Alex Duncan

I and my wife are French residents for tax purposes. We run Gites and Bed & Breakfast. I am the sole registered person as self-employed under the Micro-Bic regime. My wife is not registered as my conjoint. Last year we paid 4000 € or so to local helpers and artisans using the CESU service. We were expecting to be refunded 50% of the payments made as a credit to our tax bill. It works out that if you pay say a 100 euros cheque then you get charged an additional 60% or so as their charges. Then you are supposed to be reembursed 50% of the initial 100 euros cheque. Effectifly if you pay 100 euros you will actually loose 110 euros. That was what we thought would happen. But the local tax office told me that since my wife is not registered as employed, we were not entitled to any rebate. I feel tricked! I did not know this was the case with CESU. Did I miss something in the CESU pamphlet? Does anyone have anything useful to contribute to this topic? I am due to raise the issue with my accountant shortly. Just wanted to forarmed.... Yours slightly peeved. Alex in the Cevennes mountains where most local people prefer to work on the black anyway!!! What a joke, really... ah the fun and games of living in France and making a living. (sorry for the mini rant!).

It does. Though we basically do full food and board for groups so I can whittle away the unknowns better than perhaps some B&B's. Basically the accounts balance and we make a small profit after personal living costs to put away for a rainy day. But now that I ma 5 years into it I want to hone things so that I know that I am getting the best long term solution. Thanks for your time all of you.

Will and Benjamen. Thanks for the quick replies and advise. What is also hard to figure is why my collective URSSAF and RSI payments to date for 2008 come to 85% !!! of my Revenue Impostable for 2007. This seems rediculously high. Anyway. A visit with the accountant is on the cards. Thanks again for your advise.

I am a gites and B&B owner and currently use the Regime Micro BIC (Simplier). This allows me to declare up to about 76,300 € revenue p.a. as income. Whatever my revenue, 71% is lopped off (this is the abattement). The remaining figure (29%) is then considered my business profit. That figure, my Revenue Impostable, is then subject to the many Social Security charges and Income Tax. This all comes to about 60% of the 29% of my revenue i.e. about 17%. So if I declared for example 50,000 € revenue my charges come to about €8,500. The advantage of this regime is that I have no accounts to submit. It is Simplified. While it is hard for me to know exactly what my true business costs are, I am confident for the time being that they are less than or equal to the 71% of my revenue. Put differently, I am confident that my profit is as good as or better than 29%. It is perhaps somewhere between 35 - 40 %. However, I read today in "Accueillir Magazine n 18 November / December" that the goverment is reforming the Regime Micro BIC: "Project de loi de finances pour 2009 - Article 44 : Reforme du regime de la location meublee". As I understand it, if this (the B&B/Gites) is your primary activity (and thus make a reasonable livifng at it) you will be affected. The reform proposes to lower the abattement from 71% to 50%, and to limit the revenue to 32,000 € down from 76,300 €. This means that my social charges/tax would go up from 17% of my revenue to 30% (50% X 60%) AND that I am limited to declare no more than 32,000. For me this will be a problem since my revenue for 2008 will more than 32,000. According to the article, I would have to modify my regime to the Regime Reel. This is a pain in the ass to say the least: full accounts, TVA, etc etc. I don't want to do this. However, in the same magazine I am reading that switching to the new statut : Auto Entrepreneur might provide a solution... Are there any people who are concerned about this sort of scenario and who have already found a solution. Of any people who have recently made the switch to the Regime REEL and actually done better out of it (i.e. making your profit appear less than 29% of your declared income?) Any advise welcome. I plan to discuss this with my accountant ASAP.

I am very new to politics but want to read some outline information about the French Budget. Like what the government is spending tax payers money on ! It all started when my wife read out from the papers that 12 million p.a. was to be funnelled into supporting agriculture BIO. I thought at first "great - that is a ton of cash". But when I looked more closley, it turned out to equate to 0.17 % of the annual TVA spent on food. Any website references welcomed. Cheers. Alex.

I am having the same problem - what is my SS going to come to when I declare X revenue under micro bic... ? does someone know? Called URSAF but I am afraid that they must have fallen short on their daily quota of bananas - typical useless French admin responses that were totally uninformative. I just want a simple calculation that I can use to estimate the damages... Can someone help?

I am registered under the MICRO BIC / "Real Simple" regime. I run a B&B/Gites. But I susspect that I haven't correctly understood exactly how my SS and INCOME TAX are calculated from the GROSS REVENUE that I declare. Could someone please help me understand - for example a simple hypothetical calculation based on say 50,000 Euros = My B&B/Gites Revenue (the money I get payed by my clients). I am not to concerned about the TAX - as far as I can see, they deduct 72% off the revenue then from the 28% that is left, work out my TAX. For example TAX would be about 25% of 28% of 50,000. What I am concerned about is SS. I know that SS works out at about 40 - 60 % of one's 'salery'. Here is my dilema! Please don't tell me that I am going to loose 40-60% of my revenue (the 50,000) to SS? I thought - and I fear I have made an error - that SS was going to be calculated on a lesser figure than the otal revenue - like maybe : revenue - 72 or 68%. I tell you - I thought I understood my accountant - but perhaps not Please help if you can. I tried to find a simple calulation example online - but failed. Many thanks. Alex (Cevennes Mountains, France).