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Dream Commuters BBC2 tonight


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...........can you claim a rebate?[;-)]

I'm totally gobsmacked! Mind you, you'll be paying "Impot sur la fortune" soon, Will. Mrs W is going to be raking it in when a whole new influx of telecommuters start buying in France, safe in the knowledge that they can telecommute and not become tax resident because the Beeb says it's OK!!![:D]

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[quote user="Will"]

Oh well, that's OK then. I can go back to France almost full-time and tele-commute from there safe in the knowledge that the BBC says I do not have to pay tax and cotisations in France.

[/quote]

You can't go back to France almost full-time and tele-commute.  Your primary work place must be in the UK.  This is why the owners of an internet business frenchconnections.co.uk had to return to the UK.  The French authorities are cracking down on this - BEWARE 

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Yes Dreamcommuter I totally agree with you. I know that, my French accountant knows that, Mrs Will (who used to train tax inspectors in London before she worked for a French estate agency - no further comment necessary [:P]) and several friends of ours who are senior UK tax inspectors all know that. John not Di knows it as well, we and others have both said so many times on this forum.

Pity the BBC's Money Programme team does not seem to know it.

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[quote user="Will"]

Yes Dreamcommuter I totally agree with you. I know that, my French accountant knows that, Mrs Will (who used to train tax inspectors in London before she worked for a French estate agency - no further comment necessary [:P]) and several friends of ours who are senior UK tax inspectors all know that. John not Di knows it as well, we and others have both said so many times on this forum.

Pity the BBC's Money Programme team does not seem to know it.

[/quote]

 

a) Thank God! I thought I'd lost the plot!

b) And THIS was the great pity about the programme........................

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Too many small businesses - including those who supposedly advise others on French life - find they have to register, and what it will cost once they have done so. They have failed to take that into account when planning their finances, and the only option is to return to Britain and do the job from there. Though some think they can work in France and pay in Britain as long as they are paid in sterling, use a UK bank, and have a UK address, but that's another story (unfortunately reinforced by the BBC's take on the subject).

I sometimes wonder if I, my accountant, and all the taxation and social security people I have spoken to in both Britain and France are all missing something very simple here... [:@]

Having had no response to my comments via the Money Programme web site, I have contacted them again, by e-mail. And have also posted on a forum that the Money Programme and Open University seem to run together, but that is a fully moderated forum so my critical message will probably not appear.

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[quote user="Will"]I have spent 5 years with our main home in France and another house in England, working for English publishers. I have both worked from home (telecommuting) and been office-based in England, travelling back to France at weekends. Neither is as easy or stress-free as the programme made out.[:D][/quote]

I'd be interested to learn whether you did one (work full time in UK and came back at weekends) or the other (telecommuting from France) or did a bit of both?  It's not so clear from your statement. 

Also, had you thought of doing alternate weekends like I do to make your commute less stressful?  I get a 4 day holiday in France with the family after busting my **** working for 10 days in UK!  Doing a weekly commute is much harder (and more expensive for flights, parking, train-ing or taxi-ing) I tried that at first but found a better compromise!

I'm sorry I can't enlighten anybody on the taxation in Spain and this is a French related forum so its only important for those thinking of moving further south.

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Dreamcommuter - I have done both.

I started to write a posting here about it, and also to indicate why it might not be exactly clear how I currently worked (as the regime is changing due to a new job offer) but it all got too long and went into more detail than I would like to in public so I have explained my situation to you in a private message.

I would be quite happy to answer any questions for anybody else privately. I'm always glad to help, as I think I have, like dreamcommuter, built up a lot of information on the subject over the last few years.

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Copy of e-mail from Money Programme production team:

Sorry you didn't like the programme. An individuals tax status is up to them to agree with the HMRC, who have agreements with France, Spain and most European countries to make sure that a person doesn't pay tax twice.

This is not a subject that we had time to cover in a 29 minute programme. Also, for the 7pm audience, it may not have been the right subject area. For our 10pm slot, it may well have been.

 

There were many other areas we could have looked at but didn't have time. That's the nature of TV.

 

Thanks for taking the time to write in.

 

Emil Petrie

The Money Programme

 

My response:

 

Emil

 

Thank you for replying.

 

I still believe you are wrong - if an individual is resident in an EU member state it is down to that member state where they pay tax and social security, and has nothing to do with HMRC.

 

Work carried out in Britain is taxed in Britain - if one is working in France or Spain, even for a British employer, then the rules of that country apply. You cannot choose to whom you pay your dues.

 

I feel this is a vitally important point that your programme chose to gloss over, creating a misleading impression.

 

Regards

 

No further comment necessary...

 
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If you thought that programme was, at best, disingenuous, have a look at today's 'Times,' which has a huge feature on how the new quick time of 1 hour 20 mins from London to Lille is 'set to send house prices in rural Pas de Calais rocketing.'  And so on  - they single out the area around Le Touquet as set to benefit (!) What they don't say is -

1)  Lille is utterly irrelevant to rural Pas de Calais because to get out of the city to, say, the 7 Valleys, takes two hours in rush hour or on a bad day, an hour plus at any other time. Not to mention that Lille is in fact a dump - even the so-called 'trendy shopping streets' are a mess of graffiti, and it is the dog mess capital of Europe.

2)  The only relevant train service is the Eurostar one which at the moment stops at Frethun, but this stop will be no more when the St Pancras service begins. So how do people get to Le Touquet? Look at the map - it's 3 hours from Lille!

3)  The so-called fast service is in fact from Ebbsfleet, not London at all!

I suppose I should not complain, as our house is right in the area supposedly set to benefit, but this sounds very misleading to me!

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