Pickles

There are a couple of different types of source that have been tagged as "geothermal". The first is where there there are eg hot springs etc, which can be found in certain countries but is not terribly widespread, but where it is available can be used to drive eg a turbine because you're dealing with something which is essentially HOT. The second and more widely available possibility concerns using the ground as a source of heat to drive what is in effect a refrigerator in reverse - ie a heat pump. This uses the relatively constant temperature that is to be found a couple of metres below ground (of the order of 10 deg C) - either via a trench into which coils of water-carrying pipe are laid or via a deep vertical borehole.  If you have a virually inexhaustible supply of water at 10 deg C, then you can in effect cool this via a refrigeration system, which extracts the heat which you can then use to either heat up the water in your house, or heat the house, or both. If you think about how a fridge works, what it does is to transfer the heat energy from the air inside the fridge and dumps it into your kitchen via the radiator of the back of the fridge. This is how a heat pump works. So we can convert the heat energy from a lot of water at 10 deg C into a much smaller quantity of water at 60-80 deg C. The only energy that you need to put into the system is that needed to circulate the water and that needed to drive the heat pump. I am told that commercially-available systems can get 4KW of heat energy out for 1KW input (which would come from your electricity supply). Regards Pickles

Please take legal advice on your situation: there are two issues with which you need to concern yourself: the first concerns the niceties of French inheritance law, but then the French TAX law will probably cause a significantly bigger headache. My understanding is that in the absence of children and spouse, parents and siblings become automatic inheriters of a proportion of your estate under French law. If you are not French resident, then you may use the Hague Convention to make a UK will govern the shareout .... BUT you need to be aware that this does not prevent the French taxman from taking his share - and in the case of unrelated legatees, the maximum tax-free legacy is of the order of 5000 € per person - or at least it was the last time I looked at it, and the percentage of tax payable in the case of an unrelated legatee rises very rapidly once the 5K threshold is breached, and I seem to recall it possibly hitting 60% after a few very small steps.  Hence if you are not careful, you could end up with your chosen heirs having to sell the property in order to pay the tax bill! Regards Pickles

[quote user="cheminot"]Having read this post I have checked my insurance card. It states that the subscriber (policyholder) must sign the card but underneath that it says that in the case of residents of the UK and Northern Ireland all the vehicle users must sign it. AM I right in thinking that as I am resident in France it is only me who has to sign it and not my wife (who also drives) as well? cheminot[/quote] Are you sure that it doesn't say that if the CAR is driven in the UK/NI then all drivers must sign? Regards Pickles

[quote user="Evianers"]Sorry, should perhaps have mentioned that we do not live in the UK. [/quote] Ah! Sorry, I've been reading this forum for long enough that I should have remembered that ... [quote user="Evianers"] We live currently in Belgium [left UK in 1976 so UK tax doesn't apply]. There used to be something about taking up residence with fewer than 183 days left in the financial year. It is this where we need up-to-date clarification. Perhaps it no longer applies............... [/quote] I had a quick look on www.impots.gouv.fr which confirmed the position. You're liable pro-rata on your worldwide income, as Will notes, on arrival. Regards Pickles

[quote user="Evianers"]Can anyone please confirm whether the 183 days ruling for residency in France is still applicable for tax purposes bearing in mind by the time we arrive in LBF on [ca.] 5 July this year, we shall technically be retired. If we decided to immigrate slightly earlier, would this be a problem, meaning would we then be subject to a whole year's tax? Thanks for all knowledgable answers.[/quote] Errrr ... from the French point of view, you're tax resident as soon as you arrive with the intention of making France your main residence, aren't you? And from the UK point of view, you get your annual allowances pro-rata for the period between 7 April and your date of departure. The 183 days doesn't really apply unless you are thinking that you may return to the UK frequently ... Or have I misunderstood the question? Regards Pickles

[quote user="milkeybar kid"]  Do you think (subject line house in offshore company name) is a good idea? [/quote] Why would you wish to do this? [quote user="milkeybar kid"] Can you envisage any problems? [/quote] Yes. I have been advised that if you purchase a French property in the name of a foreign company (whether offshore or onshore), then the French authorities will require the identification of the beneficial owners of the company - ie those who are the major shareholders. If your aim was to avoid ISF (wealth tax), then this would be negated by the fact that the French Fisc would simply treat the foreign company as transparent and attribute the value of the property to you. It doesn't matter if you are UK or French resident - except that transactions by French residents involving offshore or foreign companies will attract the attention of the Fisc more rapidly than if carried out by a UK resident. If the foreign or offshore company was a company with a lot of different shareholders, each with a small shareholding (eg a PLC), then I was advised that under those circumstances the French authorities would treat the property as belonging to the company rather than the individual shareholders. Regards Pickles

[quote user="ErnieY"] To Pickles:  Space saver wheels are of the same diameter as the original to prevent the problem of reduced ride height. [/quote] I beg to differ, but on many cars the space saver overall diameter is significantly different to that of the "standard" tyres fitted to the car. For instance on Saabs it can be over 2 inches (though this may be an extreme example). I've helped a few people to fit space savers and found similar differences on Fiats and other cars. I think the basic issue with regard to their legality is that they are recognised as being for emergency use only. I will also refrain from further comment on this topic on the grounds that I will be tempting fate and do not want a puncture .... Regards Pickles

The responses below are all to be prefaced with "IIRC" [quote user="RayS"]Next question: do the UK tax people allow for the cost of capital improvements I have made to the house in the same way as the French tax people do when calculating the gain, [/quote] Yes. You need to have bills. [quote user="RayS"] and do the UK tax guys allow me to deduct the CGT I will have paid in France from any UK liability, [/quote] Yes. [quote user="RayS"] and do they allow for the "natural" inflation in property values over the last 7 years? [/quote] Depends what you mean. Yes, the UK has a scale of relief so that the longer you have owned it, the lower the percentage of the capital gain is taxable - but you have to use the NON-business asset relief (unless of course you have been running the house as a business). However, the rates are fixed and not related to the "actual" inflation in property prices. Regards Pickles

[quote user="andyasj"]Has anyone any experience of the Carte Bleue Cadeau ( http://www.carte-bleue-cadeau.com/ ). This is a prepay Carte Bleue card which will give me a Carte Bleue without a French account and which I am hoping will be useful to buy petrol out of hours etc.  Trouble is it is only valid for a year and I am wondering how easy it is to reclaim unused credit.  Also how much does it cost? Cheers [/quote] The website says that the person buying it needs to have a French bank account. It also says that you can reclaim unused credit by talking to the customer services people ... Regards Pickles

[quote user="Baz"][quote user="Gastines"] I believe the problem with UK tax payable only arises if you take the money/profit back into UK. I believe you can find ways to avoid some of it. Please note I said avoid not evade. Regards/ [/quote] I am sorry that this wrong, the gain for UK CGT is payable once the sale is complete, whether or not the proceeds are in the UK. I have been through the procedures and also bear in mind that the exchange rate is calculated on the day of exchange. The Inland Revenue have many ways of tracing non tax payments on overseas transactions. Baz  [/quote] There ARE circumstances under which Gastines' comment would be correct, but they require you to be non-UK DOMICILED, whilst being UK resident. If you are UK-domiciled and UK resident, then you are taxed on the arising basis (ie as per Baz's comment) rather than the remittance basis (Gastines' comment) Pickles

The weight and space-saving tyre is unfortunately only too widespread - in fact if you buy certain cars all you get is a can of sealing gunge - the space-saver is a cost option! Personally I hate the damn things, having been forced to purchase a tyre make that I did not want but which was "available" when on a weekend trip, 200 miles from home, after a non-repairable puncture. If forced to use one, I would advise fitting it on non-driven axles - even if that means (eg on a front-wheel drive car with a front tyre puncture) that you have to swap a rear tyre to the front, putting the space-saver on the rear. This reduces the workload on the differential. When driving with the space-saver fitted, obviously the handling of the car is affected, as is the ground clearance on the corner where it is fitted. However, when buying your car, take note what the depth of the wheel well is - on many cars it actually CAN take a full-size steel wheel and standard tyre (a give-away is if there is a lot of foam padding between the wheel and the false boot floor). The new Yaris is a case in point, as are some of the Saab models. You can then get a spare full size steel wheel and tyre and store the space-saver until you sell the car. Pickles

IIRC, most dishwashers use less water than doing it all by hand would take ... Pickles

I'd advise taking legal advice on this course of action. Depending on how your ownership of the property was originally set up, I don't think that there is such a thing as a "simple transfer" - although I am quite prepared to be corrected. Hence, the transaction may be in effect a sale by all 4 of you to 2 of you.  In such a case, there is a danger that if it were to become apparent to the local authorities that the transaction was going through for a value rather lower than the property is worth, then the local authority may exercise a right of pre-emption to purchase the property at the same price ... Regards Pickles

UK 0560 numbers are non-geographic numbers charged at the old "local rate" (ie same as 0845 - in other words what a local call USED TO COST) and which are used for VOIP services. We have one that we have used in the UK and France. People in the UK have no problem contacting it, wherever the phone actually is. People in Germany and Switzerland have no problem contacting it. People in Ireland used to have problems but I think it now works. People in France can sometimes call it and sometimes they can't - seems to depend on the network, or how tight the string is, or how loudly they shout into the tin can or some such factor. Regards Pickles

I seem to recall that on ours there was a 1.5% deduction for a primary residence, which obviously you didn't get if it was a second home. Regards Pickles.

My understanding (having prepared a French will with help from a notaire) is that if you leave your estate (or parts of it) to a FRENCH registered charity, then it will receive it tax free. It is possible to leave your estate to a French charity with an instruction to them to distribute part of the estate to others, but these amounts will then become liable to taxation. Pickles

Sunday Driver wrote: Regardless of where it's come from, if the vehicle is less than six months old and has been driven less than 6,000kms, then you must pay 19.6% French TVA on arrival in France.  If it's a UK car, then you should have bought it tax free in the UK.  Same with Belgium.  For Germany, you have to pay 16% German VAT, then pay 19.6% French VAT, then reclaim the German VAT, so budget this in your cash flow.  For EU sourced used cars over six months old/6,000kms, there is no French VAT to pay and no import duties. Irlandais wrote > Have to bring this up ...what if the car is more than 6 months old, but has less than 6000kms? Then it is classified as a second-hand car (the requirement is less than 6 months old AND less than 6K Kms, so if your car fails on either requirement then it is a second-hand car) and you don't pay French VAT on importation and don't get to claim back the VAT paid in the country of origin. Incidentally, if you buy an new export car in the UK (hence not paying VAT) and try to hang on to it for more than six months before registering it elsewhere (or else do more than 6K Kms in the six months), then the car becomes liable for UK VAT. The tax authorities have the right to demand the original bill of sale/VAT receipt. Regards Pickles

First of all, these schemes have been going for quite a while now, so there is some evidence about how they perform - although there are now FAR more of these schemes which are in their first or second lease term than have exited from the leases - which is an important point to bear in mind with regards to future predictions .... You really have to look hard at these and think hard about why you are considering them. Some of the French books on property investment warn that (depending on the location and the type of property) you may end up with something at the end of the lease which is worth less than you paid for it.  Some properties are pretty much stand-alone and are therefore relatively independent of the complex in which they are located: others amount to not much more than hotel rooms and therefore at the end you are dependent on who manages the overall building - in these cases you are looking into a crystal ball about how strong the management company is, what reputation they have now, what's going to happen to the business over the next 10-20 years, how well they are going to manage and maintain the building, etc etc. In some cases, beyond the end of the leases, you will need to think about how easy is it going to be to either resell or manage the property? The common areas (which would have been the responsibility of the company to which you let the property for the first 9 or 20 years or whatever) end up as being the responsibility of the copropriete, and so from that point onwards (just when things start wearing out) the cost falls on the owners - if the management company has done minimal maintenance leading up to the handover, then higher-than-normal costs will be incurred by the owners. Some French commentators regard these properties as being overpriced in terms of their potential as an INVESTMENT. That's not not say that they are not worth buying; it's just that you need to go in with your eyes wide open and the best advice seems to be: don't consider them as being indistinguishable from "normal" property investments. If it is something that you are going to use yourself, then that gives it an additional value to you. Otherwise, be VERY careful. The same goes for de Robien-style investment offerings: quite often these are priced above the local market norms - and bear in mind that eg de Robien investments giving rise to a deduction from your tax may in effect be far more attractive to French residents than UK/overseas residents. This is because overseas residents will be subject to the "minimum 25%" tax rate which is applied AFTER de Robien tax reductions are applied. Thus, if the tax benefit offered is a direct reduction in your final tax rather than a reduction in the amount on which the tax is calculated, the benefit will be nullified by the requirement that you pay 25% of the imposable amount (unless you can prove to the satisfaction of the French tax authorities that if your world-wide income were to be taken into account for French tax calculation purposes, your overall tax rate would be less than 25%). Pickles

My understanding of the situation is this: If you are ordinarily resident in France at the time of your death, then French succession law takes precedence. If you are ordinarily resident in the UK at the time of your death, then it is possible for UK inheritance law and hence a UK will to take precedence over French succession law if you have invoked the Hague Convention in the purchase of your French property. However, French Inheritance tax law will still apply to your French assets and their distribution. Returning to the original point, I was advised by a French notaire that the basic, handwritten French will (which must NOT be typed) should not be witnessed (contrary to UK wills) and if it carried the signature of a witness then it would be invalid (although other forms of will are witnessed by a notaire). I was also informed that it must actually be written in France to be valid. Not that anyone is likely to check up but if you suspect that you have litigious heirs, then a claim that the will was not physically written in France could  in theory render it invalid, if proved. (How?). The basic handwritten will can then be lodged with a notaire, who will then inform a central registry. The notaire gave us a simple example to follow. Pickles

This happened to my father-in-law ... What you are supposed to be able to do is to go to the ticket office in the station with the reference number of your booking and the credit card used to make the booking. You must then purchase new tickets - but they will be sold to you at the same price as your original booking. Then you ask for a form called "Apres Vente Voyagers/envoi a domicile" which you fill in, attach your NEW tickets (after you have used them) and send it to SNCF, BP 74, 75462 Paris Cedex 10. They will then reimburse you direct to your credit card about 8-12 weeks later. I made sure that he had a print-out of the relevant section of the SNCF website in French which he was then able to wave under the nose of the agent at Roissy who was trying her hardest to make him pay the full fare. It worked ... eventually, though it became obvious that she had signed up for the full half hour rather than the 5-minute argument. Pickles

It's not really a good idea to respond to any spam emails. Most of the "phishing" emails are sent out to vast numbers of email addresses that have been complied over a period of time by various automated means - and the spammers haven't a clue which ones are live and which are unused. A lot of those addresses will be inactive. If you respond, then you are giving them a useful piece of information which has monetary value to them - that this particular email address is "live" - which they didn't know previously. THEN you get added to the list of "known live" addresses which the spammers sell on to other spammers. Pickles

For those who are unaware why the spammers insert such random quotations; it is generally an attempt to get the email past some spam filters which use scoring systems based on content analysis. These types of filter look for messages which contain the usual suspect words. If the message content is short and contains one of the target words, then the filter will give it a high spam score on the basis that such a short message containing a target word is likely to be spam eg "buy your viagra here". If however, the message contains only one target word in amongst lots of other words, then it will give the message a lower score, on the basis that you might just mention the word "viagra" or whatever in a normal extended conversation and therefore the message COULD be legitimate. Pickles

Having just done something similar (though not to France), then I can tell you that there is actually a process via which you should do this. If you go to the HMRC site and do a search on "New means of Transport" then you will very soon find the documents that you need. One is VAT 411. The key document is Notice 728 which explaind the procedures. The HMRC internal guidance note is V1-17. For those are buying in the UK and who haven't had their cars delivered yet, the idea is that you can have the car registered in the UK on special number plates (which are at present in the XA ... range). These indicate to the authorities that UK VAT has NOT been paid on the car (and naturally the price that you pay to the dealer is the VAT-free price). Obviously in order to register the car you have to have a UK insurance certificate, and the various documents (including a VAT declaration)have to be presented to a DVLA Regional Office: the dealer cannot do the normal thing of giving you a reg number from its allocation. You don't pay for the Road Fund Licence, just a charge of (currently) £38. The car then has to be exported within 2 months. When you register the car in France, it is declared as new and you pay the full French VAT - usually on the UK invoice price. For those who haven't gone through this process, all is not lost. Provided the car is less than 6 months old and has done less than 6000 km on export/registration in France, it is possible to reclaim the UK VAT though I think you need to prove that French VAT has been paid. Both routes are explainied in the same document from the HMRC site. Incidentally the same process applies to ships and aircraft. Regards Pickles

The same pitfalls occur in France as in the UK. If the property is rented out then the tenant pays taxe d'habitation but you pay the taxe fonciere. There are specific rules that govern residential lettings, eg effectively you cannot evict a tenant during the winter months, even if they are not paying. Unfurnished lettings are 3 years duration - the tenant can give notice whenever they wish, but for the landlord to terminate the lease early would be difficult. If you are UK resident then you pay income tax on the rental income (less certain costs) in both France and the UK but get relief for the French tax paid against your UK tax. As a non-French resident you don't pay social charges but also don't get the advantage of the graduated tax system in France - essentially you will be charged 25% of your taxable income. If it is done on a small scale, (income less than about 15K euros), then the French returns are VERY easy: above that level and it is slightly more complex but not rocket science. Pickles

If you intend to be resident in France then unless you buy it in the name of your heir (essentially, you give him/her the money and he/she buys the property), I don't think that you can avoid inheritance tax. How much do you trust your heir? The other alternatives are to leave it to a large number of people (so that each has a share worth around the 5K euro limit (or whatever is the current tax-free limit to a non-connected person)) or to leave it to a charity. If you are going to be UK resident, then going down the route of having the property owned by a company might avoid some problems, but would introduce others in the form of an income tax liability on your use of the property. Pickles