PUMA, AE and phasing out of 'ayant droit'

[EuroTrash]

No, ignore that - everybody's being transferred to PUMA aren't they.

Goodness it's confusing.

[mogs]

Has anyone received any notification from their health provider (CPAM/RSI etc) of the changes?

We haven't.

[EuroTrash]

I doubt they would write to everybody in France individually when the information has been pretty well publicised and is all easy to find on the internet. Especially when in fact it makes naff all difference to reimbursements which is all anybody is really interested in, you still use the same carte vitale and deal with the same caisse and everything works just the same for routine stuff. I hope they don't, just think how much it would cost, and we all have to pay for it. But you never know.

[lindal1000]

I don't know where you get the idea from that somehow AE is a free ride with low cost healthcare. If you invoice more than 15000euros pa it is actually cheaper for health and other charges to be under a different regime, and if you look on the Facebook group, many of the people with AEs struggle to keep under the legal threshold for a business. Yes, some people, French and others, saw it as a way to get cheap healthcare for a couple of years, but in reality it is anything but. I would definitely have been better off doing the work I do on an employed basis and getting my healthcare via CMU, as I would have actually paid very little since the total of my income would have been just above the minimum wage and given me a payment of a couple of hundred euros maximum . The only reason they haven't got rid of Me/AE is because they get a lot of money from it. You pay on absolutely everything you invoice, no allowances, no minimum. At least with PUMA it looks like you don't pay anything if you have a low income .

I do think this new system is fairer and more straightforward and hopefully will stop the daft scenario where you move from employment to self employment and you waste 6 months of your life trying to sort out your healthcare. To give you the other view, I know some people who have gites but get their healthcare for the family via CMU. They have no other activity. One of them had a good idea for a business and looked into setting up what was then an AE, but decided that it would make the family's healthcare situation so complicated that he didn't set up the business. Such a shame as it was quite lucrative and doing well, but too complicated to make it legitimate. At least this will stop this happening.

[EuroTrash]

Linda I don't think anyone has a problem with genuine freelancers who work to earn a living. The issue is as Debra said, the ones who started a business not because they needed or wanted to work but they wanted to exploit the cheap healthcare loophole. There are people who did this and who declare a fictitious few euros turnover every year just to keep on the books - they don't work because they don't need to, it is not a genuine business, it would never have been set up if it hadn't been for the loophole. They can declare an income of €200 a year and pay €50 cotisations; in fact you can declare €0 for up to 2 years, pay nothing and still keep your healthcare. I don't and you don't but some people do, and they boast about it on forums and tell other people to do the same.

I don't think you can compare costs across regimes because it depends so much on your business model, but I did work it out for myself a while ago because I actually would quite like to change onto a réel régime, I would like to rent office space. However because my overheads are so low at the moment, micro still works out best for me.

You would expect to pay less as an employee, that's why freelancers have to charge more in fees than they would get as a salary, but don't employees still pay around 20% deductions on their salary with the employer paying another 40 per cent or so? though they get more tax perks. Complicated again.

[Debra]

I thought they'd worked out the ME cotisations in such a way as it made little difference which way you set up your business as it all worked out about the same in the end?

It wasn't cheaper as an employee as you needed a minimum number of hours to get in the system, otherwise you'd be paying in via CMU.  That hasn't been the case with AE/ME as Eurotrash has pointed out.  I too have seen lots of people boasting about this as a method of getting cheap healthcare and advising others to to it.  

Under PUMA there is no minimum hours for employees - it'll be the same for them too.  A threshold of minimum income from activity, below which other ways of getting cotisations will be explored and actioned.

Let's hope whoever developed their automatic system has got the algorithm right or I can see a lot of queries coming up in the next couple of years.  Like what happened when they changed the way foreign income was reported so that it could be correctly taken into account for one's tax level for other income whilst also generating the appropriate credit for French tax.

[EuroTrash]

"I thought they'd worked out the ME cotisations in such a way as it made little difference which way you set up your business as it all worked out about the same in the end"

Yes that is correct. It was worked out on the AVERAGE business in that sector, based on the average proportion of overheads/expenses to turnover. So if your business model is bang on average, it will make no difference. If your overheads are a little higher than average you will lose out on micro, though it may still be worth it for the simplicity. If they are way higher than average, micro is not the right choice - theoretically you could come out making a loss, if you subcontract etc. But if your overheads are lower than average, micro is the way to go.

[Debra]

Thanks,  I've been keeping an eye on all the posts about it since it was introduced as I thought I might do it one day when I was all organised and ready to put my mind to it and that's what I understood.  Although I've been advised myself plenty of times that it might be a way out of the difficulties I've had because of not having an activity here and therefore being classed as a dependant of my ex and having the UK as my competent state, it's not something I wanted to rush into because it may not be the best thing for me to do in the long term what with the pension implications and the type of income I'm most likely to have (rental income) not really being best put under that scheme (I've read a lot of Chancer's posts on that aspect as well as those on the laymyhat forum which advise against it).  I've also never been quite sure whether I might suddenly end up back in the UK so it was best to wait until I was sure.  Now it needs even more looking at before taking a leap.   I'd got to the point where I thought a return to the UK was getting less likely lately but with the Brexit stuff, who knows?

[idun]

http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/health/when-living-abroad/health-insurance-cover/index_en.htm

Is it this that is the problem for people who have started businesses. Anyone staying in France and has built up enough cotisations to get a french pension, will then automatically be in the french health care system rather than be able to use a UK S1.

[lindal1000]

As far as I understand it, yes. Although as an Me/AE you have to have a turnover of over 10,000 pa to get any pension rights. Before I set up my AE I worked as an employee for about 60 hours in one quarter one year and that qualified me for 1 part of a pension, worth about 10 euros a year. I think in those cases they give it to you as a one off payment and it doesn't entitle you to healthcare.

[EuroTrash]

Of course if you work in the UK again before you retire, it would revert again wouldn't it. I used to have a cunning plan that I hatched up with the boss of a company I work freelance with in France - he was going to give me a four-month contract based at their head office in the UK, I was going to go in every day and make tea and pay him most of my salary back, and then I would retire. However since then my retirement age has rocketed up and the longer I'm here the less of a problem it seems, and I doubt if I'll bother. Plus when the time comes everything may have changed.

[EuroTrash]

"Although as an Me/AE you have to have a turnover of over 10,000 pa to get any pension rights. "

Good grief no, it's nothing like that. For profession libérale you clock up one trimestre retraite per 2K-ish of turnover. You get your maximum annual quota of trimestres at under 10k. The table is here, click on Validation de trimestres.

https://www.service-public.fr/professionnels-entreprises/vosdroits/F23369

[lindal1000]

Ahhh ok, so I might get a pension of 80 euros! It's quite a good idea to go back to the UK for a few months! Maybe I'll see if I can get an agency job, part time..pay tax and NI in the UK and then 'retire' there.

[EuroTrash]

Except if you're a professional libérale you won't get it even if you are due it, we can all go whistle because CIPAV won't pay

http://www.franceinter.fr/emission-lenquete-cipav-quand-la-retraite-tourne-au-cauchemar

[lindal1000]

Well that may well work in our favour I guess. I wasn't banking on getting much from it!

[idun]

the link I gave is not working, but this is from that Europa site and it won't matter if you go and work in the Uk and move back to France, IF you move back to France and are getting a french pension, then you are under the french system. Won't matter one iota if you get a UK pension or from another EU country.

I remember a poster on here mentioning that years ago and maybe NH is in the same position too? Is that right NH?

Pensioners

Healthcare in the country where you live

• If you receive a pension from the country where you live:
  you and your family are covered by that country's healthcare insurance
  system — whether or not you are also receiving pensions from other
  countries.
• If you do not receive a pension or any other income from the country where you live: you belong to the healthcare insurance system of the country where you were insured for the longest period of time.

[EuroTrash]

And any guesses what would happen if on paper you are entitled to a French pension but CIPAV is denying ever having heard of you and refuses to pay you a cent, and your cotisations over the last 10 years or so have vanished into a black hole?

[idun]

Yes, but that can happen anywhere, not just France. Although, I have to say that if that happens, and the person involved hasn't got all their paperwork, then they should have.

There were a couple of things that were told to me when we moved to France all those years ago. One was keep paper copies of absolutely everything, the other was buy a decent cooker.

Great advice which I followed. Only recently got rid of some of our old paperwork, some stuff can go when we do!

[EuroTrash]

That doesn't really answer the question. The issue is that CIPAV is systematically refusing to give AEs their pensions. CIPAV never wanted anything to do with AEs; it was told it had to, and RSI presumably passed on our cotisations, but apparently it kept no records of any of it because it had no intention of taking responsibility for us.

I have never, ever received any communication from CIPAV. At the beginning of this year, after CIPAV had been slammed by the government for not being fit for purpose and two of their directors had been sent to prison for maladministration, they announced the launch of a wonderful website that would help everybody access their records and sort out where they stood. I phoned them and managed to establish that yes they did have a record of me, and they gave me the number that they have me registered under. I put that number into the CIPAV website, and it said that that number didn't exist. So I'm not over optimistic.

Read the link or have a google, there's plenty online about the CIPAV scandal. There are hundreds if not thousands of people who have been paying into CIPAV for their pensions, have never received a single communication from CIPAV and are now banging their head against a brick wall trying to get their pensions. There are stories of real hardship, some of the people are disabled, some have been paying in for half a lifetime and have no other pension (it's not only AEs that are having trouble). It's not just a little misunderstanding that could happen anywhere, Idun.

[idun]

Which mediateur is involved? There is surely one.

What with the internet, why haven't people started this process together?

I agree, not easy, but the government said that people had to pay in, so the book stops with them.

[EuroTrash]

The CIPAV scandal has going on for years and there has been lots of internet activity, petitions and pressure groups and help groups, even a charity set up to help prof libs left without a pension and suffering real hardship.

It's not as if the government isn't aware, the Cours des comptes has investigated and reported that it found "une gestion désordonnée, un service aux assurés déplorable". CIPAV has been told to sort itself out and a new guy was put in charge at the beginning of this year. Apparently he found sacks in the basement containing literally hundreds and hundreds of unopened letters dating way back. It's almost beyond belief, makes RSI look efficient, but there it is. It's going to take more than a few years to go back and retrospectively set up complete files for people who have been cotising for years, if indeed it's possible. Probably most of us will be dead before they figure out how much pension we should have had. Basically CIPAV thought it was above the law and could do whatever it liked, and obviously nobody expected national body like CIPAV to behave like that and there was no proper monitoring .

Cours de comptes report here:

http://www.cipav.info/medias/files/rapport-cour-des-comptes-2014-sur-la-cipav.pdf

[EuroTrash]

quote from the Cours des comptes report in 2014:

"Le refus de l’intégration des auto-entrepreneurs.

La CIPAV n’a toujours pas inscrit les cotisations des autoentrepreneurs sur leurs comptes et n’a donc pas encore enregistré leurs droits à la retraite. Elle limite, par ailleurs, conformément à une décision de ses administrateurs mais en l’absence de toute base légale, leurs droits à pension complémentaire."