Where to put your UK State Pension on French Tax Form?

[Quillan]

Trying to be prepared in advance of the tax form arriving does this go on the standard tax form or is there a supplementary tax form and what box do you put it in.

Also any idea how this will affect our B&B income with regards to tax, we are on the Micro BIC system.

[nomoss]

It goes on the first page of 2047 (the pink form for foreign income), under Pensions, Retraites, Rentes, and under the same heading (on page 3) of 2042.

This will be added to your other income, and any increase in tax due can be calculated using the tables on [url]http://www.impots.gouv.fr[/url]

[Kong]

You will need form 2047 (declaration of foreign incomes).

Enter pension in section I and transfer same amount to form 2042 box 1AS. The pension is subject to income tax and may not be subject to Social contributions depending on your circumstances. Kong

[Quillan]

I printed off the 2042 form (in pink!) and assume Mrs Q's state pension goes in the section marked PENSIONS, RETRAITES, RENTES, is that correct? Does this have to be the annual amount? Also I understand it has to be in Euros and that there is an offical exchange rate, where do I find this please. As we both have S1 forms do we pay social charges on the pension and finally as I understand it the tax rate on it is 7.5%, can somebody confim that. Thanks in advance.

[Kong]

Your pension should go into box 1AS and Mrs Q into 1Bs on page 3 of 2042. You must also submit form 2047 (which is pink!) and put the same amounts on the first page.

If you've got an S1 you will pay no social charges on the pensions, but they are taxable just like ordinary income.

Have you considered having your pensions paid directly to your french banks? You will never achieve as good a rate as they give you buying euros each month and you declare the amount of euros you actually receive. No need to worry about exchange rate.

[Quillan]

I don't draw any pension and I work (B&B) which I obviously pay tax one. I know which box to put the B&B income in and it is on the 2042CK PRO form for Professions Non Salariées. So it is only Mrs Q who will be on the 'pink' form. As we are both on the same tax form (2042) does that then mean Mrs Q's pension goes into 1AS or does it still go in 1BS?

Mrs Q's pension goes to her bank account in the UK, what she does with it after that is down to her. I therefore still need to find out what the 'average' Sterling to Euro exchange rate was according to the French tax system for 2014. I would like to know where to find it for next year to save asking again.

[Kong]

I would think Mrs Q's pension will go into 1BS, designated as the second party in your joint tax declaration.

I can't help on the choice of declared exchange rates but this and other forums are bristling with threads on this subject.

[mint]

This is what I do, a method recommended to me by our late, beloved Cooperlola.

As you would expect, she was MUCH more methodical and smart than I could ever be.  She used to make a note in her diary on the date she received her pension and used that day's exchange rate.  At year's end, she would just tot up the figures.

I continue to use her method but, being altogether less organised, I gather all the amounts the different dates on which our pensions come in, 3 entries for OH each month and 2 for myself , I get the historic interest rates for all the different dates and convert them.

Until this year, there was, of course, the WFA but no need to make a note of THAT this year, is there?[:P]  Then there is just the Christmas bonus which is 2 separate dates for us both but then the whole lot is nicely accounted for and I am happy to file my return which is normally finished by about a week before the due date.

It's the thought of doing it that I don't like.  Once I start, I actually find it quite interesting how the same income in sterling can change surprisingly dramatically month on month because of varying exchange rates.

[tinabee]

You can ask your local tax office for the "official" average exchange rate for the year, but if you want to follow mint's system you can use the official Banque de France's daily rates tables here

https://www.banque-france.fr/en/economics-statistics/rates/exchange-rates.html

I use a similar method, but keep the figures in a spreadsheet and insert the appropriate daily rate soon after the pension is paid - saves a bigger job when preparing the tax form as all the payments and conversions are completed and just need totting up.

[sid]

[quote user="Quillan"]I printed off the 2042 form (in pink!) and assume Mrs Q's state pension goes in the section marked PENSIONS, RETRAITES, RENTES, is that correct? Does this have to be the annual amount? Also I understand it has to be in Euros and that there is an offical exchange rate, where do I find this please. As we both have S1 forms do we pay social charges on the pension and finally as I understand it the tax rate on it is 7.5%, can somebody confim that. Thanks in advance.[/quote]

Q, For several years I used to email our local tax office (email address on the avis) and they would give me an "average" exchange rate for the year in question. I always filed the email in case it was ever queried, but it never was.

EDIT See later post below. Apologies. And in any case Tinabee (above) beat me to it while I was still typing!!

The official exchange rate as supplied by the Banque de France for the day of the transfer can be found here:

 https://www.banque-france.fr/nc/en/economics-statistics/rates/exchange-rates/main-daily-euro-foreign-exchange-rates-reference-rates-provided-by-the-ecb.html   click on Pound Sterling and you'll get a list for every day since April 1999 !

 

[Kong]

Sid I don't understand what you are doing. If your pension is paid directly into your french bank account, presumably it is paid in as euros. Why do you need to know the exchange rate? Surely the impots want to know how many euros you have received.

[sid]

Kong, apologies, I made a complete hash of my reply. Put it down to old age!  [:$]

I meant to endorse the payment of pension direct to France, that way there is no need for doing your own conversion rates.

I used to have 2 small pensions plus income from our gite paid into our UK account, and it was these that I converted using the "average" rate supplied by the local tax office. We no longer run the gite, and those 2 pensions are also paid directly now, so no conversion necessary.

Sorry for the confusion.

Incidentally, the annual exchange rate supplied by my local French tax office, which I used for 4 years, was different to that at other tax offices, so there doesn't appear to be a national agreement for this.

The link I supplied is still valid though for anyone wanting to know how much a sterling receipt is worth in euros, and there can be no dispute about the value.

I'll go and have a lie down.

 

[AnOther]

Whether to use a given average or not is something you may need to work out against your actuals to see which works to your advantage, and no Kong there is no national agreement, this is France remember where the prime object of the system is to employ as many people as possible with efficiency being a dirty word.

Some tax offices do actually give a reasonable average whilst others seem to just take the spot rate on the 31st of Dec which could prove extremely costly if the significant gains of the first 3 months of this year had actually occurred in 2014 !

The average fisc drone will have little or no knowledge of the vagaries of £/€ exchange rate and probably care even less so it's easy to see why they might just look up the Dec31st rate.

I was in my tax office one time and was given a different rate to the person before me [8-)]

[Quillan]

Thought I would just run this past people to see what they think. I have given Mrs Q a spreadsheet so she can enter the amount per month in Sterling given that the first month will include one or two weeks from the previous as it is on a pro rata basis. From this I can enter the exchange rate on the date the money was paid as shown on the Banque de France website then do a grand total and put it one the two tax forms. Does this seem correct?

[mint]

Bravo, Q!  You have nailed it[:D]

And Mrs Q, will be Déclarant 2 even if hers is the only pension that goes on the form, until such times that is, until you have reached the venerable age to be classified as OAP.