They are catching on to the Auto entrepreneur swindlers

[NormanH]

http://www.midilibre.fr/2017/07/24/hauts-de-france-une-vaste-fraude-aux-prestations-sociales-stoppee,1540321.php

"après avoir remarqué que de nombreuses personnes étrangères, essentiellement de la communauté rom mais aussi des Espagnols, Italiens et Anglais, s'étaient installées.... sous statut d'auto-entrepreneur. ...

Les services de l'Etat ont ainsi découvert que ces personnes profitaient du fait que ce statut permettait d'ouvrir des prestations sociales plus facilement accessibles pour des étrangers. "Pour un étranger, l'accès aux prestations sociales est plus difficile que pour un Français car pour rester vivre dans notre pays, il ne faut pas être "une charge" pour l'Etat, c'est-à-dire avoir des ressources supérieures aux aides sociales perçues", explique le sous-préfet. Sauf que dans le cas d'un statut d'auto-entrepreneur, les ressources ne sont que "déclaratives". Des aides suspectes ont ainsi été versées par le RSI ou la CAF.00

[Chancer]

Nothing more than a clamp down on a big concentration of doasyoulikeies in one ville, meanwhile life goes on as normal for all the other AE's.

[alittlebitfrench]

Do foreigners registered on the AE scheme bring anything to the table for France ??? Gîtes, people making bird tables, selling salad cream and jam on market stalls !!!!!

Surely it costs more to allow people to operate under the system (French healthcare system and provision of other services) than it will ever get back in tax revenue.

It could be a loophole they might close.

[woolybanana]

The entrepreneurs I know work hard to make a living but will never be well off, but being in the scheme does enable them to access healthcare.

AE's are given something like two or three years to show they are making some money otherwise they are booted off the scheme and lose their rights.

It is an excellent scheme that just needs a little tweaking, though I think all the schemes are a bit nuts.

[Chancer]

[quote user="woolybanana"] AE's are given something like two or three years to show they are making some money otherwise they are booted off the scheme and lose their rights. [/quote]

 

Not "making money" as is profit which they can live on.

 

Not even recieving money on which they may make a loss.

 

Just "declaring" something every once in a while.

[EuroTrash]

Never let the full facts get in the way of a good cliché, eh, ALFB ;-)

Some micro entreprises sell jam. Some run gîtes. Some provide services such as tuition, painting and decorating, computer repairs, website design, whatever. Some pay a couple of hundred a year in social security contributions and tax, some pay many thousands. If you earn up near the ceiling, your annual cotisations will be in the region of around 8k. Which probably makes you a net contributor. PUMA has a built-in safeguard in that if as an AE (or any other kind of business or employee) your earnings over the year were below a certain floor (10% of PASS) you may be charged additional healthcare cotisations for the year based on other income, so that loophole was closed as of 2016.

You'll find the statistics on average ME earnings easily enough if you're interested enough to look, they're issued every year.

[alittlebitfrench]

Thanks ET for clearing that up.

Next time the 'gens de voyage' come knocking (who are today illegally parked just down the road from us) looking to chop down a tree on the AE that does not need chopping down I know now that they are contributing their little bit to France.

I feel guilty now for bringing the subject up.

[EuroTrash]

I would be very surprised if any gens de voyage who come offering to chop down trees are working under ME. For one thing, you need a siège sociale to register a micro. For another, chopping down trees is arboriculture which comes under MSA which is excluded from micro entreprise.

Just sayin'.

[alittlebitfrench]

Next time they come knocking I will pass on that info.

I am guessing they know the score.

[Chancer]

Indeed some of the reforms had the benefit of débarrassant some of the pas sérieuse vanity enterprises that were created by people just wanting to get some business cards printed with a Siret number, these were in the main French usually already in employment, if a few of them actually made a go of it so as to continue after being (rightfully) burdened with some of the costs of being a real enterprise then good for them.

 

Brits make up a tiny minority of the registered ME's I reckon for most its their sole source of income to live, before they would no doubt have been on the black so again only a positive, there may be some who are just declaring a mythical activity and nominal income just to regularise their situation.

 

The polémique referred to above was a large scale scam facilitated in part by Les Hauts de France led by Xavier Bertrand who have opened an office in High Holborn to encourage them over, the Roms who had previously been able to claim UK working benefits and housing benefits by notionally working as scrap metal men (AKA thieves) and registering as self employed when they got rumbled France was waiting for them with open arms.

 

"Nous travaillons avec nos amis Britanniques à une stratégie gagnant-gagnant pour booster nos échanges. Aux Pédophiles, chômeurs, cas sociaux et consanguines  de Grande Bretagne je dis: chez nous, dans les hauts de France, vous êtes chez vous" [:-))]

[lindal1000]

We've tried to keep our AE earnings low but not succeeded. I'm registered as a prof liberal for my teaching which allows me to have lots of little jobs in different places. I don't know how you would do that any other way as 4 or 5 contracts with various employers for a week here or two days there would be virtually impossible.

[Chancer]

That is precisely what remplaçants do in the medical, teaching, vetinary and other professions and were doing for years before AE/ME, I have quite a few that stay.

 

The language schools did exactly the same with vacataires like yourself before AE/ME so not in any way impossible but complicated with exponential amounts of paperwork, pushing them towards AE removed all that and gave them higher wages albeit with less protection.

[Chancer]

Norman.

 

Would you please explain what you consider to be a swindle about AE or how you think that people may have been swindling it, who are the losers?

[NormanH]

People using the scheme as it was intended are fine of course, but I have come across numerous cases (often British early retired)  who have set up as an AE simply to get into the health system, but who have never really 'worked' just sent off occasional fake returns and so paid very low charges.

Perhaps that loophole has  now been closed as ET says, but a recent concrete example is a chap who set himself up about 5 years back, has sent off  minimal returns but has just benefitted from 40 round trips by Taxi ambulance between Béziers and Montpellier for a course of treatment, at the price of 200€ a trip to the Sécu.

He also claims ALS as his declared income is so low.

In the days when we needed a carte de séjour he would not have been allowed to stay without his own arrangements for Health Insurance, and  even then he wouldn't have met the income criteria for not being a charge on the French State.

The swindle to me is that has taken full benefit of the system including the 100% ALD provision without really paying anything into it.

The losers are all the rest who pay correspondingly higher charges to compensate.

[NormanH]

[quote user="lindal1000"]We've tried to keep our AE earnings low but not succeeded. I'm registered as a prof liberal for my teaching which allows me to have lots of little jobs in different places. I don't know how you would do that any other way as 4 or 5 contracts with various employers for a week here or two days there would be virtually impossible.[/quote]

I did exactly that with the result that I have 3 different caisses for my pensions..

Public from my employment by the Education Nationale  the Grandes Ecole and the University  (all vacataire work in many different establishments)

Private from the language training body that were subcontracted to by the Region  for the and the book shop

A mixed one from Cheque Emploi service (piano and English lessons)  etc and (weirdly) a Choir I directed over 13 years; making that a rather 'catch-all' caisse.

That's how things were back then, and even with the AE scheme I don't see how so many different activities could fit into one business though of course I have never had to put my mind to it.

[lindal1000]

You decide on your main activity..I am registered for general teaching activities and language teaching as a secondary activity as that is closest to my actual work..but some teaching is or was on line coaching, and some is face to face classroom type. Some is more like research supervision, but that fits into general teaching. If I wanted to, I could work clinically as an OT and add that as an activity. However that's a bit more complicated and would require a different insurance, and I've never really wanted to do it. Many of the new graduates who want to work as liberals, start in the ME scheme. They don't earn very much and until they build up their client base don't have enough of a turnover to cope in another structure. To qualify for any pension you have to be turning over around 3000€ a quarter. Some quarters I have managed that and others, especially over the summer, nothing close.

When we arrived in France we had other income but at that point we were not allowed to access CMU by paying a percentage of that income so we basically had no choice but to set up a business or get employment. The first option was preferable as it enabled us to work flexibly. The slightly ironic thing is that had we been allowed to join CMU and paid a percentage of our un earned income the state would have been better off.

[Chancer]

A good explanation of the swindle Norman and I agree with your choice of words.

 

Lindal makes a good point, at some time, 2007 IIRC the hammer fell without any warning and those like myself who were not already swindling the CMU were then blocked from entry, many had no choice but to start an AE business.

 

There were a lot of CMU swindlers back then, aside from the natural wastage of those who have returned or drunk themselves to death they will  most likely still be filling their boots yet the AE/ME's are the ones being accused.