Dilemma

[londoneye]

OK.   Will try to keep it simple, and appreciate that ultimately I will probably have to seek professional (paid !) advice, but not quite ready to do that yet.

We have been in France for just over a year, registered for tax etc which we will pay for first time this year.

We have a house in France (our sole property), thus our main residence.     We are currently renovating two properties for rentable accommodation, which should be ready by next spring.   We have a third property which we could renovate (have permission etc for) during 2008.

Our original intention was to stay here and open a business, with gites.   I haven't done anything about registering as a business etc yet, because we aren't yet!

However, I am not sure if I want to stay here.      Thus, if we set up as a business and then decide its not what we want to do, I am guessing that we are going to be financially worse off, than if we were to complete the renovations, not set up as a business and sell without having ever involved our property as a business.   If this were our decision, then I could probably quite easily find contract work in UK for some months of year, pay tax and NI etc in UK and declare this income as taxed income on my tax return in France.

My reasonings for assuming we might be worse off by opening and then deciding to move on are as follows:

-    if we never open any part of property as a business venture then I think (but not sure) that I would not pay capital gains tax on any profits from sale here because its our main residence.    Quite open to the fact I may be totally incorrect on this one.

-    we are likely to struggle for business in first few years, thus if we decide to sell within couple of years of starting business our books won't look particularly attractive

-    I believe we might have to pay some kind of business or professional tax as part of any sale.

Does anyone have a view on the rough ins and outs of the scenario above?