Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

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!

As moving day approaches there are loads of last minute things needing done.

Sometime today we’ll be trying to get the mail redirection sorted out. I say “trying” because we rarely are successful on our first attempt at anything with the local post office branch. If it’s not closed, then we’ve not got the documents that they want or we need to make an appointment with someone or other.

Next up is getting a full set of keys cut so that we can leave one behind with some friends on the off-chance that there will be some interest from the estate agents while we’re in the UK. Can’t see our friends having much to do on that front though.

James is in his last few days of school now though it looked like they were going to insist on him going from their school to his new one the next day which, of course, just ain’t possible. Still, they have now accepted that he’s not going to be there after Friday.

Not least are a few essential documents that we need to find and a final check that we’ve got everything packed that needs to be.

Finally, there’s the ferry trip to organise. At the moment, the best option seems to be Le Havre to Rosslare which at £250 is less than it would be for the Calais/Dover plus driving up England and Scotland plus Stranraer/Larne (surprisingly expensive at £170) plus the petrol plus at least one hotel night alternative. In fact, the Calais/Dover plus Stranraer/Larne ferries would be £230 so it’s sure to be cheaper to go direct to Ireland and it should be somewhat more easy on us without having 10 hours or so of driving.

Now that I’ve started thinking about going down the pill route to jump start the transition to a trimmer me, I’m all confused!

OK, so fat burners are presumably about speeding up the use of fat within your body. Easy, though sometimes with side-effects, of course, as obviously it’s not, yet, quite that easy.

Metabolism enhancers are there to turn up the knob on your body so to speak. Thus they’re very similar in effect to fat burners though I suspect that they’d be more likely to make you a bit hyperactive if you overdid it.

But, what do you make of the likes of Orovo? It’s billed as a super supplement and contains a whole bunch of natural but somewhat offbeat ingredients. To be quite honest with stuff like alfalfa and wheatgrass it sounds very new-age to me which isn’t really my problem: it’s just that I don’t know where it would fit in my diet regime.

Whilst we expected to have admin hassles when we moved to France in that we didn’t understand all the intricacies of the French health, social security and tax administration, it’s not necessarily so easy to both get out of the French system and into the UK one.

On the health side, it’s very easy to get into the UK system. Essentially all we need to do is go back to our previous GP and fill in a form for everybody and we’re in. We’ve already done a “temporary resident” form when we’ve been over on extended trips to the UK so it doesn’t seem difficult and since it’s not an insurance based system there’s no possibility of any debate over pre-existing conditions as happened in France to begin with. However, I’m not so sure that getting out of the French system will be so easy: after all, almost five years down the line they still haven’t got our bills correct!

Social security requires co-operation with the French authorities. We need a form from the benefit office in France to say that they’ve stopped paying us child benefit as the UK won’t start paying it ’til they get that. That’s not really a big problem though as the French seem to pay more than the UK do ie no big deal if they delay sending the letter. Getting out of the contributions side of things should be easier (can’t see it somehow) and getting into the UK National Insurance system is automatic once I start getting money from there.

Which leaves the tax system. After almost five years they have only just started to post the tax letters to us here so I suspect that it will take quite some time for them to correct their information. The UK system is simple: start work and you’re in the tax system.

That just leaves the small matter of the overpayments of social security and taxes that we’ve made over the years. Two years after making the first claim we’ve still not received anything from them so I think it’ll be some years before they pay up.

Although we set off for France with the intention of spending the rest of our lives here, in practice I left on a career break which left open the chance of me returning to work at any time up to five years from my departure from work way back on February 20th 2004.

Whilst at the time we thought of it as essentially free unemployment insurance, as y’all know we’re currently in the process of returning and with the global economy being in the current mess that notional “free insurance” has turned out to be quite valuable to us now. Not only do I have a guaranteed job waiting for me, but it’s a nice safe one at that and seems a good place to be sitting to ride out the coming recession/depression for the next year or two.

Although obviously not everyone will have the opportunity to leave on a career break, it’s definitely worth taking that route just in case things don’t work out. If they do work out then there’s no downside as you don’t have to return from a career break but on t’other hand if they don’t or your plans change as ours did…