Can I sell my house but leave (& abandon) my SCI

[WilliamMarchant]

Not sure whether this is one for the legal or accounting gurus!

We’ve just sold our French house, have paid off the mortgage, removed the legal ‘charge’, paid all our bills, received the remaining cash and live in the UK. We made a loss on the house so no profits and no CGT to pay. We have paid more costs & fees than you can shake a stick at and the whole thing has been a disaster.

Now our French accountant wants to charge nearly €3,000 to close our SCI and prepare the final tax return. But can we just abandon it instead? What is anyone going to do?

[nomoss]

Maybe you can, or maybe it just goes to show it's not always worth setting up complex legal devices to minimise or avoid taxes.

It wasn't ever "your" house anyway[;-)]

[DraytonBoy]

The SCI won't just die a natural death, you have to formally close it and submit a final tax return. As for the consequences of doing nothing who knows, the authorities have your address in the UK I presume so they can easily track you down and use the UK court

system to come after you for any outstanding debt.

[EuroTr@sh]

If the "raison sociale" of the SCI was to own property and it no longer owns any, it should be closed.

For as long as it remains open its directors have certain obligations - to hold an AGM, to keep accounts, I don't know what else.

As for "what is anyone going to do", well if the French authorities decide to puruse a person who is not meeting their legal and fiscal obligations, they normally start by sending a long letter explaining what obligations appear not to have been met and what the penalties are. (I know this because as a freelance translator I used to make a nice income translating these letters for Brits who had received them out of the blue and wanted to know what it was all about). I was always amused at the logical, clinical approach - the person's misdemeanour was broken down into the specific articles of whichever Code(s) had been infringed, multiplied by the number of times each infraction had occurred, Doing it this way rather than treating it as one misdemeanour, meant the potential fines increased faster than a rat up a drainpipe, for instance, if for a period of 5 years an SCI didn't hold AGMs and didn't keep accounts, that would be 2 infractions x 5 years = 10 infractions = 10 separate fines.

They may never bother of course. But from your post it sounds as if perhaps you got your fingers burned by not fully appreciating how France operates and what consequences to expect from this or that course of action. Setting up a company brings certain obligations, and people are expected to take their obligations seriously, and if they don't there may be consequences..

If it were me I would close the thing as quick as I could. I guess that's because I've seen the kind of letters the autorities send out and felt sorry for the people who received them, and I wouldn't like to be on the receiving end myself.

[WilliamMarchant]

Curious responses from these two. We didn't avoid any taxes and we speak perfect French. No more silly comments please

[WilliamMarchant]

And thank you to EuroTrash for a sensible answer.

[WilliamMarchant]

..and thank you to DraytonBoy too.