Tax Adviser

[Guillaumy]

Hi,

I wonder if anyone can suggest a good Tax Adviser/Accountant.

My wife, mother-in-law and myself are expecting to make the move to France sometime this summer/autumn.

We (my wife and I) have no huge piles of money, investments etc. I, however, have a business, which I want to continue in France. My mother-in-law has a few investments and her UK house.

The reason for this request is because our daughter and son-in-law, who are moving to Spain, have consulted a well know, well advertised, double-barrelled named tax adviser. Having paid over £1,200, for this initial meeting, the information and advice they received could have been read in any “living abroad” book and the majority of the “personal report” looked to have been photocopied out of their book.

These were the people that we were going to use so we need to rethink.

Thanks,

Robert

[Nick Trollope]

Not unless you tell us where you are!

I certainly can't (& won't)  recommend any UK-based advisers (for reasons you have already discovered), or "mail order" accountants.

Mine is excellent, French & speaks excellent English - but he could be 1000Km from you.

[Jc]

I've read some of these books on moving to France in general and it only takes one or two glaring errors(which most have) to make you doubt any advice shown and as an example-a book fully "updated" for the 21st.century stated yellow headlights were a legal requirement!!

[Will]

You will see several 'advisers' advertising in Living France, France Magazine, French Property News etc. I tend to agree with Nick about the UK-based ones, though I am sure most are better than the firm you had your sorry experience with. You can judge their worth from the articles they supply to those and other magazines and web sites - trouble is, you have to be able to spot the errors in order to make a judgement, and their target market is, by definition, those who don't, as yet, know what's what.

As a general rule, the bigger the lump sum you have to invest through them, the better service you will get. If you just want advice, you have to be prepared to pay for it - perhaps not at the rate your relatives have already paid, but good advice never comes cheap either. I would go to somebody based in France, but with knowledge of the English investment market, British systems etc. You will find one or two of those in the ads.  We use a French accountancy practice in Brittany which has some British banking experts as well as English-speaking French accountants on the staff (it advertises on another web site), but having sent so many other British people there I fear they are becoming overworked - so their service to us may be suffering [:D]

If you are intending to carry on your business in France then you definitely need a proper French accountant. The 'tax advisers' may be OK for those not working with large capital sums to invest, but most of them know s** all about registering and running a business in France, and the cotisations you have to pay. In fact their advice is generally based on minimising tax, and can, in extreme cases, have the effect of vastly increasing the social charges you will be liable for, which will more than cancel out any tax reduction.

[Guillaumy]

Thanks very much for your replies.

 

Nick: We will be living about 20mins SE of Bergerac.

 

Will and Jc: This is the problem, conflicting advice.

 

We had decided after our daughters experience that it would probably be better to see someone in France, but I’m sure this is a minefield as well. Getting the right person etc.

However, this will be the way we will go.

Thanks again.

Robert