[Trying another school]

I changed my son's school when he was about 9. he'd only been at the local village public school for about 7 months but he hated it! Although he didn't complain much, I luckily had my younger daughter keep me informed about what was happening to him at the school; and I didn't like what I heard. He had lots of friends in the UK but he came here and was bullied and just didn't fit in at all. I looked at a couple of schools and decided on the private school 12 km from our house. It was the best thing we ever did! The kids there were much nicer and he's now moved onto college with a really great group of friends, boys and girls.

I think you can move to a private school easily but they might make you wait until the new term or the next year if it's already close to the end of term. I believe that it's harder to move to different public school, but not impossible.

If you go and talk to the director of another school, try to see what the other kids behave like. I ended up also moving my daughter to this school the following year because I didn't like the way she was behaving at the first school. She made so many improvements that I'll never regret changing her school even though she pleaded with me not to move her. Incidentally; 2 months after her move, she told me how much happier she was and thanked me for moving her!! She still says it was the best thing that happened to her now.

Another reason I preferred the second school was that they only mixed the classes up in the afternoon. At their firts school, the poor teacher had about 2 or 3 different years all in the same class and although I know it does work well in most French schools - for me and my children, it worked better the other way. In their second school, they stayed with their classmates all morning for the key subjects like French and Maths and only changed their groups and mixed with some older or younger children in the afternoon (according to ability) for subjets like Art and History.

I hope this post helps you.

[Auto Entrepreneur!]

I was told that when you complete your yearly tax return, there is a bit on the form where you put in your total AE turnover for the year/period and that they take 29% of that figure to be added to your household revenue income. I'm still in the early stages of looking into the AE scheme so I might be wrong about this, but it might be something you need to know for the future so hope it helps.

[Closing SARL, Stock problems]

Gosh I'm in a pickle here!

Firstly I was told I would have to pay back all the vat that I'd claimed back from stocks bought whilst running the sarl. This I can understand. The accountant said "not to worry because I haven't claimed much -only from the French and some UK stocks"

Then whilst talking about changing our business so that it was only me running it as an AE, she said that because all the stocks were vat free, I'd have to pay vat at 19,6% on every stock we have before we can bring it into an AE structure. This also makes sense because you can't buy stock vat free on an AE.

I don't have a prob paying what I'm due but to move from the sarl to an AE and have it costing me approx 6,5k just seems really stupid. I've invested a huge amount of our money into this business and I'm reluctant to put much more into it.

Selling it on cheaply to someone outside the sarl sounds good but we'd loose that way unless I could get it back for myself somehow.

I could sell off one side of the business (I sell 3 different lines) and getting rid of half the stock would possibly pay for me to keep the other half for myself in an AE. (To be honest- I'm struggling doing 3 different lines on my own anyway.)

I only made 19k ttc last year (in effect my first year) and the sarl costs are huge -but sales from Jan-April this year are up by 65% so I may just have to run with it until I can see a clearer way out. Thanks for all your replies anyway. :) :)

[Closing SARL, Stock problems]

Hi All

We want to close down our sarl and re-start the business further down the line as an AE.

30%owned by hubby, 70% owned by me, director. Online shop.

We have about 20k of stocks bought from France, UK, Holland and Asia. We've only ever paid TVA on stock bought in France.

We've just been told that in addition to it costing us approx 2,5k in admin fees to close the co down, we'll have to pay 19,6% towards the TVA on the 20k stock owned. This is totally different from what I've been previously told, (no TVA claimed, so nothing to pay) so I'm a bit confused.

Can anyone advise if this is true or not please?

Thanks