Taxes - Gites Rural - to good to be true? Advice please!

[nijntje]

Hello all,

We have bought a farm with outbuildings that we will convert into 4 gites + 1 main house. Location is defined as zone rural or "zonage de revitalisation rurale"

I have been looking into this more closely and it seems that we would have a lot of advantages in taxes because of the zone rural.

1) Social securety charges:

As far as I understand...With the new regulations for auto-entrepreneur this is what it says  "if you own a chambre d'hôte or rural gîte you pay social security contributions at the rate of 12% and not 21.3% as for other landlords of furnished accommodation with 'auto-entrepreneur' tax status"

2) income tax:

Under the micro enterprise this would be : *Owners of rural gites, résidences de tourisme and chambres d'hôtes benefit from a fixed percentage cost allowance of 71%, with a turnover limit of €80,000.

So again, this seems to be way better then 50% cost allowance with a limit of 32,000 euros.

3) Tax habitation or tax professional

This one is tricky, I do not know when you should pay tax habitation or tax professionel. Obviously we would have to pay tax habitation for the main house. But for the gites I am not sure which one apply's and why. It seems there are also rules and exemptions for gites rural.

I could find this for tax habitation: "Owners of chambres d’hôtes, gîtes rurales and meublés de tourisme in rural development areas (Zones de Revitalisation Rurale (ZRR))

are able to claim exemption from the tax, although this is not an

automatic right, as a decision as to whether to apply the exemption

within any particular ZRR is at the discretion of each local council"

and this for tax professionel : " owners of gîtes ruraux affiliated to the Gîtes de France and those with classified meublés de tourisme

are able to claim exemption from the local business rates, provided it

is part or all of their main residence, and that it is not the main or

second home of the tenant. Local authorities have discretion not to

grant this exemption, although only on a general basis, not to

individual cases. More generally, there is also an exemption for up to

five years for a new registered business (including chambres d’hôtes) in rural development areas (Zones de Revitalisation Rurale (ZRR) in those communes with less than 2000 inhabitants"

So depending on what tax we should be paying for the gites and if they are canceling the tax professionel thing at a whole, what is the best way to go, what are the differences in costs?

Also is the auto-entrepreneur the best way to go? or the micro-Bic?

Since we are not in business yet, we have no idea how much turnover we will have, we hope to be in the region of 20,000 per year for the 4 gites together.

We will be main residents and no other income. We will also not be having a loan that we could bring in as a cost to write off.

Sorry, lots of questions! Any thoughts and advice is greatly appreciated!