Uk company living in France

[donkey]

I hope someone can help, I seem to be going round in circles!

I have been living in France for 4 months now; I have recently set up a Uk ltd service orientated company, dealing with and invoicing uk clients only, I will be using the net to run the company from my appartment in France; I have not filled in a P85 but understand I need to. I have a Uk accountant for my corp tax in Uk and have spoken to an international accountant in France to sort my personal French tax situation, he is quoting so much money that it is just impossible for me to consider. I rememebered reading on this site some months back that you had members with similar problems, I hoped someone who has a hisory in these matters might be able to point me in the right direction, either a referral french (international)accountant (cheap) or give me some ideas of how I can sort this. Primarily I am trying to find out how it is best to pay myself, divedend, Paye, loan etc

If anyone can get in touch,I would very much appreciate it, first time starting company and living abroad, VERY daunting!!

Chris

p.s. Toulouse based

[Will]

As has been said many times on this forum, if you live in France you cannot legally avoid paying French tax and social charges (there are ways you can delay joining the system for up to two years, but you will have to pay eventually). If you live here in France and work here, even for a non-French organisation with 100% non-French clients, the correct thing to do is to either register self-employed or set up a French subsidiary of your UK business. If the latter is your choice it is absolutely vital that you get it right at the outset, otherwise you will see about two thirds of your income disappearing in social charges alone (you can easily get stung for employer contributions, as director of the company, plus employee contributions because you will also be employed by the company).

So do swallow your pride and pay for decent advice - it will pay off in the long run. Though I do sympathise with what you say about so-called 'international law and taxation specialists' - I was quoted a minimum of 1000€ plus 19.6% TVA plus 16% 'disbursements' for registering myself in France; which we did ourselves by a couple of phone calls and filling in one A4 form.

I can't suggest anybody cheap, but it may be worth getting in touch with somebody like VG Consultants http://www.vgconsultants.com - VG = Vincent Grey, who was the man behind Britline banking and is now offering financial advice in conjunction with French experts. I have no idea of his charges, and no experience of his services, though I have met him and thought he was a pretty knowledgeable and sound guy. A possible difficulty for you may be that he is based near Caen, at the other end of France from you.

[Iceni]

I had a UK Ltd company and came to live in France. After much to-ing and fro-ing it became clear that we needed to be registered in France, so now I am working under the French system with a Siret No and not via the Ltd Co. You have to register one way or the other in France.

If there had been any way of continuing the Ltd Co we would have done so but this way is much cheaper (everything is relative as is the word 'cheap' with regard to tax and social charges in France).

This course of action made sense to me as I would not have started a French company if I lived in the UK. According to the IR in the UK, where your bottom is on the seat, that's where you are taxed. When they made that statement to us, all our clients were in the UK.

Hope that this helps as this is from someone who has been there and done that.