Squeezing two professions into a household

[Lindnarden]

The wife has a small, sucessful business, fully registered and full ypaid up with the manifold organisaitons who ask for money. My question is this......were I to start some part time freelance work in France, is there any way of integrating it into my wife's business. The caveats are this:

1) I doubt I'll be earning more than 5-6,000 Euros a year as I don't have time to do more work than that, therefore,

2) I don't want to be paying full cotisations again as I wouldn't be left with anything and we're already covered as a household for health with payments topped up with insurance

3) The two businesses (ie mine and my wife's) have nothing to do with each other

She is an independent travailleuer.......I am guessing there may be some clue in the word 'independent'. This probably precludes me from just running my income through her business (it would also, I guess, cause issues around Siret number if I were to advertise)

I don't want to work on the black but it would also be nice to keep some of the earnings, even if it is only for pocket money....[8-)]

[Will]

You have answered the question in your point 3.

As the two activities are nothing to do with each other, they will be treated separately and you will each pay cotisations. I speak from experience.

We have seen other British in France who thought they could just tag one business on to another's registration - wrong.

You will of course be taxed as a household rather than separately, but that does not apply to health and social security etc contributions.

If in doubt, do ask your accountant for advice (as you have a succesful business in France I presume you have one? If not, you are probably paying too much in cotisations etc already).

[Lindnarden]

so in essence it is impossible to run a small part time business......we don't have an accountant at the moment but I guess going down the SARL route might be an option in which case we will, I guess, certainly need one.

[Will]

There are a few exceptions, Chambres d'Hotes is one but even that might be changing. What you can't do is something like adding gite changeovers to a carpentry business, even adding translation to self-employed house sales agent (the first often being needed as part of the second) is rather a grey area.

Sometimes it is possible to re-register to include several diverse businesses, but this is really where you need professional advice because we don't know your circumstances - not even what buinesses you are talking about. It is so easy to get it wrong when setting up businesses in France.

[clarksinfrance]

Have been told by our accountant that it is possible to earn upto 10% of your turnover as an unrelated activity, so on a micro-enterprise of €27,000 turnover, €2,700 can be earned doing "something else"