BobDee

  We have been living in France for 6 years, and have carte vitalle and complementaire insurance. We are presently in Spain and 4 weeks ago I suffered a stroke. Luckily not the most serious sort, but at the moment I have pretty much lost the use of my left arm. i am receiving excelent care here in Spain, but the physios advise that the care should be continuous in the early weeks / months and advise staying in Spain until the care situation in France is known. I have telephoned my french gp and told him of my stroke but it is difficult to have a long call as he is a one man band and anwers his phone while treating other patients. A french friend has told me that stroke care tends to be at residential centres. Has anyone had experience of these and whether there are waiting lists etc? tnks   BobD

And am I right to assume that to obtain a new carte grise, you also have to pay the local tax x cv rating of the car?

This year, we seem to have scraped uder the tax liability figure, but can someone say whether social charges will still be levied on our small savings interest? thanks BD

Does anyone have any typical costs re making a will in France? I know it will depend on complexity, but the norm might be making sure a surviving spouse is protected from avaricious children.

PP, From other info I have., No Tax deduction treaties exist between US and Canada, Egypt, (Now there's a thing!), Germany,, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Romania, Switzerland (15%), and UK. Check Publication SSA 05-10143. Regs BobD

No good news to report. Had a long conversation with a very helpful chap at Benefits office in Paris. It is true that if you have or had, a Green Card, then the 30% should not be deducted. But the Green Card has to be valid. This card, also called Alien Registration, varies according to when it was issued . Some old ones had an unlimited time stamp, others had to be renewed every year. My wife's is apparently not valid anymore, and therefore we cant avoid the witholding tax. However the chap we spoke to is still on the case and really is doing his best to help us out. The UK has a different type of treaty it seems and tax is not deducted at source in any circumstance. France is not the same. and thats how it is., As was helpfully suggested earlier, we will change the catagory for our Impots reorting, and that will save a little but overall, we still seem to pay less tax in France than in the UK, so its all swings and roundabouts.

Have just received a not too helpful reply from Fed Benefits Office in Paris QUOTE; There are 2 ways to avoid the taxation: 1 – you are a US citizen 2 – you have/had a green card This is for Social Security purposes only. For purely tax purposes, and if the 2 cases above do not apply, you should address your question to the IRS office. END QUOTE>> Well my wife did have a green card, so not clear why the witholding tax is being applied. I guess now we write to Baltimore with all the info we can muster and complete the W8-Ben form etc. Isnt life exciting!

Hi Allan, Thanks for the input. Monday was a National Hol in USA so I sent the Fed Benefits Office in Paris an Email, to which, I still await a response. The only thing that gives me some hope is that I did receive the benefit untaxed in the UK, and it was only when we moved here, that the 30% tax was deducted. Anyway, we wait and see, results will be posted here as and when.

Many thanks for the responses folks. Firstly the pension is my wife's widows pension. She lived in the US for many years and her first husband (an American citizen) was in receipt of a disability pension when he died. I have read through the notes re formW-8BEN and it does seem that we can claim an exemption to the withholding tax. When we first moved to France, four years ago, we spoke to the US embassy in Paris and also to the tax authorities in Maryland. Nobody mentioned this form and assuming that no tax would be reclaimable, I have been showing this income at the received, (net) value. If sucessful with the claim, obviously I would show the gross value and be happy to be taxed here at the more beneficial rate. Maybe even a retrospective refund would be available! It all seems a little too good to be true at the mo. Another call to the Embassy may be in order Monday morning.

Hi Anton, Thanks for that. I hadnt seen that document before, but under Pensions it seems to imply that tax should be applied only in one State but it also mentions being a Citizen of the US. So I guess I dont qualify for this consideration. Whilst I lived in Tthe UK, the pension was paid without being taxed, As soon as we moved to France tax got deducted.

I receive a small pension from the USA. Before it is paid the US Gov deduct 30% "witholding tax". For the past few years I have been declaring the net amount, (as paid into my UK bank account), on my French tax return as there is no way that I know of that the tax can be reclaimed. (I am not an American citizen). There is no double taxation treaty between the US and France, so I am effectively taxed twice on this small amount. Enquiries to the US Embassy have not been helpful to say the least and the local French tax office dosnt seem to have a clue. Any ideas anyone?

Beware, Nat West now charge a total of £12 for a €300 withdrawal. Nationwide is starting to look good again!!!

Just a point re telephony via the LiveBox, Note that you cant use this facility for connecting a Fax machine or to connect a standard dial up modem. I use a fax machine for bank instructions and the dial up modem occasionally to keep my BT Internet Email address alive. So make all outgoing telephone calls via the Livebox but Fax and Modem connections via the direct line these calls of course are charged at the standard rate. The other negative that no one talks about is the Answering service. Most people are going to call you on your old fixed line number, so you need an answering service on that. When you call someone via your Live box, the Live box forwards your name as caller ID, assuming the recipients phone can display alpha numeric characters and not just the numeric, in which case just your new Live box number will be displayed. So the caller might return your call to the Livebox 'phone or to your old fixed line number. Bit of a mess really!

John, when you say "floating safety cover", do you mean the normal summer bubble stuff cover? We have similar concerns with our cats. They have not yet tried to get on our summer cover and if they did, I'm pretty sure they could leap off again. The worry is that they would get on the edge section which would faily easily go down with their weight and of course if they ended up under the cover, that would be their end game.

Back to the original posting....... Stains on our liner are usually caused by lizards and even frogs that get into the pool during the winter, sadly fail to get out again, and their decomposing bodies leave a lizard or even frog shaped outline on the liner. Usually vanishes without effort on my part bt the end of the season...

Thank you all for your responses. Touch wood, I think I am OK at present, but who really knows? An apparently healthy friend was recently admitted to the local hospital with severe chest pains and is now in intensive care awaiting a double bypass operation. It just makes one think about things that are normally pushed into a quite corner of one's brain, best left undisturbed. Mortality is a fleeting thing and steps need to be taken from time to time to at least avoid the disturbance to those left behind, by an untimely departure. On a happier note, its gonna be really warm tomorrow!

I thought I had read somewhere that heart and cancer conditions allowed a 100% reimbursement of hospital and treatment costs. Did I dream this or is it so? My wife has a mutuelle but I have always assumed that the 1000€ I save every year by not having one, would go a fair way to meeting the 30% shortfall in CPAM payments. We are both over 65 and have been living in France for 2.5 years now.

[quote user="woolybanana"] You seem to be trying to teach me to suck eggs. [/quote] Sorry WB, that was not the intention. The original posting was meant to seek advice from other folks as what options were available. Nationwide International do not seem to offer the famed NW debit card and the two tax options they have, the wthholding tax and exchange of information, have no apparent advantages over NW UK. 

"Why not simply bank in the Channel islands?" Probably because of the lack of UKGovernment guarantees re the admitedly unlikely possibilty of Bank failure and the difficulty in paying UK creditors on line and the absence of cheque and debit cards.  Its pretty sad if you have to close your UK Bank accounts just to get around a needless systematic failure. Clearly the UK banks could pay interest gross if they had half a mind to. Once closed it is impossible to open a UK bank account if you are living permanently in France as we all know.

We have this in common. Tax resident in France and declaring all interest received from UK banks gross to the French tax authorities. We dutifluly apply every year to the UK tax authorities for repayment of tax deducted via an R43 or whatever, and have to wait may be a year for the tax deducted to be repaid. Being true Brits we go along with this inane procedure and are somehow pleased when the tax we paid is finally returned.  Efforts to get the banks to pay interest gross are invariably met by responses ranging from, "if you want to be paid gross, we suggest you open an off shore facility" to "We dont have the facilities to pay interest without deducting tax." The bottom line is we, the long suffering savers, are being taken advantage of big time, and in the present climate of people power asserting itself, perhaps we shouldnt be quite so compliant to the current system. If all the expats with money in UK savings accounts withdrew it to favour a French bank, then maybe the odd financial eyebrow would be raised.  Sadly the present exchange rate dose not favour this approach and we all quite like to keep some money in the UK, but there must be a way of getting interest paid gross. Are our human rights being abused? I for one, am feeling pretty sore.  

Thanks for the replies folks. Nick, if an oven, (Free standing device with traditional type oven below with hot plates on top) is OK on a 32A feed, would not a hob plus insert type oven amount tp the same thing? Also what do you mean by "change anything"? Would upgrading appliances constitute a change? Regs BobD 

We are in the process of getting a new kitchen into our 25 year old house. Currently we have a 32 amp feed for the existing cooker and a tee off of this that feeds the electric ignition system for a gas hob. The new kitchen supplier says the gas hob needs a 32 amp feed of its own to comply with latest norms even though the electricity drawn is microwatts for just the igniter circuit. His argument is that some person in the future might replace the gas hob with a four ring induction hob drawing megawatts. Installing another 32 amp feed back to the tableau is a major job with much upset to the decor etc. All the existing installation is as far as I can see perfectly safe and conformed fully at the time of installation in the 1980's. So questions: Does a gas hob upgrade with just an electrical igniter circuit really need a 32A feed? The new regs appear to say a dedicated 20A circuit is OK for an oven. Is this right? Given this is a change of appliances in an older  house and not a new build, what is the position regarding conformance to the latest electrical norms? BobD  

Martin, Thanks for the ifo. I will investigate and report back. The nice thing about French digital is that some of the US and UK films actually present with an English soundtrack. We have a pretty dodgy analogue signal here living as we do on the edge of the Landes Foret but we are happy to get as many dig channels as we do. An arial amplifier was essential (UK Ebay). Regs BobD

We have a decent TV with built in Digital tuner. We receive about 12 french terrestial digital channels within the first 30 channel grouping but the next 30 channels all appear to be subscription only. The TV has a slot for presumably a decoder device for these other channels. Where does one go to get this decoder card? Does one decoder cover all channels or is it so much per channel? and what sort of costs are involved. Be very interested to hear from anyone who has already trod this path. BobD  

Back from CT station. CT man said lights wern't good but was a bit uncertain when I said do they have to be changed. Went back to the garage who submitted the car to the CT station and they reckoned they could be adjusted. Garage understood the fact that pre 1999 cars can dip up and down and not left/right and still be legal. Both CT man and garage said, " why not fit new ones and claim on the insurance?" Seems a tad dishonest given its a rules thing and not damage etc. BobD