Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘France’ Category

We didn’t manage to get out to see the rally on Saturday so we’d quite a trek to get to Ansignan to see it on Sunday morning.

As usual in France, all the promotion of the event is in French so there are relatively few foreigners attending what is quite a good rally. The most complete information on the rally is on the French site here which will have the information on the winners etc. in the not too distant future. One interesting consequence of this limitation in the promotion is that Foreign Perspectives achieves top ranking for searches about the rally.

The area over which the rally takes place comprises quite an intricate set of roads so you need to know the area fairly well or have a very good map to work out how to get to the various vantage points. For example, a journey which normally takes about 30 minutes from here ended up taking nearly 90 minutes due to the various diversions for the rally.

Whilst it’s mainly French teams taking part there’s quite a sizeable representation from Spain too.

Quite an interesting event if you’ve over here at the appropriate time next year (probably November 23rd & 24th 2008). Although it’s usually pretty good weather here, the route goes through several rather windy mountain passes so it can be pretty cold if you’re out of the sun.

A long time ago, I was brave enough to ask the question which many are afraid to ask: do you need to speak French if you want to live in France?

It’s not such a simple question to answer as it might appear. For one thing, there are many expat enclaves throughout France where, by and large, English is the only language used. Within these enclaves, the shopkeepers and so on can be expected to speak English and indeed even if you speak French to them, they’ll reply in English. So, yes, you could live in France without speaking French.

However, in many other areas (most of France in fact) you couldn’t do that. The locals either cannot or will not speak English. After all, why should they be expected to? It is France after all. Except that everywhere else in the world the locals DO speak English: that’s why people expect to be able to move to France without speaking French.

Funnily enough, just a few miles south in Spain the locals won’t speak Spanish and actually insist on using English. Well, to be fair that’s Catalonia and few people outside it ever have the opportunity to learn Catalán which tends to dictate the use of English with foreigners.

One of the chief characteristics of French tax and social security administration is that when you start out in business they send you bills based on an estimate of what an established business would be earning, not what a start-up would be bringing in.

Although typically a new business will earn very little after start-up expenses in its first year, it will typically receive bills for thousands of euros no matter how small it might be. Clearly that’s something of a drag on start-ups in France and the effect is that considerable chunks of business activity are done on the black ie without registration. This, of course, helps nobody in that the businesses which do register have to shoulder the tax burden for those that don’t which forces many down the unregistered route or alternatively into bankrupcy, neither of which is beneficial for the country.

Take for instance Marcus who’s done some calculations as to what tax a start-up could expect to be paying in the first couple of years. His example was of a business making EUR 5000 per year right from the start and includes just the social security contributions (ie there would be addition taxes). Year one bill: EUR 4914, year two 2780, year three 2183 ie over 98% tax on the first years income.

Even if you change the parameters of the calculations to reflect zero income in the first two years followed by EUR 5000, the bill for the second year is EUR 4080! Still, at least in the third year you get a refund of EUR 281 in that case, which you could put towards the wind-up costs of your business.

Is it any wonder why the black economy in France is so large?

We’ve just received yet another ludicrous bill from one of the French tax offices.

Apparently since we didn’t return the 2005 figures for the business until a few weeks ago and haven’t yet returned the 2006 figures (both thanks to our duff accountants), we must obviously have earned EUR 155,000 in 2006 and therefore they are taxing us on the basis of that. Since 2005 was our first full year with the business we were still investing substantial sums and therefore didn’t make any money at all in 2005 and it’s only in 2006 that things started heading towards a more normal level. Sadly, still a long way short of EUR 155,000 though.

As in all areas, they are incredibly optimistic about the performance of the French post office too and seem to believe that a letter which they printed on October 31st would be delivered within two days even though they didn’t even post it until the 6th of November!

Anyway, we’ll have yet another go at rattling the cage of our accountants to see if they can head off the attempt to collect on one of the largest direct debits I’ve seen (which’ll bounce anyway as the sum involved is actually more than our total income for the year!). Still, at least that should give me the opportunity to change back to paying them by cheque: it’s never a good move to pay any French tax place by direct debit as we’ve found.

James started in the local nursery school in September last year as the only non-French child.

When you look at any of the “moving to France” TV series, no matter what the age, the kids are put into the local school and are fluent in about three months. Over a year down the line, James uses single french words now and again but never a complete phrase. How come?

Ironically, I think it’s an aspect of them being helpful from the start in putting him in a class with the teacher who speaks a little english (they’ve even moved her up to the next class with him). The effect of that was that the children started speaking english which, of course, meant that he didn’t need to speak any french, so he didn’t.

Unfortunately, that’s going to mean that next year they will surely refuse him entry to the primary school and instead will insist that he goes to the CIPPA class in Perpignan. That’s simply not viable as you could hardly expect a six year old to negotiate two buses plus cross a very busy road by himself and besides it’s a class for 16 to 18 year olds who already speak french.

All this, of course, creates something of a problem for us as from September next year.