EuroTrashII

or 'prendre rendez vous" je vous propose de prendre rendez vous sur le chantier le 1 avril

To be fair... the distributors may have got fed up with taking a lot of unsold papers back, and their conclusion that there is no demand might not be altogether unreasonable. Distributors don't (normally) just deliver papers and then forget about them and leave it to la patronne to dump the unsold ones in the dustbin or use them to light the fire. Every newspaper has to be accounted for, either sold and the money handed over, or unsold and taken back.

It varies from commune to commune but if you go to the hotel des impots, they will tell you what the rate was in 2011 which will give you a good idea what to expect. For me, it looks as if CFE is going to be roughly half what I pay in taxe fonciere.

There'll be plenty of paperwork involved in setting up a shop or getting permission to sell things at a market. Once you've done that, I guess you can sell baked beans if you want!

Can only assume that the people the OP has been talking to, who have painted this rosy picture of a state that generously hands out money to all comers just for the asking, have comfortable jobs as fonctionnaires or similar and are not in the position of being recently arrived in France and trying to get a foot on the jobs ladder ... Why does the OP think the Sangatte residents were so keen to hop across the Channel, if the handouts are so good in France? Self-employment in small food industries ??? is there a lot of that in France ?

Well not unmitigated, surely, let's not scare them! Worst case scenario IMHO is either they have to take out 5 years private healthcare for the family, or if they are in fact working here, their company would have to set up some sort of French business entity through which to employ them and pay them a salary plus social security contributions. But deffo better sorted out before the move, and deffo expert advice needed, it's not something to entrust to the average UK tax advisor.

Yes, as Russethouse says. Self-employed but working for a company is a contradiction in itself, and working from France but not doing any work is another one. Any hint of a contradiction is best avoided when you're dealing with the likes of cpam and urssaf and the impots. They like things very clear and nicely in line with the regulations, otherwise their mouths curl down at the corners, they shake their heads and they hand your dossier back to you.

Sorry, just read Will's post - I thought that to be eligible for an E101 it very definitely has to be your intention to only stay temporarily in another country, and you have to have a permanent home continuously available to you throughout the period you are away, which you intend to resume living in after your time abroad? Several years ago when I moved over I applied for an E101 and got one and then decided to go AE after all - but I seem to recall having to identify exactly what accommodation I had permanently at my disposal in the UK.

To me it's still pointing towards private healthcare, because to all intents and purposes, as far as France is concerned, you will be inactif. So, stop paying NI, get private healthcare for 5 yrs, and declare worldwide income in France starting next April for year 2012. With an 18-month old infant, winging it on an invalid EHIC seems a tad unwise. Please get expert advice, you are stepping into a minefield.

Hmm. Sorry, I'm stumped then. All I can think is that you will in fact need to arrange private healthcare for 5 years, after which, provided the rules don't change in the meanwhile, you should be able to join and start paying into the French health system. You will need to show you have lived here 'legally' for those 5 years i.e. filled in your French tax returns and had full health cover that is equivalent to what you would have had under the state system. Maybe someone will be along with a better idea ! PS - if they're not actually generating any revenue in France, and not trading as such, wouldn't it be the dividend scenario?

When you say 'working for your British company in France' ... If 'your' company means a company that belongs to you, will that not involve registering your business in France? There are very few circumstances in which a UK company can (legally) operate in France without being registered in France. And if you are running a registered business in France, problem solved, you will be paying cotisations through your business and therefore fully in the system.

At the risk of stating the obvious - AE is not, and was never meant to be, a route to healthcare. And the sooner people stop recommending it as such, the better, IMHO.

I've found with varifocals that it's best to wear them all the time so your eyes get used to them - you seem to adjust automatically and start moving your head more so you look through the right bit. If I don't wear mine for a while I feel disorientated for an hour or two when I put them on but if I wear them day in day out I'm fine with them. I don't think varifocals are right for occasional use. What I hate is going down flights of steps in them, I can't judge the distance.

SD - the way I'm going I will have a very small pension because I rarely pay enough cotis to qualify for a chunk of pension. Any ideas on what would happen if you retire and in theory would get a pension, but in fact don't because you haven't clocked up enough qualifying trimestres?

It isn't all quite so black and white though is it. In the UK business creation is an industry in itself, that gets through huge pots of EC and UK govt funding. A lot of the businesses that get started, never had any chance of being sustainable. Sorry to be cynical but a lot of new businesses are unwitting vehicles so that the funding councils can (a) make the stats look good and (b) distribute grants for setting up websites, for setting up telecoms, etc, etc, so that the website/telecom/consultants on the approved list make a very good living, and after a couple of years those businesses fold and are replaced by another tide of businesses needing websites etc etc. Well that's how it was in the UK a few years, I worked in that area and it sickened me in the end, the only people that made a secure living were the people who worked for the funding councils and really they were doing nothing constructive for the economy at all, it was just a funding merry-go-round with public money, nobody cared two hoots whether a business was sustainable in the long term or not. To me a business is only worth setting up if it has a chance of success. I think France is probably too extreme in that but equally I think the UK is too extreme the other way.