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Exchange rate for tax declaration for 2016 tax year


David
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In respect of my upcoming tax declaration I have been trying to access exchange rates on the Banque de France to obtain historical 2016 daily exchange rates for my UK income, but they seem to have gone electronic.  They used to have a graph where you could use a pointer to get the rate, but this seems to have changed.

If I use the average of the 1st January 2016 and the 31st December 2016 I get a false result as these were two highs, and the exchange rate was mostly below the line connecting these two exchange rates on a graph, thus I would end up paying too much tax.

I would be grateful if anybody could point me to a site where I can access the official exchange rate for any particular day in 2016.

Or does anyone have any ideas for obtaining a fair yearly average rate?

David

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If you wait nearer the time that your tax return is due (end of May) and ring your tax office they'll give you the official figure.

Otherwise for an estimate look on Google under currency exchange where there are graphs going back a few years.

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According to Blevin Franks:

We have been advised by our accountants that the exchange rate that they will be using for tax returns this year is 1.2188. They arrived at this figure using the average end of month exchange rate using Banque de France data.

The rate for wealth tax, i.e. the rate on 31/12/2016 was 1.1680.
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Ahhhhggggghhh - yes, it's the dreaded annual debate over exchange rates !!

Seriously though, it is important and (as has been discussed ad finitum) there are many different ways of arriving at a figure.

As Patf says, ask the Impots. For me, the calculation has always been quite simple since we use a money broker for our mthly transfers, so its the average of the rate at which tsfrs are made.

I have however just looked at the Banque de France website and have been able to get a figure of 1.221 as the average - not a million kilometres away from the figure that Jazzer quotes above.

However ......... and its a big however. That's interbank rate, not what you get if you make a transfer via your bank or a broker. You have to deduct at least 4 pts (arguably 5) from that to arrive at your 'true' income.

Accordingly, I maintain that a perfectly reasonable number to use would be 1.17. You could describe the source of your information and argue your case in the extremely unlikely event of a challenge.

What's sure is that at 1.22-ish, you'd be shafting yourself. This isn't fiddling the numbers, its reality.
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[quote user="David"]  They used to have a graph where you could use a pointer to get the rate, but this seems to have changed.

I would be grateful if anybody could point me to a site where I can access the official exchange rate for any particular day in 2016
.[/quote]

This should fulfill what you need. ECB £/€ exchange rate in interrogatable graph form.

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Aaarrrrgggghhhh indeed !

Every year this crops up and every year the same raft of advice is given some of which does as much to muddy the waters as clear them.

The bottom line is that it's not in the least bit unreasonable for you to both know and have on record exactly how much income you received in the course of any given tax year be that in Euros themselves or derived from Sterling transfers, and that's the number you put down, I don't know how much simpler than that it can get ?

The one and only time averages come into it is if your own tax office do openly publish a figure in which case you can legitimately apply that to your Sterling transfers if it did happen to work to your advantage but you can't cherry pick between the times it did and those when it didn't !

 

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That's okay if you change ALL of your income for the year into euros. We don't. There's always some income for the year put into savings in the UK -but we still have to declare that. Probably 80% of our annual income comes to France for living expenses, the other 20% is put to one side in the UK for emergencies-but it's still annual income. Hence using an average for all income-if that makes sense!
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Just to muddy the waters further.

Whether or not the income in other currencies is changed into Euros, or when it is transferred to France is irrelevant.

The exchange rate to use is that for the day on which the income arises, not when it is transferred somewhere else.

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On an average income are the French tax aurhorities going to be that concerned if you use an exchange rate that is a cent or 2 different from their rate? The difference would be small. If you have a huge income however that might be different-so probably wouldn't affect most of us!!
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To AnOther - You would be correct if I transferred all my worldwide income to France, and it would be much easier to calculate the euro income.

Unfortunately I do not transfer all my sterling income to France, but use some to cover UK liabilities.  Thus I need a bank rate to calculate the euro value of the income which stays in the UK, this can either be an average or it can be taken on a daily basis from a chart.

Unfortunately I cannot note the rate on the day of receipt as I have to wait for my monthly UK  bank statement to see how much funds have been received, and when they were received.

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Gardian - I agree with you and I tried this but I was challenged by my local tax office.  After a stern talking to I had to use either the Bank of France rate for the date of receipt of funds, or an average rate given by the local tax office - which that year was not very attractive.

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All I have ever done is averaged the exchange rate I have received for the year. Each month I transfer and get the best deal I can, so how can any other organisation tell me that I am getting a different exchange rate.

This seems like common sense to me, no more no less. And the official rate, well, I shall now check what the BofE spot rates, yearly average is, in a couple of weeks for 04/16-03/17, see how it compares to mine. And yet, IF theirs would make me worse off, how could they justify me having to use theirs, when I could not get that rate????????

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All of the above from just about every poster (and nicely summed up by Idun) covers the situation.

People's methods of transferring their money from the UK will vary slightly (mthly bank tsfrs, brokers, card withdrawals, etc), but essentially 99.9% of us 'play the game'. By that I mean that we are happy to pay whatever our tax liability is on whatever our overall income is. Our income = whatever we end up with after the bank or broker takes their (reasonable) cut.

If you ask the Impots what figure to use (and its possible that David the OP did just just this), they'll adopt the 'party line'. I'd say, don't ask, don't fiddle it, be prepared to justify it if questionned.

The reality is that the Impots have got bigger fish to fry than expat Brits over here who (for the most part) declare their incomes honestly. The fact is that, for most of us, its what we actually receive rather than an inflated interbank number, and is closer to the truth than the declarations of many French nationals !

If I was a French Impots Inspector, I'd be spending my time looking elsewhere for tax evasion rather than at the British living in France.
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  • 2 weeks later...
I agree completely with Nomoss, the rate is from the day the money is paid and not when it's received.

My government pension is paid at a very good rate while my company pension which is controlled by the PPF is a lot lower meaning the PPF is using a different transfer mechanism.
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 Mr Wiggy, just either list it all in a book, or even do a spreadsheet and the amount in £'s in one column and the actual amount received in €'s in another column, add them up from the end of the year and divide.

You then get the average for both your pensions, all done honestly, ie what was paid, and more importantly what you actually got, you could not get any different to what you got, net, as the french would say, no matter what any government states.

Why the fuss, if figures are done honestly??? Don't get it.

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[quote user="idun"]Why the fuss, if figures are done honestly??? Don't get it.[/quote]Nor me, I can only think that some people enjoy the self induced stress of making something hard out of something which is so simple ?

I might be more understandable if the forms actually asked for the rates you'd used or if you had to state them somewhere but of course they do no such thing.

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Every month I enter the date and the exact amount I receive into my French bank account from both of my UK pensions then at the end of the twelve month period. I tot up the total that I have received and that is my total income, IE 10000€ and this is what I submit on my form. What could be more honest? Besides this is how S D told me to do it, and I have never had any problems.
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