Creusedwellers

Dear all This is an update on the "social contributions" issue which I started a few weeks ago. Thanks to a couple of the posters, I have now reached a solution and it IS possible to work for a UK employer from one's French home, provided of course, one is prepared to take the "medium" sized cut in take home pay. In brief, it works like this: Join a portage company (I do recommend Challenge & Co (freelanceinfrance) for their understanding and flexibility). Get your employer to pay your salary into your British bank account (the salary should be paid gross plus the employer's NI contribution - assuming one's P85 has been processed and the DSS has given permission for you to be treated as a Category X NI (non) payer). You negotiate a good Euro price on your salary with a good FX co. Every month or every second month, you tell the portage company how much to invoice your employer in Euros. YOU pay the invoice by converting your Sterling salary to Euros and paying it over to portage co. They act like your employer, deduct all the necessary cotisations and issue you with a salary slip...et voila. The alternative was to pay my employers' cotisations plus my personal cotisations without the benefit of the portage co acting as my French employer, which would have left me with about 20% of my gross package - hardly enough to live on. Through the portage co, I'm left with 55% of my gross package. These percentages would obviously vary slightly depending on one's level of earnings. As solutions go, this is better than renting a flat in the UK for 6 months of the year, both financially and in terms of quality of life. In answer to another question I raised during the course of the discussion. One DOES pay cotisations on interest from one's savings. Depends on the level, but it comes out at around 8% (and then one may still pay tax on the balance after cotisations). Hope this is helpful.

Thanks to all those who posted their views on the vagaries of working for a UK-based employer and living in France. Clearly I need to investigate options from living part-time in the UK to setting up a portage company etc. Can anybody recommend a savvy accountant who speaks English and knows both the French and UK systems with whom I can discuss the options - preferably an accountant who follows up phone calls and emails with something more substantial than silence, as has been my experience over the past few months.

Dear Cooperlola Thank you. This tax calculator is very useful for the future. What I need now is a cotisations calculator. As you know, one pays tax, and one pays National Insurance (or in France cotisations). In addition to one's own cotisations, the employer pays employers' cotisations on one's gross salary. In England the percentage is 11.5 on the gross salary; in France it could be anything from 35 - 60% of the gross salary. Obviously, my employer, as a UK-based company is going to refuse to pay that on my behalf, and I'm going to have to pick up the bill by reducing my salary. I'm trying to find out what the percentage on my salary would be for both me and my employer. I've tried to engage various accountants to advise, but either they don't need the business, or they're dead because I get no reply from any of them - leaving me feeling quite desperate! Thanks again for the tax calculator. I will continue my search for a cotisations calculator. Creusedweller    

Please help! I recently moved to France. I work from home (in France) for a UK company. I'm told that my employer in the UK will have to pay cotisations (social contributions) here in France. As my employer would rightly refuse to pay the much higher cotisations required by France, I am going to have to reduce my salary so that the total package paid by my employer (salary, employees cotisations and employer's cotisations) is equal to the total package paid while I was tax domiciled in the UK. Question is: how do I find out what my cotisations would amount to. I know it depends on my salary and the kind of work I do, but a) who can I consult to get exact figures; b) how do I go about registering to pay cotisations in France; and c) are these paid monthly, yearly or how?