EuroTrash

Agree with the previous posters. It's regarded more favourably by the French authorities if you make your savings generate a secure regular income, rather than just spending them, potentially until there is none left. As said, there is some kind of formula they use to arrive at a notional income figure if all you have is savings, but they seem to have a fair amount of discretion and since French law actually specifies income levels not saving levels, contesting an unfavourable decision might be difficult. Looking at the bigger picture, the criteria you need to meet in order to live legally in France, are essentially the same criteria you need to meet to be accepted for PUMA (ie sufficient income to be self supporting, as per EU Freedom of Movement directive). So, if you're not eligible to join PUMA then you're probably not going to be eligible for a carte de séjour either, and if Brexit comes to pass, living below the radar is going to be a lot more hassle than it has been in the past.

If you're filing onlne - I seem to recall there is a search facility, down the left hand side of the screen if memory serves, where you can simply enter the reference of the box you want (8VL) and that section of the form appears as if by magic.

Idun, I know you don't make this stuff up, but I would be interested to know how recent this was? Because now SIPSI has been set up it is a lot easier for DIRECCTE to check whether posted workers have been declared or not, and posted worker fraud has become a main focus. In 2018 for the first time DIRECCTE were set targets of how many contrôles to carry out, apparently the targets were raised in 2019, and the government still seems to think it needs to do more to combat posted worker fraud in the future. https://www.vie-publique.fr/actualite/alaune/cour-comptes-enquete-efficacite-lutte-contre-fraude-au-travail-detache.html. Contrôles involve talking to workers, requiring to see copies of their contracts, payslips (French version), evidence that the amount it says on the payslip has been paid into their banks, record of working hours, etc etc etc. It is a real thorough crackdown, and I imagine that if they find evidence of deliberate fraud as opposed to simply ignoring the rules, they'll deal with it accordingly. One of my clients was down south and the works inspector there was very cooperative and is now working with them to ensure they get it right in future. The other is in northern France and the works inspector they had to deal with was only interested in finding as many violations as he could, you couldn't get two more different approaches.

Well you can't stop people ignoring the rules if they want to take their chances. Salaried workers who are employed to work in France have to be declared in advance to the French authorities via SIPSI, and AFAIK there is no loophole apart from that up to very recently this wasn't policed. They have to be paid French minimum wage and their employment contracts and working conditions have to comply with French labour law. If they have S1s then their social security/pension etc contributions continue to be paid in the UK so that is a saving, but if they don't have S1s then the employer has to contribute in France. UK companies have been getting away with it for years by simply ignoring the requirements, but as of 2018 France started tightening up on this. I have a couple of clients at the moment who are being investigated by DIRECCTE and are appealing against the fines purely on the grounds that they can't pay them. The fine for each contravention is around 1,500 euros and there are separate fines for failing to declare a worker on SIPSI, failing to pay minimum wage/union rates, failing to issue a French payslip, failing to have a contract translated into French, failure to record working hours, exceeding permitted weekly working hours, etc etc etc; multiplied by the number of workers, multiplied by the number of contracts each worker has been on, and if like my clients you've been employing dozens of workers for years in blissful ignorance of the rules, the potential fines get up to millions of euros in no time. https://www.sipsi.travail.gouv.fr/SipsiCasFo/login?service=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sipsi.travail.gouv.fr%2FSipsiFO "All employers based outside France with the intention of providing services in France must submit a prior declaration of posting of its workers to the labour inspectorate branch of the place where the service is to be provided, before the posting gets underway." Doesn't leave much of a loophole, does it.

At the end of the day - workers have rights in France, more so than in the UK. If you want someone to work full time for you for 3 months, then you have to respect those rights. If there were loopholes in the law that offered an easy way round paying their dues, then lots of employers would take the loophole to save money at the worker's expense. But in fact, French employment law is pretty watertight, they take workers' rights seriously here.

I'm not sure it would make any difference. A cds doesn't prove you are a French reisdent and it doesn't oblige you to live in France, it simply proves you have acquired the right to live in France which is not the same thing.Your father acquired the right to live in France by exercising FoM in accordance with the EU FoM Directive. I believe the right lapses automatically after he spends 2 years living outside of France but until then he has the right to return and resume living there if he chooses to do so. I don't think France can take that right away from him even if he asks them to. Keep it as a souvenir or destroy it.

You will pay the taxe foncière because that is the property ownership tax and is always paid by the owner, regardless of who lives there. As said, rental income is normally taxed in the country where the property is, but check the FR>DE treaty.

You won't be able to settle his tax affairs in France for 2019 until the 2020 tax exercise. When you fill in his tax form for 2018 which you're doing now, presumably you have put that he was resident in France on 1st Jan 2019 (since from what you say, he was). There is another section on the form where it asks you if he has moved since 1.1.19. You enter the address where he now lives. When you come to fill in the form next year, France will already know that he has left. You will confirm that he wasn't resident in France on 1.1.20, and you'll enter his income between 1.1.19 and the date he left France. And with luck, there will be nothing to pay and you'll hear no more from the impots. There is a section at the end of the form to be completed if the declaration is being submitted on behalf of the declarant, but I don't know whether or not any formalities are needed before you can do this. But if he can sign it himself then just get him to sign. There is no problem with that. It doesn't matter who wrote the figures in the boxes - the first tax form I submitted had all the figures written in by the lady at the tax office and all I did was sign it. Hope this helps up to a point.

If possible I suggest you are waiting outside his local tax office when they open on Monday morning so as to be first in the queue. They will answer all your questions.

My aunt had two sons. The younger one was a feckless type who wanted to be a musician and she supported him financially, paid his rent when he had no money, fed him and washed his clothes when he went back to mum, mopped his sick up when he turned up drunk in the early hours of the morning, worried herself sick when his marriage broke down, etc, I don't think it's exaggerating to say that he aged her before her time. The older brother was a shy serious lad who became a teacher and my aunt always joked about how he was "the only sensible one of the family". She never needed to do anything to help him. Guess which brother looked after her when her dementia set in. The younger one suddenly discovered he could lead an independant life after all and he stayed well away, he said he loved her so much that he found it too upsetting to visit her. The older one took her in to live with him until her condition deteriorated, and then he made all the arrangements for the nursing home, visited her several times a week etc. Both brothers both benefited equally from her will. I could never understand how the older brother managed to be so philosophical and accepting about having done all the giving while the younger one did all the taking. I don't think he did it out of duty exactly, nor out of love exactly, he just felt it was the right thing to do and he is the sort of person who always tries to do the right thing. I guess we all have our own perceptions of what is the right thing to do, and if we choose not to do it then at the end of the day we have to deal with our own conscience, no matter how convincingly we rationalise our decision to other people. So I don't think there is an objective answer, there is only what feels right to you. Every person is different, every relationship is different.

If applications from Brits aren't being accepted, it would be a regional policy not a national policy. Under French law, EU citizens are entitled to apply for a cds if they wish. However it's completely understandable why prefectures are fed up with the extra work Brexit is creating. I can easily believe that people will operate the scam described in the OP if they can devise a way to do it, although I don't see how it would work if, as is the case here, the appointment is registered in the name of the person that made it. If you make an appointment for Jean Lebrun you couldn't then change it to a different name, and if on the day the official looks at his list of appointments and calls out "Jean Lebrun" then it would be no good going to the counter if your name is not Jean Lebrun because if your name is not on his list he won't process you.

Yes I think WB is on some good stuff. "No, Brit, much more complex than you are trying to suggest. brussels wants to stop the breakup of the EU so is posing, being hard and inflexible, meaning the UK has to hang tough too." WB, what's complex about the concept of the EU wanting to protect itself? OK stop the breakup if you want to put it like that, although I don't think there is any imminent danger of that outside the DM. But more to the point, it wants to ensure that all its members have the best deal possible and are disadvantaged as little as possible by the fallout from Brexit. And Ireland is one of its members. So yes, it is being hard/inflexible/steadfast/unwavering in doing that - not just posing but actually being it. One would likewise expect the UK to "hang tough" to fight its own corner. It's what both sides usually do in negotiations. What's arguably made this negotiation complex is that the UK, having created an unsolvable problem, has been too busy arguing amongst itself to bring anything constructive to the table, and it's been expecting the EU to do all the negotiating itself in the UK's absence, presumably by doing a kind of double glove puppet act with the EU flag representing the 27 on its right hand and the Union flag representing the 1 on its left hand, and then to present the UK with the perfect answer to the unsolvable problem.

"The whole sorry mess is the result of a faction of the Conservative party, as fanatical as religious bigots, managing to put the blame for Tory austerity on the EU." And also, the determination of certain individuals to keep their lucrative activities outside the scope of the EU's new anti tax evasion legislation. All that matters to them is that the UK is never obliged to implement this legislation, and their self interest seems to have blinded them to everything else.

Aren't folk reading too much into this? Successes and victories for a national team is not just sports news, it's news that many people will be glad to know even if they don't follow sport. Whether it's a win in rugby, football, badminton, wellie-chucking, eating the greatest number of whelks before you're sick, whatever. Match results are sports news and followers of the sport will be interested to know, but the public at large won't. As soon as they no longer feel they have a stake, they lose interest. So the news reflects that. I don't know that that proves the French hate losing, mightn't it just prove they're not all sports fans? I was a just the same about Wales when I lived there. If they were doing well in a tournament I would watch. When they got knocked out I stopped watching. Not because I hated the fact that Wales had lost, but because the buzz, the sense of anticipation, the suspense of waiting for the next match, had all gone.

Most people pronounce c as "sea" in English and "say" in French, don't they? And the others on the list are all "say" as well, so I'm still confused what the difference is. Vert as well, for the vers/ver/Vergt list. I had never heard of Vergt, I would probably have gargled at the end.

Just for good measure you could add the town of Sées, in Normandy. @idun - How else can you say 'c'???

Another aspect to add into the mix is the uncertainty over the exchange rate in the immediate and mid term future, depending on Brexit. UK pensioners and others whose income is mostly in sterling, be it from UK state or private sources, are very much at the mercy of the exchange rate. Don't underestimate the effect a 10% drop, for instance, could have. On the other hand of course, you could do well out of it ...!

Hereford wrote: "If they really did drop the file on the floor they could still see whose photo is was - your application includes photocopies of your passport!" This. So no harm in writing your name on the back but anyone who didn't, I don't think they need worry unless their new photos look nothing like the photo in their passport - which would be a problem in itself.

I didn't write my name on the back, simply because it never occurred to me that there was a risk of them getting separated from the rest of my dossier. I assume the people dealing with applications realise the importance of keeping the right photos with the right paperwork. In fact I applied in person and not by post and I think I saw the lady attach one to a form she had printed off, and laminate it there and then. I did include a list of paperwork because I had to make myself a checklist so I could keep track, but I don't think she even looked at it, and certainly she left it in the dossier when she'd taken out what she wanted.

Hopefully another renter-outer will be along to clarify soon. But in the meantime, I have a feeling that the rule is that if it's your only or main source of income, and / or the annual income is above a certain theshold then it has to be registered as a business; but if you have a day job and the rental is just a little extra income stream then it doesn't and you can just declare income and pay tax as you say. However I could be wrong and there is probably more to it than that, it may also depend what kind of rental you do (holiday let/long term lets/whatever). Presumably the reason for the 2 different systems is that if it was your only or main income and you didn't have to register as a business and pay full social security cotisations you would end up short on your pension. If nobody else comes along, I suggest you go along to the tax office and have a chat with them, they will be able to explain.

If you mean CFE=cotisations foncières d'entreprise then this is a business tax, ie different from personal income tax. Since you give no info about your situation I have absolutely no idea if it is correct, but if you are set up as a business then it probably might be. However it is rather odd that you are asking about paying CFE now because the payment deadline for CFE is early December, after which date, late payment fines would be added.

Wooly, try that one on your French teacher or your GCSE examiner ;-) And why not argue that tu est and various other common alternative forms aren't wrong either. Seriously - I would say dropping the ne when the rules say it should be there, is colloquially acceptable but grammatically incorrect. So in a context where you should be grammatically correct, like a formal written communication or speech, it would be wrong. Papoting with your friends it is fine. But like everything the important thing is to know the rule, so that you break it from choice in appropriate situations, not from ignorance in inappropriate situations.

Insisting on putting a figure on everything before the figure is known, seems to be a British thing. It's like the "Brexit bill" - how many times has the EU said that no figure has been calculated yet and can't be until Brexit happens, what has been agreed is the method to be used. Yet the British media keeps quoting this figure and that figure, and if asked for comment the EU patiently reminds them that the figure hasn't been calculated yet.

The rule is that you need ne + another bit. Usually the other bit is "pas". But there are certain specific constructions where it is ne +something else instead of the "pas". The most common are ne ... rien - nothing ne... jamais - never ne... personne - nobody ne... plus - no more However ne... toujours is not such a construction. So it would be "je ne comprends toujours pas" (I still don't understand) or "je ne comprends pas toujours" (I don't always understand). Does that help?

Yep. Legal translators typically charge around 15 cents per word. So a professional translation of the entire text would cost many hundreds of euros. Which is fair because to do it properly would take days of work. Most translators reckon on a rate of around 3,000 words per day. OK, you might say just a summary will do - that would take even longer because to do it properly you have to read it all first, and then work out how to summarise it...