Daft Doctor

Hi, quick question on form 3916. The form basically asks for declaration of any foreign accounts 'ouvert, clos ou utilisé' during the year. We have a few UK accounts remaining, but most of them are just dormant, either with a nil balance or £1, and have had no transactions through them for a few years. Do these have to be declared, as they haven't been 'utilisé' during 2016? Any insight welcomed, advice will be taken at face value.

Hi, yes, just use the taxable UK property profit for the calendar year. When you fill in form 2047, you will include this profit in section 4, the total of which then goes across to box 4BA on 2042. This year there is a new box 4BL to tell the impots that under the dual tax treaty you should receive a rebate of French tax payable on the income. This same income, along with any other income taxed in the UK but declarable in France (such as government pensions), is entered again in section 6 of form 2047, then this is transferred over to box 8TK on form 2042. This should prevent any social charges being levied on any of it. I do also fill in form 2044, but once again I only give consolidated profit data, and just mention Royaume-Uni as the address. This is the way our French accountant always did it, so I've just carried on like that.

Couple of things. Firstly Brexit does not affect a UK citizen's right to have the inheritance laws of their country of birth to apply to their estate under EU reg 650/2012, you could be Brazilian and would have the same rights. It is only relevant that France is in the EU, so the only fly in the ointment would be Frexit...... Secondly, if you have a will which is valid in the UK (wording, signatures, etc), it will be valid in France (many online resources make this clear), and the will does not have to be in French. Mrs DD and I have newly drafted valid UK wills covering all worldwide assets, complete with a clause invoking rights under EU regulation 650/2012 (similar to the one given in a post above). It is for individuals to take advice and make their own minds up, but I am very confident that our wills are both legal and valid here in France. It is true that as habitual residents in France the estate would have to be administered here, and a notaire would have to be involved. That it might be difficult for them to deal with assets other than those in France would be their problem, but not insurmountable in this day and age and with a bit of help surely.......

Just a couple of quick question on this subject, if not directly related to the OP's initial query. I have worked out by looking at various online resources, that assuming no professional activites are undertaken, it is only property income and investment income that is taken into account to calculate the PUMa cotisations. It is also widely stated that those in receipt of a retirement pension are fully exempt from PUMa cotisations. What I have not found by searching online are answers to the following: 1. Is UK property income included in the calculations? (This income is taxed in the UK, and although declared in France, is then under the dual tax treaty subject to a rebate of French tax equal to the income's proportion of the whole income for the foyer, and a 100% rebate of social charges). 2. Would my early retiree NHS pension, which is both taxed and subject to social charges in France, qualify me for exemption from PUMa cotisations? (None of the resources I looked at specify the type of retirement pension qualifying for the exemption, nor any minimum age limit - it seems the information to calculate the cotisations is simply taken from the previous year's tax returns, in which my NHS pension is of course declared as such). Thanks to anyone who has any insights or thoughts

Regarding the phasing out of 'ayants droit majeurs', I read the state published information online when the plans were announced in late 2015. It seemed to me that the switch of an ayant droit to their own personal health cover and reimbursements (administered through CPAM), was mainly designed to modify the system to protect confidentiality of ayants droit, particularly in respect of (mainly) female adults and grown-up children who were piggy-backed onto their husband's or parent's cover. I may have been wrong, but what I read implied that those who would have been ayants droit under the old system would gain health cover in their own right without additional cost. In other words, this change in system is not designed to make more money, but rather to comply with modern approaches to confidentiality and to comply with current data protection legislation.

Hi, don't know who told you that your AE status only lasted for 3 years, but I do not believe that this is the case. My wife has been an AE for nearly 5 years now, and there has never been any suggestion made that her status is time limited. It is likely therefore that you do not need to worry about your status in the French healthcare system as long as you continue to declare your AE income and pay cotisations in the normal way. Even if you cease to earn anything, you can continue to submit zero income declarations for 2 years until your AE status lapses. That is not to say that the incoming French government won't change the rules regarding AE, but the above is the current situation as I understand it.

Well done Parsnips, and thoroughly deserved of course! My only bug bear now is that although our 2012 & 2013 contributions were reimbursed by cheque in December, despite several requests by email to the local tresorerie, they haven't yet stumped up the promised interest. Next step is a march down there to try to sort it out, wish me luck with that!

I beg to differ Richard51. I posted a question on 1st November to which Debra replied, sharing her personal experience. I was feeding back on how my personal situation had developed, no-one else had posted meantime. I was 'chatting' about the same subject, one that has been a saga for many. Whilst it does lengthen the thread, it would have been entirely inappropriate to start a new one, since there was no new subject matter, merely a continuation of what had gone before...... To be honest, what I said was relevant to the post, whereas what you said was not, so who is the one who has lengthened the post unnecessarily?

Well, my merry-go-round keeps turning. After receiving the letter with details of my dégrèvement on 12th October, and having emailed the tax people in mid-November enquiring as to when I might be paid, I eventually received a cheque from the local tresorerie yesterday. Problem is, they haven't applied the promised 'intérêts moratoires' to the dégrèvements, which as my award was over 1,000 euros is not insignificant. Email has gone off to the tresorerie pointing out their 'oversight', so let's hope the rest of what is owed arrives in due course!

Hi, I just wondered if anyone can tell me how long it takes to receive the payment after receiving the letter accepting the validity of the claim? It mentions 2 months to appeal, do you have to wait until after those 2 months have passed to receive payment, or is it generally quicker than that? Thanks in advance.

Have you tried logging on to sfr.fr and using webchat to sort it out. I've found it a very useful and efficient way to sort problems out both here in France and the UK. You usually get the option to have a transcript of your chat emailed to you, so no arguments over what has been agreed.

Oh yes, and of course a HUGE thank you to parsnips for providing the excellent template letter. Without that I'd be empty handed for sure!

Hallelulah! Letter from the fisc arrived a few days ago. 90% of my claim has been accepted, plus interest. No mention of recalculating impots for 2014 & 2015 due to less CSG being available to offset income in those years, so maybe they're overlooking all that. The letter says there is 2 months to appeal, which of course I've no intention of doing. Does that mean they won't pay out until that period has elapsed, or should I expect something imminently? Nice to have good news for once!

Especially a xenophobic one...............

Just going back to mint's comment re cholesterol not being a major risk factor for Coronary Heart Disease (CHD), I beg to differ, and I'll explain why below. Although lifestyle, stress levels, and of course obesity are all contributory factors to many diseases, including CHD and other circulatory disorders such as stroke disease, from a medical perspective, the major risk factors for CHD are high LDL (low density) cholesterol, high blood pressure, smoking, diabetes and family history. These risk factors have been identified on the basis of a wealth of observational and interventional research, which shows that having any of these factors significantly increases risk (worse in combination, tending to multiply rather than add to the risk), and removing or reducing these risk factors (where possible - can't do much about the genes we inherit) significantly reduces that risk. The added complication is that high cholesterol and (in the vast majority of cases) high blood pressure have no symptoms at all, so otherwise seemingly healthy individuals, who may indeed be slim, may be carrying both these risk factors without knowing it. Men carry a greater risk of CHD than women, but men aged below 65 consult their GP much less frequently that the same age group in women, so the challenge has been to reach this particular group to screen for the various risk factors. I recently had cause to look at life expectancy changes in the UK between 1982 and 2014, and it is quite startling. Life expectancy at birth has risen by 8 years for men and by 6 years for women during that time. In addition however, life expectancy at age 65 has also risen considerably, up from 13 to 18.4 years for men, and up from 16.9 years to 20.9 years for women. Not only are we therefore living a lot longer compared to 32 years ago, but the gap between men and women is closing. If we all accept that obesity is a contributory factor for many diseases and that it becoming an increasing problem in all western countries (and is more prevalent in the UK than most), there must be something significant going on to explain the rise in life expectancy, and particularly the narrowing gap between that for men and women. In 1982, only 29% of men lived to beyond 80, that figure is now 57%, a huge increase. The Office for National Statistic's own conclusions are that the overall trend can be explained by better detection and treatment for cancer and in the prevention of circulatory disorders, including CHD. They go on to suggest however that the latter particularly explains the narrowing life expectancy gap between men and women, since unlike cancer, men are more at risk of CHD simply because of their sex. So my point is that cholesterol is a indeed a major risk factor for CHD and, more importantly, modifying it leads to undoubted benefits statistically. Indeed, the correlation is so strong that in the UK, patients with either diabetes or high blood pressure are invited to take statins irrespective of their starting cholesterol levels. This is done because we know that whatever the initial levels, reducing LDL cholesterol levels by 20% greatly reduces the CHD risk in these patients. So yes, lifestyle, stress and obesity are of course all very important to avoid, but we mustn't ignore the elephant in the room, and should all have our cholesterol and blood pressure checked now and again, especially if we are otherwise fit and well and don't tend to see much of our GP.

Things have indeed changed, which is why Norman kindly reproduced that article for us. It was also mentioned in previous threads on the subject earlier this year. I should also say that when I brought up the subject of acting sooner rather than later in this thread in May: http://services.completefrance.com/forums/completefrance-forums/cs/forums/3370760/ShowPost.aspx I was haranged by one member of the forum as 'scaremongering'!! Doubt whether he's saying the same things now.

Hi, just picked up on this thread, which is very interesting. On the difference in obesity rates between the UK and France, that can only be environmental, i.e. a combination of dietary considerations (including alcohol consumption) and attitudes to sport and more minor physical activity, watching TV, etc. In my opinion and experience, the UK is much more aligned to the American way than France, and yes, whenever I go back to the UK I notice how heavy some people are. That being said, if you took 100 people and fed them exactly the same diet for 6 months, they would all gain (or lose) different amount of weight. Morevoer, even in the 'weight gainers' some would look fat and others wouldn't to the same degree. That is because there is huge variation within individuals in their basal metabolic rates and also to what degree and where they store fat. Although everyone is somewhere on a spectrum in this respect, there are undoubtedly naturally skinny people (ectomorphs) and people who naturally gain weight easily (endomorphs). This is quite probably why the brothers referred to in the post above look very different despite apparently similar attitudes to food and its consumption. Some people tend to put weight on mainly round their middle (very bad prognostically for heart disease and late onset diabetes), whereas others deposit fat more evenly, so look very different. These things are genetic, and if like me you're an endomorph body type, you have to work an awful lot harder to keep your weight under control. The other thing to say is that in some ways being naturally thin can persuade people falsely that they are healthy, don't need to bother about diet or exercise, and have a low risk of e.g. heart disease. Being naturally thin does not however guarantee that you will have a low cholesterol, as much as being overweight does not necessarily mean that your cholesterol is high. Cholesterol is of course a major risk factor for heart disease, so even the lucky thin people still need to have this checked periodically and watch their diet in the same way that the rest of us should.

Hi, I disagree that simply having any dog in a restaurant is by definition unhygienic. Whether you like dogs or not, unless they physically interact with the food in some way, there is no risk to hygiene or health. The argument is more whether it is appropriate to have dogs in a restaurant, and has been said earlier, it depends so much on how well behaved and well trained the individual dog. Whereas we would never contemplate taking our dog to a restaurant by choice, particularly in the evening, it can be difficult to avoid doing so during trips away from home, when there is often nowhere he can be left safely while we eat. On the other hand, he has never ever been given treats, let alone fed tit-bits from a table, so is not interested in the slightest in any food on show. Even in the presence of other dogs, he just lies under the table and sleeps (as a border collie, he burns all his energy off during the day, then just crashes in the evening). In our area of France we've usually been welcomed without reservation, but I would understand if we were told that him staying would be conditional on good behaviour. Whether or not the other guests object to the presence of dogs wouldn't interest me, since as long as dogs are inconspicuous and don't cause any disturbance, in my opinion they do no harm. We have been told by restaurant owners on a couple of occasions that they don't object to dogs at all, as in many cases they are better behaved than humans!

Thanks nomoss. The fully prepared copy 2042 which the accountant emailed me after approving the draft did not have box 0TA crossed or any other indication that a mandate was in place. We did send a mandate of sorts back in late 2014 to allow online filing of our VAT return, which had become compulsory, but I don't recall any mandate covering any other action. The fact is that our accountants filed our declarations online in 2014 & 2015, but I saw that this year it hadn't been done by June 7th deadline. The accountant sounded a bit hesitant on the phone, as the person dealing with my case wasn't there, but then insisted that paper declarations had been sent 3 weeks earlier, before the appropriate deadline. Earlier this week I got an email from the local tax office essentially saying that nothing had been received to date, and to avoid penalties I had to move quickly and resubmit everything. That has been done (all by me) thankfully, but I'm not convinced that anything actually left the accountant's office in the first place. In the absence of a mandate they would have had to forward everything to me for signature first, which of course didn't happen. Even if they had a mandate, why go back to paper when they'd already filed on line 2 years in a row? Am I really to believe that the forms just got lost in the post, a bit suspicious don't you think?

Won't bore you with the whole saga, but we may be heading for a dispute with our French accountants over the filing of our tax declarations this year. Am I correct in believing that paper declarations must be signed personally by the tax payer, and cannot be simply signed by the accountant on our behalf? Everything I've read implies that this is the case, and in the days before online declarations we were certainly sent the prepared forms by the accountant to sign and forward to the tax office, but I can't find the definitive answer to this specific question. Thanks to anyone who has good knowledge of this.

Thanks, it makes me feel better that I'm not the only one still waiting, though it would be better still if we were all sorted out, and preferably before Xmas!

10 months down the line and I still haven't had a response to my claim for reimbursement of social charges. Am I the only one to have waited this long?

Have you tried putting a post on the Chien Perdu website?

Registering as an AE as has been said starts the process off and can all be done online. Depending on the nature of your AE business, you will be registered with the appropriate 'caisse'. They will issue your social security number, SIRET number (for your business) and (eventually) issue you and anyone piggybacking onto your health care as 'ayants droit' with a Carte Vitale. Healthcare access however begins almost immediately after registration with the issue of an attestation. Be prepared to send birth, marriage and any other bits of paper requested, and as things frequently get lost in the system, take copies before you send. The site to register on is www.lautoentrepreneur.fr, click on 'adherez au regime' and off you go!

With a little info you can get any certificate you like from the General Records Office (sorry not sure how to insert active link): https://www.gov.uk/order-copy-birth-death-marriage-certificate I used this service to 'tool up' with all the relevant certificates before moving over to France, as it seemed likely I'd need them at some point.