Daft Doctor

Having bought both land and a property in France, the legal position is exactly as the others have said, i.e. no 'clauses suspensives' in the CDV, then the deposit is forfeited if the buyer pulls out after the cooling off period. What I don't understand is how it needs to go through the courts for the seller to be given this deposit, since it must be lodged with the agent or notaire at the point of the CDV becoming binding. Legally, it is the buyer who has no right to that money if they then pull out, it should be paid over to the seller without question. If the buyers aren't happy, they are the ones who should attempt to challenge the validity of the CDV through court action. I think sadly that the lady mentioned by the OP has been duped, or their relative lack of knowledge on the subject has been exploited.

The guys who di the crepi on our new house had a machine which mixed the bags of powder with water then it was sprayed onto the walls to give a rustic-type 'brut' finish. I believe you can then trowel it a bit to give a semi-smooth finish (taloché??) or of course smooth it off altogether. Most of the time was spent masking everything off the prevent an unholy mess, but the result was good. I'm sure you can hire these machines, maybe the bricolage places or builder's merchants might know?

Thanks to all, will stick the 'vous' in it and in conversation will try to lazily drop the 'ne' (something which makes sense as we do similar things in English, but in French it doesn't come naturally)!

Hi, a little advice please? Can either of these imperative forms be used for a simple 'don't worry', or should it always be the second form with vous included. Thanks in advance.

Hi, we've banked with Axabanque since 2007, it's 100% online, with email and telephone support if needed. No complaints as such, the website is excellent, as is the smartphone app, and the annual charges are reasonable (a bog standard current account is around 40 euros a year - ours has a few more bells and whistles and is 99 euros per year). The only drawback I'd mention is that we can only pay cheques into our account by sending them to a sorting office in Paris, but then we don't get a lot of cheques given to us........ Hope that helps

As far as the OP's plans go, renting first is of course the best thing to do. In the longer term however, if a decision is made to remain in France, from experience better value can be had from buying land and having a house built. In our case this was much cheaper than buying anything that was on the market when we were looking, and of course you should get the house you want design wise. In addition and quite important for resale, as well as for making your pension go further, you get the benefit of all the modern energy efficiency standards.

Hi Martin, thanks for that. Yes, I did get it sorted, but I guessed what the problem was myself and told the engineers rather than them working it out! In the end they simply hadn't correctly matched the 4 outputs from the Quattro LNB to the 4 inputs on the mini-switch in the sous-sol. As soon as they did that, bingo, everything worked fine. Fingers crossed it stays that way!

Hi, I have an old Sky+HD box with an old Tesco clubcard in it (I was told you got a couple of extra channels by putting any sort of card in - not sure if its true). I don't seem to be able to get ITV 2,3 & 4HD or Channel 5HD, but can get all the BBC HD channels, ITVHD and Channel 4HD. I can get all the equivalent SD channels, and I thought all the ITV and Channel 5 HD channels would be free to air, so wondered if I've got that wrong? Does anyone know what HD channels should be available without a subscription, and does the clubcard make any difference to the channels available? Many thanks

Hi, I am a French resident, have UK rental income and use a French accountant. I have never needed to submit a form 2044, just the 2047 and 2042, so not sure where your local inspector is coming from. My biggest problem was that last year social charges were levied on the UK rental income, which required an appeal before they were removed. I'd watch out for that when you get your Avis d'Imposition.

Thanks for the advice. Even with Media Hint through Chrome I can watch the program on iplayer but it will not download it to iplayer downloads. I can't get Hola to recognise that I have IE as well as chrome so it just defaults to the chrome extension. Don't want to necessarily use yet another browser, am I missing something here? I would have thought that if I can watch the programme via a VPN proxy then downloading should be straightforward enough.

Hi, thanks for that, I've tried doing the pause thing whilst streaming but nothing much happens for some reason. Will try again to download via IE but won't I need some sort of proxy VPN like I have with Hola on Chrome? Happy Valley is a series set in W Yorks with Sarah Lancashire as a community PC with numerous other problems. It was recommended and the first episode I watched last night was promising.

Have been just about able to watch Happy Valley on the iplayer via the Hola extension on Chrome, but since our internet connection is on the slow side, it was pretty much stop/start, very frustrating. I tried to download it from iplayer, but although the BBC iplayer download app was evident, and the episode appeared on the list of downloads on the app, nothing happened and it didn't download. There were no pop-ups asking me to authorise the download, etc, so I presume something was blocking the download without telling me. Is there a way for us here in France to download from iplayer to watch (seamlessly) later? Any advice much appreciated.

Yes, sorry for the misunderstanding. I used incorrect nomenclature, but what JohnFB said is actually what I meant to say. Approx 60% of CSG would be offset against taxable income in the following year. So, as an example, if the lump sum involved was 50,000 euros, the one-off tax charge would be 3,375 euros (7.5% of 45,000). The CSG would be 3,550. Of that CSG however, 2,100 would be offset against taxable income in the following year, making a 630 euro tax saving (at marginal tax rate of 30%). The net payment in tax and CSG on the 50,000 would therefore only be 6,295 euros, representing a net composite tax/CSG rate of 12.6%. As Parsnips has already said, that's certainly a much better deal than the current UK system. As regards the new proposed UK arrangements, for that sort of sum the effective tax rate would only better the 12.6% in France if a full unused personal allowance could be offset against it, even allowing for the 25% tax free element.

Just a quick update on this. I was talking to my accountant about the subject and apparently if I wait until April 2015 (new UK rules) and take the whole of my UK private pension pot as a lump sum in one go, as a non-resident for UK tax purposes it should indeed only be taxable in France. Furthermore, I could opt for a fixed French tax rate of 7.5% on this lump sum, with 10% of the pot being exempt from all French tax (without an upper ceiling). There would be social charges of 7.1% to pay on the lump in addition to the income tax, but approximately 60% of the social charges could be put against tax in the following fiscal year. The summary of this is much more favourable tax treatment of the lump sum in France than I had expected. Hopefully it will pan out like that!

Hi Norman, for us it was a brand new contract situation as we were moving into our new house, rather than switching suppliers. I'm sure from memory however that if we had been switching suppliers at the same address to DE, we would have been eligible for their online tariff and saved 10% rather than 5%. I'm pretty sure it will be as it is in the UK in that the new supplier takes care of the switch from the old. Maybe it would be worth giving them a ring if that isn't made clear on the Direct Energie website.

We have just signed up with Direct Energie, it was very straightforward. We still have HC/HP but are guaranteed 5% of the national tariff (EDF rate). I think it is much the same as in England, the supply is exactly the same, just a diffierent company administering the contract.

Thanks again, will wait until the new legislation comes into force and take appropriate advice at that stage.

Thanks for the replies. I appreciate the comments about tax relief having been given in the UK over the years on the contributions, so they'd want to enforce the charge despite my French residency. On the other hand, I also got full tax relief on all my superannuation contributions into the NHS pension scheme, and that pension is nonetheless paid to me gross and taxed wholly in France. I think it is more straightforward from April 2015 if the new proposed rules pass through into legislation. In that case, as the pot (less the first 25% which is tax free) would be simply treated as income, I would imagine that it would be wholly taxable in France and not taxed at all in the UK. It will be interesting to hear what HMRC say in response to my email and I will feed it back to the forum.

Hi I am nearing the age when I could get my hands on a private pension pot of mine which is still in the UK. It will be worth a bit over the new £30k 'trivial commutation' limit, so until the new tax rules governing pensions (as announced in the UK budget) are introduced next April, ordinarily I would need to take it as annuity. If you can persuade your pension provider to give you it in cash, the situation for UK tax residents is that it becomes an 'unauthorised payment' and is subject to a one-off 55% UK tax charge. My question is whether as a non-resident for UK tax purposes those tax charges are waived (in favour of it being declared as income in France), or if they are still paid but are later reclaimable. Has anyone out there got any first hand knowledge or experience? I should say that I have both phoned and emailed HMRC about this but am still waiting for any sort of answer. Many thanks in advance.

Hi, moved into our new house in late March and have had a blank H1 form sent by the constructor for us to fill in and send to the Impots. I know the purpose of the form, and can work out the questions they are asking. I have 2 questions however which I hope someone out there might be able to answer. Firstly, the house had a terrasse incorporated in the plans, which was a roof-covered area of 16.5sqm outside the kitchen patio doors. It was delivered without any finished surface, so we have now had the terrasse finished in wood but have at the same time substantially extended the terrasse down the back of the house. This has increased the size of the terrasse by 23sqm approx. Is it right to presume I will need to declare the entirety of the terrasse on the H1, even though the house wasn't delivered by the builder with a terrasse to that extent? In other words, had I extended the terrasse say next year would I have avoided the need to declare it? Second question involves open plan living. We have a combined, open lounge/dining/kitchen area. Though the kitchen area is separately declared on the form, is the lounge/diner counted as one habitable room or two, or is it the floor area which is the critical factor? On the plans a combined floor area is given, but if it needs to be declared as two it is easy to split it up. Thanks in advance, I want to get this form off soon so I can benefit from the 2 year partial exemption from Tax Foncière but don't want to make any expensive errors which come back to haunt me!

Hi, fact is we have a new house of 180sqm and the constructor advised that for future proofing it was the best way to go. Lets hope it will work well once the miniswitch is replaced

Now I'm reading more about Quattro vs Quad LNBs I'm starting to understand why my attempts at direct connections didn't work, I didn't realise that with a quattro the 4 outputs aren't universal but each carries specific polarity and voltage ranges. It is only the miniswitch which can unite everything then pump it out to the sockets, is that right? If so it probably is the miniswitch which is faulty!

As you've both already been helpful and knowledgable, I'll expand a bit on the global problem we're having to see if you can give me some ideas to feed the technician when he next comes back. The new house has a communications box in the sous sol. 4 input cables come into that from the 85cm dish and quattro LNB, along with a cable from a UHF ariel. These all input into a Sedea Mini Switch 659805 with 5 entry ports and 8 exit ports, 6 of which are used to carry signals (supposedly from all sat & UHF inputs) to each of the 6 TV/Sat/Radio sockets around the house. The idea is that for Sky+ HD for instance, with the miniswitch working, each of the 2 tuners on the sky box is connected to a separate satellite socket in the lounge and each should be able to receive an independant and comprehensive satellite signal enabling normal (happy) viewing/recording/playback. Problem is that it doesn't seem to work. Our trusty Sky HD box didn't work when we moved in, refused to even initialise and couldn't receive a signal in either tuner. Innocently I thought the box had gone kaput during the short journey across town, but I've tried 2 Humax boxes and another Sky box (which was borrowed from a friend of mine and works perfectly chez-lui) with the same result. The technicians came out after my initial attempt with our sky box and claimed that signals were indeed available at all the sockets and the problem must be with the decoder. As this clearly wasn't the case, at the weekend, having deduced which of the outputs from the miniswitch served which sockets, I tried bypassing the miniswitch altogether, testing the 4 LNB outputs individually. Despite doing this I was only able to get any signal at all from one LNB output cable, so only from one lounge socket, but even then, within minutes the one 'live' output changed to being from a different one of the 4 LNB outputs before disappearing altogether soon afterwards. The technician was here this morning, was up on the roof checking the connections, then pronounced that he thought the miniswitch was faulty, but had managed to get what sounds like vertical polarity only channels to one output from the miniswitch. He is coming back when the replacement switch has arrived. I'm not saying he doesn't know what he is talking about, but it's true that the very experienced guy who installed the equipment only 4 weeks ago has retired and passed on his customers and mobile to a 3rd party. I'd be interested in anyone's thoughts on diagnosis/corrective measures here. I should say that the miniswitch is the type which is powered up by the decoder when that is switched on, and in all cases this powering up of the switch seems to work normally (green light illuminated on the switch). Finally, I will also say that when I had a live feed on Saturday, I switched it to all 3 lounge sat sockets sequentially and they all worked normally. Sorry for the essay and the imposition, hope you all haven't fallen asleep whilst reading!

One thing I forgot to say was that if you are having forms France Individual signed, I'd recommend that you do as I and Mrs DD did. Take them to your local impots, get them to sign both copies, then tell them to keep the French version to send to the non-residents dept in Paris and give the signed English version back to you so that you can immediately forward it to HMRC in Cardiff. Takes out the (often very slow) middleman and speeds up the whole process!

We are having huge problems with the installation of the satellite TV system at our new house, hopefully in time the technicians will get it right, but at the moment we not only have only one satellite feed working. We have a sky box with a card to receive free to air channels only, but the pattern of channels receivable/not receivable at the moment has got me truly baffled. We are in the alps and have upgraded to an 85cm dish, even though our 60cm dish was coping ok after the recent tightening of the UK beam except in bad weather. The single feed signal strength is 80% and quality is 90%. I wonder if anyone with technical knowledge (including but not exclusively Martin and Jako) can shed some light on why the following pattern is the way it is? A sample what we CAN receive is as follows (in order of apprearance on the Sky TV guide): ITV1, 2, 3 & 4, Channel 4+1, E4, E4+1, More4, 4seven, BBC1HD, BBC2HD, ITVHD, ITV3+1, True Drama, True Ent, Propeller, Channel 4HD, some regional BBC1 channels. A sample of what we CAN'T receive is as follows: BBC2, Channel 4, Channel 5, BBC3, BBC4, ITV+1, More4+1, Channel 5HD, Channel 5+24, Channel 5+1, ITV2+1, ITV4 Plus, ITV4+1, ITV2HD, ITV3HD, BBC3HD, BBC4HD, ITV4HD, More4HD, some regional BBC1 channels. Could it be something to do with polarity or the frequency range of the LNB or something completely unrelated? If anyone can help solve the puzzle I'd be truly grateful.