Does anyone know......?

[Janey]

An opportunity has arisen for hubby to finally work in France, as for the past 3 yrs he has continued to work in England coming home approx every 2 weeks.
In England he is a senior site manager/projects manager earning a very good wage. It is now possible he could work for the mairie doing all sorts of maintenance/building works in our village, which he is more than qualified to do.He is also the safety officer on each site he goes to and at the moment is being used as trouble shooter.
Problem no 1...he doesn,t speak French..is having lessons and now understands more than he did..not a huge problem, can be overcome
Problem no 2..the post is full time BUT the pay is terrible ! Approx 8-9000 pounds.
We haven,t got a mortgage, don,t owe money to anyone and I could get a part-time job.
My sister-in-law who is french has said to me, the more you earn in France, the more that gets taken away from you. The less you earn, the more help there is available. So, does anyone know..would you pay tax on that amount of earnings ?
Would we automatically qualify for child benefit (ages 17 and 12 ). Is there any other aide available for families on low earnings ?
By the way I,m not asking this thinking to myself..lets get whatever,s going..no way. But this is the first chance that has become available for hubby to be here with us full time, he needs to be here in order to learn French and we need him to be here.
It,s a huge step to take, but it has to be taken at some point, and it,s a start.
If anyone can answer my questions I,d be really gratefull, thankyou.
Janey

[Jennys]

I am working as an accountant for a French company in France and on average, our net pay is approx 76-80% of gross pay. You do not pay substantially more charges, the more you earn, but there are some small increases when you earn over what is known as the plafond - which this year is 29712 Euros - gross.

Be aware also that salaries are not taxed at source (ie deducted off your monthly wage). You fill in a tax return each year. I don't know the details of how much you pay, because I have only been working full time for 2 years and the first year - 2002 (working for 6 months) I got a refund. I am the single earner in our family with 2 children, earning more than you have said for your husband. This year's tax returns haven't been processed yet so I don't know how much, if any I have to pay - having dependant children actually reduces your tax bill here!

I have to say also that you cannot expect to earn anything like you did in England. I am a fully qualified chartered accountant and I am earning half what I did in England, but then I have less than half the stress I did in England and I work so close to home, I go home for lunch. I wouldn't swop back if you paid me 3 times more!!

I think you would qualify for child benefit, it is approx 112 Euros a month for 2 children and it is not based on earnings. There is an amount given for buying school supplies, which is based on earnings and we didn't qualify for in the first 2 years even though we weren't earning much here, but because it was based on our earnings in the UK which were much higher. I don't know about other allocations.

Good luck!

Jenny

[SaligoBay]

>and we need
>him to be here.

I think that's your answer, Janey!

It's either lots of money and no him, or lots of him and no money.

I think I'd go for the lots of him!

It'll be an adventure.

[Will]

I think many people reading this forum will feel quite jealous that your husband has managed to get this close to a job offer in France, particularly as he doesn't speak the language, especially as you have a possibility of work as well.

It is, unfortunately, a fact of life that pay in France is poor. Even fairly high-profile jobs attract only the minimum wage, known as the 'SMIC', which is currently 7.61 per hour, which for a standard French 35 hour week works out at 13,850 per annum - or 9200. Many work fewer hours, and this seems to open a loophole under which employers don't pay for bank holidays etc so you end up with somewhat less than the so-called minimum wage. It's no good protesting - the answer is that there are queues of English people ready to take the job if you don't want it, and this is true.

Tax etc works differently in France. As has been said, there is no PAYE so you make an annual tax return and pay the tax in a lump sum - so you need to save to cover this. There are in general fewer allowances, though you can offset expenses (which are often paid by the employee out of the wage rather than reimbursed by the employer) so your actual tax bill depends to a large extent on the job you do and the package of benefits (if any). You have to pay social security (the equivalent to UK NI) and this can be quite a large sum, which is taken from the salary like PAYE, though the employer has to pay much more to the state. On the other hand, benefits seem fairly generous.

I hope this doesn't paint too black a picture, it's based on our own household's experience of being employed in France so I don't think is untypical. I do know that there are users of this forum who employ people and are somewhat more generous though.

Will (50)
Forum moderator