Car Sales in France

[nemltd]

Hi
My wife and I are moving to the Midi-Pyrenees and I would like to carry on business in the Used Car Trade. I am reasonbly upto date with the various trading options, compliments of the 'Naked Accountant', but am wondering why there are very few used car dealers in France.
I am wondering if there is a tax on turn-over, which would be quite prohibitive, when you consider the return on investment in the used car industry is really quite small.
If there is an accountant, or anybody else for that matter!, that could help me, I would appreciate it.
Kindest regards.
Tony

[EuroTrash]

Don't know about the business side but I suspect that basically, cars change hands far less frequently in France. The used car dealers round here seem to have the same cars on their forecourts for months on end, and in fact mostly they are garages that also sell cars, not many 'car dealers' as such. Maybe because the uk thing of buying a new car every 3 or 5 years just because you can, and you need the latest model/reg plate etc, is not so prevalent here, even well off people tend to buy a car and keep it until it falls to pieces. Also since used cars are soo expensive people pay for major repairs even on quite old cars rather than scrap them and buy another as they might in the UK. Also a fee is charged for a change of ownership, Maybe it's different in big towns but my impression is that people only change car when they have to, so it might be hard to pay your business taxes and make a living purely out of car sales.

(You have a choice of business regimes, AFAIK the only regime where contributions are based onr turnover not profit is auto entrepreneur and you wouldn;t be on that anyway, your turnover would be too high.)