Foreign Perspectives

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.