Hagg

The accountant came on a recommendation from someone who has used him in the past and I've read some reviews on his work. If we have any doubts about the advice we will get a second opinion.

We have found an expat accountant who works in France and has clients on both sides of the channel so we will get in touch with him and see what he thinks our options are. Thanks for the input everyone, very much appreciated.

What a complicated can of worms lol. Thanks for the replies. We basically plan to move to France and let our management team run the business while we keep in touch by phone/video conference to keep an eye on things. We see it as semi retirement and definitely do not want to be sat in France working. We are happy to pay tax in whichever country we have to, but opening a branch in France would be a no go due to the nature of the business and if we were forced to do that then we would not be able to move there. Obviously we need to do a lot of research still but I am hoping that we can find a way through it all and end up in France. 

Both of us will be just under 50 and wont be undertaking any work in France. I should have put that in my original post. We would definitely take out top up insurance.

Thanks for the quick reply Sprogster, I will investigate the S/S costs.

Hi, My wife and I are hoping to move to France (Brittany) in the next few years. Our business in the UK is doing well and we are planning to retire there and just take income from the business as money to live on. I know tax is a complicated subject in any country and I'm only looking for a "ball park" answer but if we were taking an income of, say for example, £1000 a week from a UK business and renting a house in France, what sort of percentage of tax would we pay once the UK and French tax offices had taken their share?. Obviously we will be consulting a good accountant once we start making serious plans but at the moment we are just trying to get a general idea to see if a move would be feasible. Thanks.