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WOrking in France UK Based


Idealdeux
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Hi - we have a second home in France which we hope to move to eventually. At the moment we are based in the UK but my husband is thinking about working part-time in France. Would we have to register as a business in France and pay French taxes or would we still come under English tax system. We have a French bank account so could use that for payments in euros and our English account for payment in sterling.

Any advice, useful links, much appreciated.

Thank you.
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It depends on what you mean by 'working part-time in France'. I doubt if any tax man would get too excited about him doing some work at (second) home for existing UK clients, or even briefly visiting any French subsidiaries or branches they might have. When I was a full-time, UK-based, IT consultant I had to visit a client's French factory for a day or two and certainly never considered involving the French tax man. After I moved to France I had occasion to visit a couple of clients in the UK, again for short periods, and kept that entirely within the French system because nearly all my work was actually done in France.

However...

The bit about bank accounts indicates that he hopes to have French customers and perform significant amounts of work for them in France. That would be a totally different ball game. He'll need to be registered in some way (and there are many) as a business in France. This could be as a sole trader, as a company or as a representative of a UK company (to simplify things a bit!).

Actually, the tax part is probably fairly straightforward; the more complicated bit is social security payments. As I understand it (but could be wrong) you normally only pay those to one country, normally where you do most of your work. Within the EU you can then get stuff like health cover via a form provided by the that country's authorities. Unfortunately, some French business set-ups don't make provision for this approach. French social security cotisations are typically twice the UK NI rate but income tax is lower.

Purely from a tax point of view, paying taxes in both countries could be good, because you get the benefit of two lots of personal allowances and less exposure to the higher tax bands in either country.

It would help if you gave more information. Is he self-employed or running his own company in the UK? What percentage of the time would he work in France? What trade or profession is he in? Would you be working with him?

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  • 3 weeks later...
If you start an business in France then you have to pay the Tax of France, its better if you are thinking to settle in UK work full time in UK, because it will difficult to you to change currency each and every time, i suggest you to worked in UK.

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