English speaking clients of which the majority don’t have good enough French to be able to use a normal French accountant. They in turn don’t speak good enough English to be able to deal with them properly either. Net effect? Well it seems that they decided not to bother doing anything with the clients that she had brought to the firm.

We only found this out last week after we received what is now a growing pile of penalty notices from various organisations due to our books not being done and called them to see why these were arriving.

Anyway, after being told that “this firm is in a bad way”, we’re now looking for yet another accountant.

As with leaving the last accountants, it should be “interesting” to leave this lot. We already have penalty charges which exceed the bill that they sent us recently so I’ll be forwarding a bill to them.

On the other hand, there are many like us who have a French car, pay UK tax, etc. but who would still probably consider home as being somewhere in the UK.

Even the authorities seem a little confused by the question. Almost three years after moving here, the French have continued to send tax bills to our former home in the UK whilst the same office simultaneously sends other tax bills to us here. The UK tax people are even worse if that’s possible with Inland Revenue regularly sending mail to here, our old house in the UK, my former employers in the UK and even my parents house sometimes! Where they consider is home for me is anyones guess.

My driving license is expiring shortly and I thought that perhaps I’d have to swap it for a French one because the UK form states quite clearly on the front page that you can’t get a UK driving license unless you are resident in the UK. However, they go on to define in detail what they mean by someone being resident in the UK and I meet all their requirements!

In fact in most cases it is still much easier for me to prove that I live in the UK than to prove that I live in France, to the extent that not only have we been able to get credit cards but even a mortgage! Interestingly, despite telling everyone official that we live in France, we have yet to receive any request to pay the Taxe d’Habitation so it would seem that officially we don’t really live in France after all.

So it would appear that, officially at least, “home” for us is actually still the UK.

PS We’re off to Spain for a short break this afternoon so no more FPs ’til at least Wednesday.

Or rather, it SHOULD be a commercial loan.

The problem is that for it to be a commercial loan rather than a personal mortgage, the business would have needed to be created no later than the day that I signed to buy the place. After all, if the business didn’t exist before then, it wouldn’t be possible to make the loan to it, would it?

Seems obvious, doesn’t it?

Unfortunately, it wasn’t obvious to either our former accountants nor the bank. Net effect being that the accountants didn’t register the business ’til about two months after we’d bought the hotel and therefore the loan is a personal one and we can’t count the loan repayments as business expenses.

Actually, we can but only if I rent the hotel to the business so I’ve started billing myself rent each month.

This is a bit of a nuisance as I need to write out a cheque from the business account, deposit that, wait a week for it to clear then write out a cheque to the business account. So, I thought I’d ask the bank if we could set up a standing order to the personal account and move the direct debit for the loan to the personal account.

As it’s France, that requires a meeting with our counsellor so three weeks went by as I was off in the UK and he was on holiday.

Nope. He won’t do it. He insists that it’s a commercial loan and that can’t be paid from a personal account. The only way he’ll do that is if I set up a company to run the hotel and do it that way. Unfortunately, that’s rather expensive and besides it won’t work so I’ll just have to continue with the cheques each month.

Of course, the reason that he insists it’s a commercial loan is that, if it is a personal loan (and it is) then he and everyone in the bank associated with granting it will be suspended from work by the Banque de France for providing an illegal personal loan. So, for once, we understand his reasons (even if he won’t state them).

So, if you are getting a loan to buy a business here, make sure that your accountant has actually set up the company before the day you sign to accept the loan.

What is it? Well, it’s the French response to CNN and BBC World ie it’s a 24 hour French news channel. The thinking seems to be that the anglophones have had it too easy for far too long and it was high time that the French view on world affairs received a wider audience.

Initially, it was to be primarily a French language channel but seeing as the objective was to spread France’s world view to a wider audience, they bit the bullet and it will initially be offered with French and English on equal footing. Knowing that France often sees the English language as “the enemy”, I’m sure that was a far from easy decision to take but it just goes to show how seriously they are about getting this channel onto a the world stage.

At the moment they’re supposed to be starting broadcasting towards the end of the year but that date will probably slip.

One thing that we’ve noticed here is that the world seems a whole lot more violent in French than it is in English which is a side-effect of France concentrating more on their ex-colonies which are mainly in fairly violent African countries. It’ll be interesting to see if this view is reflected in the English version of France 24.

Unlike in the UK, you can’t just lift a leaflet, fill it in and post it. You have to queue up at the customer services desk and most of the time they require proof of ID and often proof of address before they’ll issue you with a card.

Although they have the cards, they don’t use them to promote the various shops nearly as much as they do in the UK. For instance, whereas when you get your Tesco statement, there are perhaps a dozen different offers on products, in Carrefour you just get a voucher to spend in the shop. Leclerc and Auchan don’t even send a statement as the money accumulates directly on their cards (which therefore require a PIN).

In fact, to date the only shop that seems to actually use the information is Auchan which managed to issue us with a credit card based on next to no information.

At least this is one area where we’re quite grateful that the French are a little backward!