Did not get full payment from a French publication. Where do I register a complaint?

[Ashi]

Hello friends, I am a freelance journalist based outside France and not a French national. I submitted an article that was published by the magazine this year. We agreed on a payment of 100 Euros but I only received 90 Euros. There was no contract, only e-mail exchanges, where we agreed on this price. I also sent them an invoice from my side quoting 100 Euros as the payment.

My question is:

1) Which department in France do I register my complaint? (As a non-French freelancer hired on contract to render a service for a French publication.)

2) Can I do so online?

3) Without a contract, would the e-mail exchanges be enough to support my complaint?

Thank you for helping me!

[suein56]

Ashi wrote :

My question is:

1) Which department in France do I register my complaint? (As a non-French freelancer hired on contract to render a service for a French publication.)

2) Can I do so online?

3) Without a contract, would the e-mail exchanges be enough to support my complaint?

Just a thought but, you don't say where you live and under whose tax regime you come, so for 10 euros do you think this pursuit is worthwhile?

After all this is France and the fisc might well get their hooks into you and then the cost to you might well be more than 10 euros.

Sue

[Chancer]

Name and shame them and put it behind you.

 

If just one person decides they dont want to subscribe to the magazine or do business with them in future it will cost them far more than your lost €10.

[Loiseau]

QUOTE

I am a freelance journalist based outside France and not a French national. I submitted an article that was published by the magazine this year. We agreed on a payment of 100 Euros but I only received 90 Euros.

END QUOTE

Hello Ashi, and welcome to the forum.

As a non-French resident, I have come across this situation, too. It seems that in France the tax is automatically taken off a freelance before payment (unlike, say, in the UK, where freelances are paid gross, and then deal with their own tax).

My daughter and the baroque ensemble that she sang with were engaged for one performance in France, and tax was deducted from their "cachet", or fee, even though none of them was French-resident. Though I have to say in this case that the organisers had marked up the fee to allow for that, so that in the end they received the sum they thought they would.

I don't think you have a snowball's chance of getting a refund, but in any future dealings maybe you should up your quoted fee by enough to allow for the tax "take".

[cajal]

Known as a 'withholding tax'. A common practice and this should help in explaining it to you.

[Chancer]

And if you were to declare the earnings under a régime réel they would add 25% to your declared turnover presuming that you had underdeclared  by that amount, both things I have learned recently.

 

Talk about having your cake and eating it.

[EuroTrash]

I assume you have asked the client why they underpaid you? Did they not reply? or if they did, what explanation did they give?

In theory you could set a debt collector onto them. Debt collectors can act on a full email trail which should include a bon de commande from the client or a signed devis from you, plus the relevant invoice/reminders. But in practice, for 10 euros, is it worth it? I doubt any debt collector would take it on - even if they charged 50% it still wouldn't be worth their while.

Not sure why they would have deducted tax, it's not normal for publications to get involved in freelancers' tax and social security cotisations. If you're not resident in France then your work is in any case not taxable in France. There are all kinds of special rules for live performance artistes in France, but freelance journalists are like any other freelancer, you agree terms and conditions, do the work, issue an invoice and if you're lucky, you get paid, and your tax and social contributions are your own affair. (The only thing with journalists is that journalists who work regularly for the same publication cannot be freelance, they have to be employees, but that wouldn't affect the OP for a one-off article.)

[cajal]

If and when the OP does a personal tax return in their country of residence a reclaim of the 'withholding tax' can be made via this submission under the double taxation treaty.

The French Impot should have been informed of the 'withholding tax' deduction by the fee payer and they inturn are obliged to inform the OP's taxing authority, whoever that may be.

[EuroTrash]

I don't understand why you think withholding tax comes into a French company paying a freelancer, whether France based or not. Looking at the link provided earlier, isn't it about bank interest and dividends, nothing to do with income earned from self-employment? In France, a freelancers' taxes and social obligations are his own affair. The client treates him as a supplier, he is not on the payroll, they're simply buying a service from him just like they buy paper from their stationery supplier. The only onus on the client is to ensure every France-based freelancer or business that they deal with is correctly registered with a SIRET number, because as we all know you can be penalised for using unregistered service providers.

I worked as a freelance journalist for many years, first UK based with clients in the UK and abroad, and more recently France-based with clients in France, the UK and other countries. There was never any question of withholding tax. When I was UK based I invoiced under my UK registration, I got paid what I asked (usually), I declared my revenue to HMRC and they taxed me (or more often or not they didn't because I rarely earned enough after my accountant had deducted all the deductibles). The only thing with French clients was that some were more twitchy than others about what they accepted as confirmation that I was a UK taxpayer, but this got sorted before the agreement was signed so it was never an issue when it came to invoicing and getting paid. Even if in theory they are supposed to faff about with withholding taxes, which I really don't think they are, in practice no French client I worked with ever did.

[EuroTrash]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_withholding_tax

seems to confirm that the only withholding tax applied in the EU is for bank interest.

[cajal]

From my original link:

'Governments use withholding tax as a means to combat tax evasion,

and sometimes impose additional withholding tax requirements if the

recipient has been delinquent in filing tax returns, or in industries

where tax evasion is perceived to be common.'

Freelance journalism. Hmm...I wonder?

[idun]

http://www.legisocial.fr/reperes-sociaux/bareme-retenue-a-la-source-2017.html

No idea if this was tax or not, if it was and it probably should have been, then they got it wrong. Look at these figures, and your 100€ would have had 46€ exempt from tax and then the rest would get charged at 12%. Which would be 6.48€ and they would take it from your payment, or at least should.

I know all about retenue a la source because that is how we were taxed when we left France on french income and it is far more severe than taxes paid in France.

[EuroTrash]

Were you profession libérale freelancers, idun, and were your activities UK registered at this point?

Your link says it applies to people who earn "salaires (ou pensions et rente viagères) de source française". The OP's income is not a salarie nor a pension or annuity, and it's not from a French source since the source of the income is his/her UK business entity. The source of a salary paid by a French company to an employee is France, but the source of a self-employed person's income is where their own business is based, since they are their own employer. For income tax purposes it's where you are when you do the work that counts, not where your client happens to be (although it's different for VAT). If you're a UK freelancer and you have clients in 10 different countries, your income doesn't come from 10 difference sources and you don't declare some of it as UK income and some of it as foreign income, and get tax withheld in 9 different countries and have to reclaim it all, it would be a nightmare. All your income is all part of the same revenue stream generated by your UK business activity, so its "source" is the UK.

Apart from anything else, the 100€ is not taxable income, it's turnover. Taxable income for a freelancer is turnover minus expenses. I don't think any tax system can tax you on turnover. (OK on the face of it micro entreprise does, but in fact a notional percentage allowance for expenses is automatically built into the calculations, so for a prof lib micro with a turnover of 10000€ their taxable income or RFR is 6600€.)

If the income from which you had tax retenue à la source, was indeed freelancer income earned via a UK registered freelance activity, Idun, then I'll take it all back and start digging into it deeper, but it seems a bizarre notion to me because I've been freelancing for clients all over Europe and outside it for decades without this ever rearing its head, either for me or for any of the freelancers I know or on any of the freelancer forums where these things are discussed. And since it's not a salary, it's not French sourced, and the amount on the invoice does not equate to taxable income, I'm struggling to see how it can apply.

[Cathar Tours]

10 Euros (around £8), make a note and move on mate. Next time charge them 110 Euros. It's not worth the hassle.

[idun]

I see what you mean EuroTrash. No freelancing in our case, just the old employer paying gardening leave until retirement, and during this time we moved back to England, as we always said we would.

I used to have a lot of paperwork about this and the different categories of employment, which did vary, but have no idea if I still have it, and did not see it on the internet when I looked up that link.

I must say that for all I 'knew and know' a lot about France, I mean a lot, when it was mentioned that PAYE would start, I was amazed as I had  no idea that it existed in France.............and then when I saw the amounts that they were going to increase the income tax by, was rather shocked. HOWEVER, as we lived in the UK and their income tax is higher, which I did know about, but not only that, understand, the french tax was written off against our UK tax burden. We were obviously no worse off, BUT, I had not idea that the french authorities would be so ruthless with non residents.

I have no idea what the OP was charged, it was just a suggestion and if it was that, then they got it wrong.