EuroTr@sh

"I thought BJ's response - the hand-clapping for the NHS - considering how ill he was, and his subsequent recovery was 'putting his arms round the people' - what would you have him do ?" I would have preferred the government to do something more constructive for the NHS than clapping (which wasn't his idea). For instance, Patel was asked to acknowledge the contribution of health workers from overseas by waiving the substantial visa fee they have to pay each year for the privilege of living here and risking their own lives to save British lives. She initially refused, and Johnson backed her refusal in parliament, then about a month ago she was forced into an apparent U-turn, but she hasn't taken action and as of this week those health workers are still required to pay. There was a question about this recently and the government appeared surprised to discover that it was still charging the fee. Certainly a lot of money has been spent on furlough schemes etc but it hasn't been well managed. There has undoubtedly been fraud, and money has been pocketed by people who don't need it and aren't entitled to it while those who do need it, aren't eligible. By a quirk of circumstances I was invited to claim money as a self employed person, and all I had to do to get it was to sign a form saying that to the best of my knowledge I was entitled to it. I didn't claim it because I know I'm not (on paper I am because I moved back here during the last tax year to take up employment, having been self employed in France for most of it, so they have me down as living in the UK last year and self employed for over a year). But self employed people who started their businesses less than a year ago aren't entitled to a penny. (For the record I've lost my job and am receiving no support but I'm not bitter about that, there are many worse off than me.) I don't know how closely you follow events in the UK but the government is leeching trust, there are endless reports of major contracts bypassing the tender process and being handed to incompetent operators who happen to be Tory donors, Johnson lies blatantly when asked awkward questions (twice he's stated that there will be no borders or trade barriers either between the UK and Northern Ireland or on the island). Of course no government was perfect, but some are brave enough to transparent, accept scrutiny and accept responsibility, while others don't. Johnson's government is very defensive, it avoids scrutiny, it seems to have no coherent plan and keeps insisting that what it's doing is "world-beating" when quite obviously it's not. Right now everybody is waiting to see what happens when pubs open for the first time in months on a Saturday night of all nights to choose. Johnson is relying on people being sensible and observing social distancing and restraint on the day that he himself called Super Saturday. How likely is that? EDIT - I literally just read this comment from an RCN spokesperson: "“They do not need more warm words and praise that, to many, is already beginning to feel hollow. An earlier pay rise will go some way to showing the Government values all they do, not just this year but day in, day out.”

Wow Chessie. Where in this thread has anyone refused to hear criticism about France and French leaders? I can't see where anyone said France is perfect. There's nothing wrong with criticism as long as it's justified. I'm actually living in the UK right now, I don't hate it but I feel it's an unhappy and divided place, with a government that is exceptionally weak and making itself seem worse than it perhaps really is because its messaging is consistently so off-key. Hence my comment about the bad timing. It's not how much the paint job cost, it's the perception that in the middle of a crisis when the government should be "doing whatever it takes" to "put its arms around the nation", it is actually thinking about painting its plane... I see from another thread that you feel you are far better off living in France, please don't poison your life with all this bile.

My problem is not so much the fact that Johnson felt the need for a paint job to boost his ego. He's PM so if he wants it he gets it, although personally I think there are better ways of improving the UK's image in the international arena. It's the timing that I find appalling. The government wasn't willing to pay for kids to be fed, but it was happy to pay a staggering amount for this. What message did that give out about its priorities?

I think tax rates in both countries may change in the near future. Debts have to be repaid.

"BBC world service on Friday that they are worried about physiological problems they've noticed occurring in young people with COVID" I'm worried about psychological problems that seem to be occurring in young people wihout COVID. I don't think the UK is a good place to be a young person at the moment. OMG I'm starting to sound like ALBF!

I've been locked down in Ceredigion which has very few cases, and I'm dithering about going home to Dept 61 which also has very few cases. If I could be beamed up this end and land the other I wouldn't hesitate. It's the journey that's putting me off. I don't want to using public tolets and spending time in confined spaces breathing the same air as loads of strangers from places that aren't as "clean" as Ceredigion and Orne. Well, that combined with the fact I'm old and my lungs are shot...

Talking about leadership, Boris Johnson said this yesterday: "You may think you’re not going to get it and you’re immortal and invincible and so on. And very likely that’s true, particularly if you’re a young person.But the bug you carry can kill elderly people particularly" I think that is an appalling message to give out - it's as if he's saying to the young people, "We all know there's nothing for you to worry about and you would be able to do what you wanted if it wasn't for having to protect the old fogeys, it's a nuisance but there it is". As if the nation wasn't divided enough without adding a young/old conflict as well. And this, for someone who spent a week in intensive care. I am surprised the EU is happy to let the Brits back in, the daily new cases are still so high that there is a fair chance that sooner or later someone will take a virus in and spread it around.

I think that in France you would be what French fiscality calls a "couple mixte". This may help. https://www.impots.gouv.fr/portail/non-resident-de-france-non-residents-france#:~:text=Le%20couple%20mixte&text=Vous%20serez%20impos%C3%A9s%20diff%C3%A9remment.,votre%20activit%C3%A9%20%C3%A0%20l'%C3%A9tranger. As Gardian says, the best plan is to discuss it with the French tax office - they are helpful and their advice is free.

I believe though that even though the UK has left the EU, virtually everything to do with citizens' rights stays the same until the end of transition. Under EU rules France is obliged to count periods of work in other EU states towards chomage entitlement, and I think that includes the UK until the end of transition. Brits still have freedom of movement so I guess everything related to that, including social security co-ordination, must still apply. Re running a business t,hat doesn't give you entitlement to chomage. Same as in the UK, if you're self employed and your business fails, you get nothing. (In France they have been talking for years about making it optional / obligatory for independant workers to pay extra contributions and be covered for chômage, but it hasn't happened yet.)

Idun, I was presuming the OP had been paying tax and NICs in the UK, and when they said they are fiscally resident in France they actually meant, they are dual resident, ie pay tax/NICs in the UK, and declare worldwide income in France. I guess technically that would make them a cross-border worker, ie domiciled in one EU state but working in another, so as you say, UK responsible for healthcare in both UK and France. Like you idun I don't see how you could be employed in the UK by a UK company and not having payroll contributions deducted. That's one confusing thing, and I'm baffled too why the priority seems to be to get chômage rather than get a job. I'm skeptical how that's going to work because to keep getting chômage you do need to be actively seeking work. If the OP is anticipating being able to find a job easily and quickly in order to enter the chômage system, I would have thought it's going to be a balancing act sending off enough applications and attending enough interviews to satisfy their PE adviser month after month that they're trying their best to find a job, while at the same time avoiding being offered one. These advisers aren't daft, they're trained and they've seen it all before.

Norman wrote: I think there may be a distinction between the amount of time taken into amount when calculating how long the chômage will be paid for, and the amount paid.I suspect that the latter will be based on the amount received for the French job (as mine was) but not on whatever you were earning in the UK. Yes I also think that.

Nail head hit. Being a salarié(e) in France is, AFAIK, the only way to acquire any entitlement to chômage, because your employer pays contributions into the chômage fund. If no contributions have ever been paid in your name, you have no entitlement. For instance I've worked freelance in France for 10+ years and I've paid tens of thousands of euros in social security contributions over that time, but I have no entitlement to chômage because I've never been a salariée. My contributions have been for healthcare, professional training, pension and various other things but freelancers don't contribute to the chômage fund. Hence no entitlement to chômage. So yes, you would need to get a CDI or intérim job and when it ends, go to pôle emploi and they will calculate your entitlement. I can't post links on here, it makes the page go all funny, but google will throw up plenty of sites that explain how chômage is calculated. It seems you have to have been in work for at least 6 months out of the previous 12 to open your rights. Then your entitlement is be based on your work history. 2 caveats: The whole chômage system was due to be overhauled earlier this year, that has now been delayed because of the health crisis so the old rules still apply, but I think the intention is to bring in the new rules once things have got back on track. I doubt they will be more generous. I don't know what will happen after the end of transition but I suspect that they will only take account of how many hours' work you have done in France or other EU countries, ie excluding the UK, So one way and another your best bet would be to get a job asap, firstly so that you don't lose too many working days out of the 12 month qualifying period, and secondly, in case the end of transition puts a spanner in the works. You say the French benefit is more generous than the UK benefit, I don't know what the UK pays but it looks as if the minimum in France is slightly less than 30€ per working day, which I guess is what you would get if the work you find in France is at SMIC. Doesn't sound massively generous, is the UK's really worse than that?? All this is assuming you have completed your initial 5 years residence in France and either have a CdS permanent or are entitled to one. If not, I'm not sure if it might be affected.

"All I know 100% is, if I had signed up for UK unemployment benefits before I left the UK, that would have precluded me from getting access to French unemployment benefits." Why do you think that? EU social security systems are co-ordinated so that the rules cover virtually every type of cross-border situation and specify which country is responsible and how they should deal with it. There are very few situations where individuals get to choose or even influence which country is responsible for them - otherwise, everyone would obviously always choose to be covered by the country that has the most beneficial system! The rules are very specific based on the details of your situation. As I understand it, the rules for out of work benefits are that the EU state responsible (subject to you meeting their national conditions) is the one in which you worked most recently. If you've never worked and paid cotisations in France you will not have not built up any entitlement here. You can register as a jobseeker but you can't claim chômage. If your last job was in the UK, you would be entitled to UB there (provided you meet the UK conditions). If you'd signed on there, then you are correct that you would have received UK UB and you would not have received French chomage. But since as far as I can see you don't qualify for chomage in any case, it would have been a case of receiving the lower benefit for up to 3 months or until you find work in France (plus having your healthcare in France funded by the UK), as opposed to receiving nothing at all until you find work in France. When you find work, obviously whatever out of work benefits you were getting will end. After that, if you lose your job again it will all be reset and your entitlements will be calculated based on the situation at that time. If at that time your last job was in France, the UK will no longer be responsible for you and France will pay chomage for a duration calculated on the period you've worked in France, plus (I think) earlier qualifying periods in the UK. I think.

As said, I think the best plan would have been to sign on in the UK and return to France once you were actually in receipt of UK unemployment benefit. Then under EU rules you would be entitled to keep receiving your UK UB in France for up to 3 months while you looked for work. The UK would also cover your healthcare in France for those 3 months or until you find a job, whichever happens first. But I think you need to be already receiving UB for it to be transferable, so if you didn't sign on before you left I don't know if you can get away with signing on online and maybe they won't know you're not still in the UK looking for work? I'm a bit confused by a couple of things you said: "do I first need to have worked (even if it is only for one week) in France prior to signing up at Pole Emploi, or can I sign up for Pole Emploi first (which determines my start date for entitlement to French unemployment benefit) and then do a week's work?" Since your entitlement to chômage will be triggered by having worked and then ceased working in France, your state date for entitlement won't be determined by the date you register as a jobseeker, will it? It will be determined by the date you stop work. "My concern is that by signing up with Pole Emploi first would be detrimental to my claim for French unemployment benefit" AFAIK anyone can register as a jobseeker. You don't have to be unemployed, you don't even have to be in France. Registering as a jobseeker is entirely separate from actually applying for chômage. However I believe you're correct that if you have worked as an employee even for one day in France, and then stopped work for a valid reason, France includes qualifying periods of work in other EU states when calculating your entitlement. That's how I've always understood it to work, at any rate.

Contrast with current cross casting policies in theatre where Othello is as likely to be played by a white female and Juliet by a black male. It distracts me and spoils the magic for me because I'm so busy admiring (or not) the actors' skills that I end up regarding the whole performance as a technical exercise in acting, rather than a play to enjoy and get emotionally invested in..

"History is what it is" - but what is it? I think the French have the right idea in having the same word for history and story. Unless you were there, you don't know exactly how things happened - and even if you were, you probably have a different perception from another person who was also there but who saw/interpreted things differently. If you read the French and then the English versions of an event in Anglo-French history, right back to the Norman conquest and probably beyond, the two versions will leave you with a very different perception of history. Probably both were recorded in good faith, but from different viewpoints. You would have to be ominscient and also totally impartial and objective to be able to write the definitive history. And nobody is.

It probably depends on what it is, but with some pension schemes you can take up to a quarter (I think) of the total pot tax free in the UK. It's a tax incentive to encourage people to pay into a pension. But of course it wouldn't be tax free if you live in France.

Hi If you take the money during calendar year 2020, I imagine you would in any case declare it on your next declaration in May 2021, the taxman won't want to know about it until then. And unless it's a massive amount I don't think you would need to pay any tax on it upfront. Even if you do, I believe it's easy enough to adjust your advance payments online. But to be honest I'm not sure how that works or what sources of income it applies to, I've never needed to do that. Someone else will be better equipped to advise I'm sure.

Chessie I was totally with you about the clever clogs with the PhDs in hindsight, until you contradicted yourself by saying the finger should be now pointed at China. There should be an investigation, you are right. Then, after that, we will have more certaintly where to point the finger. It seels very likely that China will have things to answer for, just as it seems very likely that not checking arrivals into the UK and going into lockdown too late has cost lives. Sticking the entire blame onto the Commies and absolving everyone else, at this stage, is premature and a bit dangerous I think.

Are you working in the UK or in France? If you carry out your work in the UK you should be paying tax and NICs in the UK (the "bum" rule - you pay tax where your bum is when you do the work). You declare the gross salary in France as part of your worldwide income, the DTA is applied so you're not taxed on this income in France but it will of course increase your RFR. Then, if you live in France, ie you're a cross border worker, you should have a workers S1 form issued by HMRC to cover your healthcare in France. If your bum is in France while you work you can't be paid via the UK payroll, you must be declared to URSSAF as a France-based employee, your employer must issue French payslips with deductions for French social contributions etc and you should be paying impots à la source. Either way you shouldn't need to be claiming tax back on a salary, tax should always be paid in the right country to start with and it should go hand in hand with NICs/cotisations. Or have I misunderstood.

I think Starmer has handled this cleverly. Instead of focusing on the Cummings incident, which will go away even if it doesn't go away quite as fast as Johnson would have liked, he's turned it into an illustration of how weak Johnson is. Which is an issue that won't go away. It's true that Johnson on his own is weak, and this will show through from time to time. All Starmer has to do is keep picking up on them. I wonder how many Tories who had never thought of Johnson as weak are starting to think, "Actually now you mention it... " Drip. Drip. Drip.

idun wrote: "I know who DIRECCTE is, but I have told you who I would be contacting" I think we're saying the same thing idun? DIRECCTE is the labour inspectorate where the labour inspectors work, so that is how you contact them. This is confirmed by the your link above which starts "Tout salarié ou employeur peut contacter l'unité territoriale de la Direccte dont dépend l'entreprise." There are very specific rules about working time, how it's recorded etc, but different rules apply depending on what job you do, whether there is a collective bargaining agreement in force etc. There is a good explanation here of the employer's obligations https://www.lailler-avocat.com/duree-du-travail-decompte-documents-controle/ My experience with the labour inspectors was from the other end, on the side of an employer who copped for a random inspection, this was in the leisure/hospitality industry. Two inspectors arrived out of the blue with no warning, they went through all the paperwork with a fine tooth comb, they walked round the premises and talked to employees. They picked up a few discrepancies and once they had something to get their teeth into they were like terriers. They claim to be "firm but fair" but to be honest their brief seemed to be to fault the employer in any way they can. So I don't doubt that if an employee goes to them with evidence of an employer who is breaking the rules, they will get onto it.

Actually France has a whole raft of laws to protect workers, but sometimes you need to be firm. Your boss is probably counting on you not knowing what action to take. If he is overstepping the line you need to start by contacting the labour inspector at your local DIRECCTE. They won't say 'it's not my problem' because it's what they do. It's no use approaching any other government authority. Google will find DIRECCTE for you.

If you could describe it as a life threatening illness I think it would count as exceptional circumstances and those days wouldn't count. Would simplify things. But HMRC may ask for proof, I don't know.

idun wrote: "ET, I'd done what you did but never, alas, on your huge scale. " Dunno about "alas". I only did it out of desperation...