steve

hiya - when we came to France in 2002 in our motor home, I had my shotgun under the bed with around 1000 rounds in the wardrobe! Not stricktly legal I think...... It was also a time of high alert, BSE etc etc - we had a fridge full of bacon and cheddar. No one stopped us either end. I had the gun cabinet sent over with the rest of our personal belongings when we moved into our house. We also informed local police in UK that we were going / gone and they requested we send the certificate back to them. As I am aware you can own a shotgun, but cannot buy ammo for it or go hunting... thats next on my to do list - hunting permit! Steve

a good point - its not usually the engines or gearboxes (was I unlucky?) that give problems The chassis is the thing - everyone knows that most of the gardens in France are not you average Eenglish lawn, but bumpy paddocks! Its the welds, the metal and mounting points for gearbox etc that usually fail - Engines are pretty good these days, even the Chinese made ones! My advise as ever is go for the bigest engine you can afford, and study the chassis well (dont you allways! :) )I think some of the smaller Husq's have the same Chassis as Craftsman. John Deere and the thing from hell have 'extra heavy duty' chassis. Me I am saving all my pennies for a Iseki SXG 19/22 with High Dump! - perhaps next year when I can exchange the thing from hell and my old John Deere for one - fingers crossed Steve

you need to talk to Dawn! She is standing with a team in local village - see http://gerard.donzeau.over-blog.fr/ - Dawn is center back - Steve

thats the key - lots of hard work - your right - all I want to do is make a living - perhaps have a pool myself one day! Steve

I run a gardening / pool cleanining / gite service business.  I have fuel to buy for mowers, pick up truck and car. I have machines to buy - every year - last year 7 k for a mower, next year 14k for a bigger one! I have chemicals to buy for pools - we look after 23, so offsetting the TVA on all these things will help. Think how expensive fuel is -  perhaps spend 1500€ a year on Petrol and around 2 fill ups of diesel a week in the summer - 60€ a time - perhaps 3.5k a year? (+ once every week or 2 in winter). new tyres, servicing of mowers, car & truck, blades, all sorts. I think the gov may not be far off on their calculations? Perhaps I should double my hourly rate? (and lose out to all the people working on the black) We have a 'reasonable' living over here - right now is the worse time for us - but, thankfully the grass is growing!  We pay I guess the same perhaps a bit more over here, but the main reason for being here is the way of life.  Dawn is standing in the local elections in a couple of weeks - we are on a couple of local committees, and have never entertained so much! So many people give up there businesses after 3 years - and run off back to the yUK. We have stuck it out, although its not easy. We have been running the business since 2002. MSA ? mmm, an organisation that certainly do not know what they are doing! We dread any post from them - almost every couple of months or so, over the last 2 years we recieved " we have recalculated your contribution and have found you have underpaid by 500€ or 1200€"  or whatever the typist thought she would put! We are going to take this outstanding amount from your account this coming Friday.....failure to pay on time will result in a 300€ late payment charge blah blah blah. We took our French neighbour to see them once - they couldnt explain to him what we should be paying. Last year was 8000€ - on a 32k turnover (declared income of 16k), (some sales in the equation too). We earnt the same as we did the year before, so we are paying them what we did every month last year - it might just work out about right.....I hope. It definately isnt easy to start up and run a small business over here - having said that I have never run one anywhere else - always had an employer! But as I said in my first post, thing very seriously about starting a new business - unless you have a money tree! Steve

as a Micro, the gov are the boys that say how much it costs to run it - they look at 48% (it may have changed this year) of your turnover as taxable. the remaining 52% is 'running costs etc' now if you earn 20k,then around 9,600 is taxable - (with allowances you end up paying virtually no tax !) MSA on the other hand look at your declared income or 'profit' - 9,600 and steel their lump - approx 50% of that. Dont forget, MSA deal with everything from pensions to medical - we never pay anyone else anything. We have gone TVA registered as of 1/1/08, so hopefully, we can off set new machines, cars etc against any profit, scuppering MSA! I dont mind paying my dues, its just when you come back from burying your mother in law (2 years ago) you find a demand for the last 3 years contributions on your desk - 3 lots totalling around 9k! Bare also in mind we had been paying what they told us to, and suddenly they remembered they had 'undercalculated' this other 9k!.  Being honest and up front we pay, sorry I pay between 5 & 6 k pa now - Dawn will cost ne another 1200 or so - luckily she is covered medacally with her past employer until next year. This is our 6th year in the business and i aint gonna give it up to anyone! Have a nice day :) Steve

hi - we run  a grass cutting business, so a mower has to be good - when we first started, we had a wee craftsman, it lasted about a season and a half - next was a john deere - terrific machine - we still have it with over 500hrs on it, but, it doesnt collect. In 2006 we bought a XXXXXXX - a well known British built machine, that collects. It was twice as much as the John Deere (nearly 3x as much actually) and frankly is rubbish - I have run it for a season (300hrs) and had a new gearbox, numerous belts, 3 new collector boxes, and now are taking legal steps to get the collector system fixed under the warrenty, which the suppliers have told me ran out after 10m of the year given! My advise would be to go for the JD range - the bigger the better - 17HP minimum really - they have (the 17HP) Kawasaki engines. Go for a machine with B&S, Honda or KAwasaki motors. If you really start to look hard at machines, then you will see that most of the cheap end machines have the same chassis - just different body work and engines. You get what you pay for (usually). You dont need to collect if you cut and mulch regularly enough Good luck[:D] Steve

If I were you I would stop and have another think. Setting up a business is NOT easy. Cutting a bit of grass, cleaning pools, cleaning etc. You will have to become a registered company and have a siret number - you will if you cut grass end up being registered with MSA - you have to be assosiated with an organisation, depending on your trade. They take at least 50% of your declared income towards your cotisations (national insurance if you like) so, if you earn 20,000€, you declare roughly 10k (if you are a micro enterprise) and then you end up with 5k to live on (the other 10k is for running the company). Its not enough! France is a great place to retire to, but a sod to work in! Its taken us 6 years to get to grips with the system (we hope) and to almost scratch a living - we have gone TVA registered this year, so we hope our costs will go down - we will have to wait a year to find out though....... If you cant speak French then take lessons and try and get a job with someone else, or work on a campsite in the bar in exchange for bord & lodging. Sorry to be so down, but its not easy! do lots of homework and join a couple of news groups to ask peoples opinions. Good luck Steve