Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

By the time you read this we should be well on our way to the ferry.

Although we’re going on one of the longest routes this time going the whole way from France to Ireland in one go, it’s actually by far the cheapest ferry route for us. Not only is the ferry cheaper but we avoid a very long drive all the way up England and the hotel night that we’d have to add in as well.

In fact, the only downside with the route is that the ferry only goes once a week. It’s got quite a late departure time but that means a much more relaxed trip up to the port for us in place of the usual dash to get there for an afternoon sailing.

By the time you read this we should finally be underway on our journey back to the UK.

Despite us having the luxury of being able to spread the packing out over a week or so we still found that we had an awful lot of stuff still to find a home in the car or trailer right up to the night before we left. In fact, we ended up postponing the last of the packing ’til the morning of our departure as so much of the final pile was all those little things that you don’t know what to do with.

Anyway, as I say, we should be off by now. In theory although it’s quite a long trip, it should be a fairly leisurely one as the 10 hours driving time will be spread over two days rather than crammed into one as many people do.

What’s turned out to be the greatest advantage in our move this time around has been that we have a courtyard and could therefore spread the packing in over several days.

That simple change has meant that we’ve been able to take a great deal more than we originally thought would have been possible. Instead of the rushed packing last time around, we were able to create a very full 3D jigsaw puzzle within the trailer with just about every piece of space occupied by something or other and we’ve even managed to get so far into the original “would like to take but probably can’t” pile that we had to add some more things to it.

One thing that we did watch this time around was that we didn’t overload the trailer which we was helped along considerably by leaving the various toys in the boxes and which filled up the trailer quite nicely with relatively light boxes for the most part. That’s not to say that there aren’t one or two boxes that we can barely lift though!

Whilst it might seem obvious that the most expensive ferry is definitely the dearest option, in our case it turns out that the most expensive ferry route forms part of the cheapest and quickest route for us.

Ordinarily we’d have driven from here to Calais, took the ferry to Dover, drove up England then over Scotland and finally took the ferry from Stranraer to Larne. Considering just the non-France bit that’s £60 for the Dover ferry, probably £50 for petrol, another £50 for a hotel (possibly two) and £170 for the Larne ferry ie around £330 or perhaps £380.

However, the Le Havre to Rosslare ferry costs £250 and effectively includes that hotel as it’s an overnight trip. Thus whilst we’d have been driving up England instead we’ll be on the ferry and leaving two days later will arrive just one day later and a good deal more rested too.

Although you might think that five years would be more than enough time to get settled into a new area, in our case it seems that the local tax authorities still haven’t recognised that we actually live here!

The reason for that is largely down to a seemingly small thing that the accountant should have done in early 2006. Well, I say “the accountant” but in fact the accountant that was dealing with us got pregnant in 2005 and left the firm after the birth. Thus the personal tax return that she was to have done for us in January 2006 wasn’t done.

Ordinarily that wouldn’t have mattered, but her firm just put all the files for her clients to the one side when she left and thus in October 2006 we started to get threatening letters from the tax people for non-completion of various tax forms. So, late in 2006 they started work on those but in fact they only got to the end of those early in 2008 (yes, two years late) and by then had forgotten about that January 2006 return.

Since we’d not done that 2006 return we weren’t marked as being resident here which meant that we didn’t get any Taxe Habitation (property tax) demands until well into 2008 and even then they were for 2007 onward. However, we also didn’t get the reductions in tax due to residents thus find ourselves having overpaid something like EUR 12,000 by this point.

Not only that but because of the lack of being marked as resident we now find ourselves getting three separate demands for the TV license from three separate tax offices. We paid the first one to arrive which has totally thrown the system as the other two are now getting ready to send out the baliffs for non-payment of the TV license which as it turns out we paid about two months early but apparently to the wrong tax office.

Still, they do appear to be close to recognising that we live here… just as we’re preparing to leave!