Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Relocating’ Category

Even before Schengen came into force, most of the borders around Europe had very little in the way of immigration control. Bit slow in getting out the passport? You were just waved on.

Yet, that doesn’t happen to some people apparently. One British/Russian couple are stopped at every border post and told that the wife needs to have a Schengen visa. How come?

Simple really. They offer up their passports at every border post and thereby give the border guards something to do. Everyone else just assumes that they’ve the right to go over the border and just keeps going anyway.

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.

Probably one of the most neglected aspects of immigration or indeed moving in general is labelling your stuff and yet it can be a major pain if you don’t do it sensibly upfront as most of us don’t quite manage to unpack everything after we’ve moved. Yeah, perhaps we should clear out some more first but realistically who does that?

Unless you’re moving to an identical house then there’s not much point in trying to label things going by the room they’re going to finish up in as chances are they’ll end up somewhere else. Aside from that, you’re more likely to remember packing the stuff in a particular room before you move than “remember” where it’s going to end up.

Ideally you’d do a proper inventory before you start the packing so you could create a nifty database to tell you where everything is packed but that’s hardly viable for most of us. Therefore the best option is probably a middle ground ie try to pack the boxes in a reasonably logical manner and keep a little book recording any additional information that you can.

Believe me, that’ll save you endless head-scratching at the other end!

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.