Victor Meldrew

Do you mean that you will be salaried or that you will bill the employer for your time? If you are an employee and salaried, then the employer will have to pay cotisations for employing you, and you will pay cotisations as well, even if you are on SMIC. However if you are self employed and you bill him or her for your hours worked, then the cotisations are your responsibilty and it will be cheaper for the "employer" As far as I am aware, the tax side is still down to you, when I was salaried, there was no deduction of tax on my payslip, just cotisations to URSSAF etc.  I stand to be corrected on this if anyone knows different.  

Don't know about the guy from Ruffec, but I personally know the guy in Dept 37 who was fined, given a suspended prison sentence, told he can never run a business in France again and WAS deported for 1 year. Also think about what would happen, if you paid even the first instalment of funds for work to be done and then all the workers got kicked off site and your site shut down. Is it worth the risk??????????????    

[quote user="babcock"]The Tempo site seems to be run by some amateurs. This morning I could not even find the page for the colour de jour. I think that it is astonishing that such an important (to some) site is left to someone with less nounce that a five year old.[/quote] Quite agree, it seems sometimes they forget just what days have already past and have to go back and change the history, but link below, this will tell you what colour day it will be tomorrow from about 5pm and give you the historical info aswell. http://www.edf-bleuciel.fr/accueil/mon-quotidien-avec-bleu-ciel-d-edf/option-tempo-141090.html Hope this helps Victor    

All I did was to go to the CdM and tell them that I wanted to close my enterprise, they did all the forms there and then, took back my artisan registration card and gave me a Certificate of Radiation. It is as easy as that. Hope this helps  

Is there a need for a qualified English electrician, registered to work in France, within the Department of Indre et Loire? Any (constructive) comments gratefully received.

No probs with them working here in France. As long as they follow the same rules as the rest of us that have registered and pay our cotisations and insurances. Victor 

I have just lost a job to someone who himself is registered but, I am led to believe, brings in Polish lads to do the work. He can hammer out the job in half the time and for 30 - 40% less than I quoted.   Firstly what is he registered as? If he is a maitre d'eouve then ne does not need insurances but any one he employs has to be registered with the CdeM and has to have the necessary insurances to cover the work that they are doing and also third party liability. Where we live a guy did just this, the work was of poor quality, there were no insurances and when things went wrong nothing was ever put right. Need I go on, but he soon had the gendarmes crawling all over him and was banged to rights. What I would do is a search on the net to see what he is registered as and if necessary get in touch with the CdeM and let them do the rest. Hope this helps Victor  

If someone is earning SMIC for a 35hour week and is married with 2 children, can they claim other benefits? Regards Victor

I wonder if anyone can help please? We moved in 6 months ago so are still feeling our way with pool maintenance etc.,  However in Spring (and when we were experiencing heavy rain) we noticed the vinyl liner of our pool began forming wrinkles at the deep end.  These have now spread to the whole of the bottom of our pool, so much so, our robot now sticks on them and is not able to clean the pool well.  We have a friend who is a pool installer/maintainer and has over 30 clients who have pools where the liners have encountered the same problem as yours, all have been caused by the very high water table in our area and almost all will need new liners. Another friend who has the same problem with their pool contacted the manufacture of their pool and was told that this problem was not covered by the guarantee on the liner as it was beyond the control of the client/company.   As our winters seem to be getting wetter, it would appear that the only solution is to either install a drainage ring below ground around base of the pool to take away some of the land water that appears to be getting under the liner or have a much thicker liner installed so that it does not crease up again next winter. Either way it is not cheap. Hope this is of assistance. Victor   

This is not French norm, by the sound of what you have described you have had the same electrician wire your house that installed mine. I have ripped out our wiring and started again especially after I found 2.50mm plugs linked with bell wire which was nail to the wall and a door bell that went from a 2.5mm main feed to a 1.50mm car in line fuse holder into telephone wire!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! In my opinion either rip it out and start again or consult an electrician. Regards Victor    

There are adders/vipers in France, see the website below for details on adders http://www.herpetofauna.co.uk/adder.htm Hope this helps Regards Victor  

Will be going at the end of next week if anyone is interested in my offer regards       Victor

The only one I can think of that will kill grass for that long is Napalm, but seriously you could try Sulphate de Courd in a very strong mix Regards Victor

South east, but could go a bit further if required Victor

I am based in the Loches area of Dept 37 and have an empty van returning to the UK in a couple of weeks time, does anybody need anything delivered back to the UK. Victor

Take the damage deposit with the final payment and return it either by cheque or bank payment one week after the guests have departed, that way you get to check if anything has been damaged and hidden. If you have changeovers back to back you cannot check every last thing before guests leave.  We had more than one incident where damage was caused and we were not informed, the guests knew they had caused it as when we asked them they confessed. Had we given them back their deposit at the time of departure we would have been several hundred Euros out of pocket. If you take a cheque and do not bank it as soon as you get it, the chances are the cheque will have been stopped by the time you have noticed any damage.   Victor    

Do not forget that as a buyer you also pay the estate agents fees as well and these are approx a further 6% of the purchase price.  Victor

Does anyone use or can recommend which french programme is best to buy for doing your own day to day accounts for a business? I want to buy a package to enable me to do the "donkey work" side of my accounts of my enterprise individuel, and save myself a fortune paying the accountant! Anyone have any ideas, please? Thanks. Victor

Not sure if this is under the corect forum but here goes. Up until the end of last year I had an enterprise registered here in France as Renovation du Batiment, but found the general spec to be too broad. The decennal insurance (multi risk) together with the cotisations were just crippiling and even with plenty of work I found that I could not turn it around fast enough to make it pay. The CdeM told me that should I wish to reopen an enterprise there would not be a problem I just need to let them know and start again. However I am now thinking that I would be better specialising in just one trade rather than a bit of everything and to this end have been looking at City and Guilds electrician courses in the UK to gain the necessary qualifications to trade as a domestic electrician although I do know my way around French electrics. Does anyone have any experience of using these qualifications here in France, getting decennal insurance with C&G certs, knowing what courses would be necessary to go on here in France (if any) to basically convert to French norms and to change the spec of an Enterprise.   Any advice gratefully appreciated. Regards Victor    

Do any of the other apartments near to you have the same problems you are having, if so how are they progressing in getting these issues resolved? Also have you spoken to your building insurers? they may be able to help as it should be in their interest, any damage caused by raw sewage could be very costly for them should you claim on your insurance policy. Victor

Having submitted my accounts for the first year showing a loss, I received a letter from URSSAF asking for a RIB so that they could refund my over payment. Silly me, thought I would be a reasonable refund, what did I get? 58 Euros And on the same day as I got the refund, I got a bill for tax professional of Euros 433. I dread to think what I would hve had to pay if I had made a profit. Victor    

Since when were the two rates for planning fees? We were never asked if it was maison principal or secondaire, we were just sent the facture. Victor

If you do not want to dig a hole in the concrete at the bottom of your pump enclosure, have you thought about raising the base, i.e. put in a false bottom and raise the pump. A small quantity of decking and a few reasonable size joists should give you the required height needed to create a sump, although you might have to do a bit of work to you pipes etc and do not worry about the pump still being below the surface water level of the poolm just fit a non return valve, this should solve you problems long term as well. Hope this is of assistance. Regards Victor

It sounds like whoever installed the pump/pumphouse has installed the pump below the surface level of the pool thus keeping the pump primed at all times, they have created a chamber below ground and have not thought about the rise in the water table during the winter. If you pool is still under guarantee the call back the installer to put the problem right or if it is not guaranteed the I would do as previously advised and dig a hole in the concrete base and fit a bucket to act as a sump for the float on a pump and evacuate the water that way. Just as a matter of interest, how far away from the pool is the pump/electrics etc? Hope this is of assistance. Victor   

It was not a case that Euros 2600 was a lot to pay out for the planning permission, it was the fact that having read various threads on forums such as this one where people tell you that there is no charge for planning etc, it comes as a bit of a shock to get such a large bill which you had not budgeted for.  Victor