Kaf

Hi Patricia Many thanks for that; doesn't sound too difficult, especially as we don't want to sell milk Karen

We have decided to buy some goats and according to the information we have, all goats must be registered and tagged even if you just keep one or two. If not, you risk having the animals seized and put down as well as receiving a fine. However, we have answered 2 ads for goats, none of which have been tagged and I have also seen loads of small ads online showing pics of untagged goats. Can anyone clarify the situation on this please? I know that you cannot advertise cats or dogs without tatto details so surely it should be the same for other animals that need to be identified? Also can anyone advise what is the exact procedure for getting a goat registered? We do not want to buy an un-registered animal and then find ourselves bogged down in bureaucracy and exorbitant fees of one sort or another, but we also do not want to upset our dairy farmer neighbour by having unregistered animals Thanks in advance

We are in a similar situation. The local tax office here advised us that you are normally regarded as taxable in France if your main residence is here. However, because my other half spends more than 181 (or possibly 183 I can't remember which, offhand) days in UK he is taxable in the UK. We went to the local tax office here and explained that all our income was from UK and taxed there and they told us that we did not have to pay tax here' although you do have to fill in a tax return. (There is a special one for foreign income). We've been doing this for 4 years now with no problems although I have heard of other tax offices interpreting the rules differently. Incidentally, if your other half is paying UK tax and Nat Ins, you should be entitled to UK child benefit and possibly tax credit. I think the child benefit situation is pretty clear, it depends on where you pay Nat Ins, not where the child lives,  but you may have problems with tax credit as they don't seem to understand the concept of living in one country but working in another. It took about 9 months of wrangling with tax credit office, but we finally got our tax credit too. We also get our health cover by means of an E106, but this has to be renewed every year after they check that you are still eligible. Hope this is of use to you but please check in detail for your own circumstances. Karen

Hi Do any of you LGV drivers out there know where I apply to get one of the new digital tachograph cards? Graham

Hi If you are currently using AOL in the UK, you should be able to continue using it in France on your UK subscription; all you need to do is make sure that you change the country and look for the "offres tout compris" phone number when you connect and set up the modem here in France. We have been doing this for the past 2 years with no problems but have just changed to Wanadoo because we are finally on Broadband in our area. Even if you don't want to continue with AOL it means that you can continue to have internet access while you look at other options Karen

Yes, this was whay happened to us last year, although they did want us to declare hubby's earnings in the section at the back of the 2047. This year they seem to have changed their minds. They have at least decided now that we do need the 2047, which I knew all along , but the person I was dealing with kept insisting we didn't. I had downloaded a copy from the website and was going to fill that in, but they have now sent us an official one. Hopefully, they will also decide there is no tax to pay once they have all the details. This is obviously a clear case of every official having their own interpretation of the law. I'm just going to make sure that I have copies of all rulings in writing, put the figures on the back of the 2047, including details of tax paid in Uk, and hope for the best. We have no non-earned income so it should be fairly straightforward to sort out once someone makes a decision! At least I know that if we have declared everything, we have done all we can to comply with the rules. Karen

Hi Rob Don't know about the 10% margin for error, but I have been emailing our local tax office about our tax situation (subject of a separate posting) and they have been replying within a day or two at the most; still not totally convinced about the accuracy of the answer but they did at least respond quickly. I've also tried the email contact on the main tax website because I wasn't happy with what the local office told us. As it's presumably the national enquiry helpline. I thought I might get a more accurate answer. However, although they also responded within a day, they said they couldn't deal with my query and referred me back to the local office! Karen

Hi Thanks for the replies. I have already been in touch with the non residents section of Inland Revenue, but they can only tell us the Uk position, naturally. Our situation isn't actually that unusual; I know that there are hundreds of families who have a partner working in the Uk but the family live in France. Presumably they have got things sorted. Incidentally, I did discover that the double taxation regulations do not actually relate to salaries; they only concern investments, rents etc. Apparently there is provision for us to get a credit of UK tax if we have to pay any tax in France, but we have to apply for it. We have to declare the earnings anyway, so we'll put it on the tax declaration as we did last year and see what happens. I did do the estimate of what our French tax payment would be if we do have to pay anything and it is minute compared to what we have to pay in the UK. Karen

Hi All! As someone getting more and more confused about the level of cover we need to take out for our mutuelle, I thought you might be interested in the following website: www.devismutuelle.com. It explains, fairly simply, (but in French) the levels of cover available and what they mean in terms of how much you end up having to pay for a treatment. You can then select the levels of cover that you need for your circumstances (it actually suggests what you may need for particular family and health situations) and it will give you about 12 options for cover. You can look at the detail for each policy suggested and more importantly, it gives you specific examples of "the bottom line" ie what you may end up paying for each type of treatment including dental and optical if these are covered by the policy. It makes it easier to understand the 100%, 150% etc levels of cover and even if you decide not to go with any of the recommendations, it helps when you are looking at other policies because you have a better understanding of what you are looking for. Hope this may be of use Karen

I'm sure variations of this question have come up before but I am totally confused. As I know there are many other families out there in the same position, I would be grateful for their experiences, please. Our "foyer principal" is France; I live here permanently and our son goes to school here. My husband, however, works in the Uk. He pays UK tax and Nat ins and on that basis we get child benefit from the UK and E106 entitlement for healthcare. Hubby is correctly taxed in the UK; he is there more than 183 days per year, all work is carried out in the UK and his employer is a UK company. While there, he rents accommodation. Because our main home is in France, we are regarded also as residents for French tax purposes. We have no French income whatsoever. Last year we went to the tax office and a very helpful man helped us fill out the required tax declarations; 2042 and 2047. Fine, no tax liability. This year the tax office here in France are insisting that we do not have to fill in the 2047 (declaration of foreign earnings), that we declare all UK earnings which will be liable to French tax and that we claim back the tax paid in the UK. Surely the 2047 is required to say that the money was earned in the UK? Can anyone with similar living/working arangements please let me know if this is the case. If so, where does that leave us with regard to our UK benefits? Are we still entitled to them or do we have to pay through the French system.? Failing any advice available, can someone recommend a good English speaking accountant in 22?! Hope to hear from someone who can help Regards Karen  

Hi Gay Have had another look and finally found the relevant publication. It is from the benefits agency and is SA29: Your social security insurance, benefits and health care rights in the EC, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. The relevant section re child benefit is Para 21 and says "If you are in the UK or another EC country and you are employed or self-employed in a job in which you must pay contributions under the UK scheme...... you can usually get UK child benefit for your children even if they are living in another EC country." It goes on to say that if you are paying into another EC country's insurance scheme the child benefit will normally be payable by that country, even if the child stays in the UK. It further says that if the two parents are both working in different EC countries, the benfit is normally payable in the country where the child resides. Therefore, if you fulfil the contributions conditions it seems that the only time that the place of the residence of the child is relevant is when there are two different countries' insurance schemes involved. But as others have stressed, you must advise the authorities of your change in circumstances; you cannot just continue to claim benefit regardless. In our case we had actually cancelled our benefit because my husband had intended to work over here and be a fully paid up member of the French system. Unfortunately he couldn't get a job and had to go back to the UK for work. It then dawned on us that if we were paying into the system, we ought to be entitled to the benefits, so we made a new application. Therefore, we know that we are correctly entitled based on our current circumstances, because ours was a new claim and the Inland Revenue who deal with child benefit had all the facts from the start. Sorry this is a bit long again, but this issue seems to raise a lot of hackles; for some reason many people who posted messages when this came up before on the forum gave the impression that they felt we were getting something to which we were not entitled. Regards to all Karen

Hi We live permanently in France, but my husband works in the UK, paying tax and NI contributions. The rules re child benefit are quite clear in the information book on Social Security contributions for those living abroad( can't find my copy at the moment so can't give you the reference number); what matters is where the tax and NI is paid and NOT where the child is resident. We have been awarded child benefit because we pay into the UK system even though we are living in France. There was a strand on this a few months ago with many people insisting that it is not legal to receive benefit if the child is not living in the UK. The only time this becomes illegal is when you stop paying into the UK system. Advise the child benefit office of your new circumstances. They will need to confirm that your husband is still working in the UK and they will review the circumstances each year. if you get someone at the Inland Revenue who says that you are not entitled to it (I have heard that this has happened) insist on speaking to someone more senior and advise them to refer to the information book. Incidentally after a long argument with the Inland Revenue, we have also just been re-awarded child tax credit, so this is also worth pursuing. We were initially awarded it on the basis that my husband was paying UK contributions and were even paid arrears. The payments then suddenly stopped with no explanation. After many phone calls, I finally discovered that someone had looked at the claim again and decided we weren't entitled to it. In the end I started to follow the complaints procedure because it was quite obvious that no-one really knew what they were talking about and the decision to award or not to award seemed to depend on whoever happened to answer the query (This was for child tax credit, not child benefit- I had no problems with the child benefit claim) After about four months we finally got a favourable decision and all the arrears, but obviously this is still dependent on hubby working in the UK. Incidentally, the child benefit claim has to be made by your husband as he will be the one paying the contributions. Obviously individual circumstances do vary and this may affect your entitlements, but if you get a no to start with, keep pursuing it through the correct complaints procedure Hope this is of use Karen

Here in 22 we also seem to be much better off as far as household utilities go: combined local taxes for 2004 were just under €400 compared with around £1000.00 on a small two bedroom cottage in Oxfordshire when we left in April 2003. (We are now in a converted longère with about an acre of land and two large outbuildings) Our water bill for the first year here was €263 for a consumption of 135m3 which is a bit less than we were paying Thames Water and our electricity for the first year was about the same in euros as our combined gas and electricity for a year was in sterling (with a much bigger house to heat) Overall for the first year we were here, we compared all the bills and reckoned we saved about 33% over the previous year in the UK. Karen

Thankd both for taking the trouble to reply. I had a vague feeling it was something to do with the machine in the corner of the CPAM, so thanks for confirming Karen

We have just had our E106 entitlement extended because Graham is working in the UK and paying NI contributions. (Before anyone queries this, Newcastle have confirmed that we should have an E106 and not an E109!) My query is that on the new "attestation" that we have received today with our updated cartes it says "carte a mettre a jour de preference a partir du 31.3.05" Can anyone clarify what this actually means please. I think it is something to do with updating but as the E106 gives us cover till Jan 2006, I'm not sure what we need to do, if anything. Thanks Karen

Hi All I can say is that Delia's traditional trifle recipe is our traditional Boxing Day dessert, and I've never had any complaints!! Karen

Hi Try leek and ham in cheese sauce, (much nicer if you can get cheddar for the sauce) Wash and slice the leeks, and part cook. Tip into a gratin dish with sliced ham, (or use lardons) and pour some cheese sauce over the top. Bake in oven for about 30 mins. Gorgeous with lashings of mashed potato. Karen

Hi In nearly 18 months, haven't managed to find anything remotely resembling a gammon joint. We had a lengthy discussion with the lady in our local farm shop, which supplies beautiful ham and other pork products, but she was at a total loss to understand the British gammon steak or joint, although she did say that if we could give her the recipe, she would try and produce it. The closest to a gammon steak that we have found is "jambon a griller" available on some deli counters in supermarkets, although this always seems to be smoked and is not really to our liking. Last year I got someone to bring over a gammon Karen

Hi Don't know about the general situation in France as a whole ,but I can speak from personal experience. My mother has had two major operations in the last year, one in the UK and then as an emergency here in France while she was on holiday with us. While she was in hospital here, we visited every day, and every day we saw the wards being thoroughly cleaned, (by the nursing staff) all staff using handwashes, wearing white coats or other uniforms, and at the end of the week, which was obviously the day they turfed out as many patients as possible, the beds were actually taken out of the rooms, the rooms were thoroughly cleaned and there was a pervading smell of discinfectant which I haven't smelt in a Uk hospital for many years. In The UK none of the above applied. All I can say is that if there is MRSA here, (and I'm sure there must be) the authorities seem to be taking preventative measures a lot more seriously

Hi Kevin Just seen your posting re HGV work in France. We've been here for 18 months and, in spite of vast experience as an HGV driver in the UK Graham has been unable to get a job here. The ANPE advisors told us that with his experience, the FIMO was not necessarily a legal requirement but in practise all companies seem to require it. Also, if your French is not good, there will be problems. We have resorted to him working in the UK for an agency, which has certain advantages: he usually works about 3-4 weeks in the UK and then has a holiday here in France for 2-3 weeks. This means he can be at home for school hols and other special events. He can earn more money in the UK because he is not limited to the 35 hour week and because he is paying UK tax and nat ins, we get health cover and child benefit. He is working about 60 -70 hours per week but this is OK when he gets a holiday every other month, and he was doing it 48 weeks a year before we moved here anyway! He has also calculated that, when the working hours restrictions come into force next year, he will still be able to do this because the hours limit is spread over several weeks and not per week. If you want any more info, email me and we could have a chat. Karen

I've exchanged my British driving license for a French one a while ago at the prefecture in St Brieuc (22) and had my HGV/PSV entitlement transferred with no trouble. I'm now due a medical - 5 yearly check in UK but how do you go about it in France? Do you get a reminder as in UK or do you do it off your own bat - if so what's the cut off point regarding time prior to the expiry date? Any help would be appreciated. Graham not Karen

We have two cats, ultrasonic deterrant and mouse traps. We also have mice! At the moment, one of the cats is sitting on top of the cooker because the last mouse we saw came up onto the worktop from behind it. He says he's waiting for the mice, I think it's because he's warming his bottom on the stove (it does have a glass top). Moral; I guess mice are an occupational hazard in a stone longère in the country. Regards to all Karen

Fresh milk is readily available in most of our local supermarkets. We have the luxury of living next to a dairy farm and they give us milk fresh from the cow. This is wonderful on Weeyabix or cornflakes but too rich for our tastes for a cup of tea, so I buy red top when I shop and freeze it. It freezes well in the plastic bottles and we always have a supply, (as long as we remember to take it out of the freezer! Karen

Janey We are the in the same position as you I think. Hubby works 4 weeks at a time in Uk and has a UK address which he pays rent on even while back with us in France. Newcastle has all the facts and there was no problem with us being awarded child benefit. The social security information booklet(SA29) clearly says that if you have to pay UK contributions you are probably entitled to child benefit even if the child is living in another EC country. (It makes no specification for medical or educational reasons) Furthermore, it gives the scenario where you may be legally entitled to claim benefit from two different EC countries; in this case it says that the country where you pay into the social security scheme is the one which will usually pay the benefit. From my reading of this,it seems obvious that if a parent is working in the UK and paying full contributions, you are entitled to child benefit even if the child is in France. Presumably, this is the basis on which we, and others, have been given child benefit. But as you pointed out all circumstances are different, and Newcastle did enquire closely into the precise arrangements we have for living and working. Karen

Hi Janey KAF again here. As you seem to be in the same position as us, have you or hubby claimed child tax credit and if so what was the result? Karen