Self-employment: register in the UK or France?

[Jo53]

I am a freelance writer and want to start working from France (we've lived here 18 months but I took a break). My dilemma is: do I register as an "independante" (or liberale, or something?) in France, or form a company in the UK? I'm wary of the bureacracy and high social security charges in France, which I'm particularly loth to pay because my husband works for a French company, so our family is already fully covered for health insurance and benefits. I'm relatively au fait with simple UK bookkeeping as I always did my own self-employed accounts.

Does anyone have any experience of taking either route doing a similar line of work? I'll be working mostly for UK clients, but physically carrying out the work in France. The sort of money I'm hoping to earn will be of the order of 15 K or eur 25 K per year (gross), though less in the first year.

And can anyone recommend a British accountant who understands these issues (or a French one?)

thanks!
Jo

[Will]

Your situation very closely mirrors my own.

Having gone into this very deeply it is a waste of time and money trying to set up a UK company in order to operate in France. You will just have to bite the bullet and register in France, which means you will pay cotisations. There is really no legal way round that.

Forget the people who claim to be able to set you up in business. They are likely to charge dearly for advice (which you can get cheaper, or in our case free, from a local accountant) and then charge again to get you registered. I was quoted 1000 plus VAT plus a further percentage for 'disbursements' for what we achieved with a few phone calls to the local URSSAF office and filling in a single A4 form.

It's a simple process, you will probably be regarded as a 'travailleur independant' and won't have to jump through the same sort of training course, insurance etc hoops that a traesman does - your local URSSAF will be able to advise how and where to register as it depends on what sort of writing you are talking about. As journalists in France are invariably salaried, if that's what you do you may have difficulty fitting in to the self-employed system, but it can be done.

I can't be more specific as all things in France do vary between regions.

Will (50)