STARTING A BUSINESS

[Nikkibowskill]

My husband and I ahve been looking into buying a fishing lake in france.Now my in laws want to come too and they want some sort of holiday home business. I have been looking on this website and starting a business and being self employed seems really difficult out there. I read something about having to go on a weeks course to become self employed, can anyone clarify this? I am also shocked by the amount of tax to pay and we ae wondering if we will be better off out there at all? Please help, all advice gratefully received! Also we have noticed a lot of english buying lakes and we don't know if there is still a market for it, and if it would cost a lot in tax if we own a lot of land.Thankyou

[Val_2]

Yes you are right about it being difficult to start a business here and the social charges will give you a shock too. In order to register to be an artisan, don't know about lakes, you must take a compulsory one week's course inbusiness management in French which you pay for and then you go into the system. I really suggest you do plenty of research into exactly what you want to do as contrary to public opinion in the UK,this is not exactly the land of milk and honey it is made out to be from daft TV programmes and you could end up making a very expensive mistake if you don't realise what is involved. People and many of them from the UK make a sucess of living in France,but nearly all will tell you they don't make half as much money as back there and that it has been problematic with bureaucracy and language problems. France is by no means a cheap country to live in anymore, everything has gone up in price in the past five years a lot.