What is the tax professionel ?

[la vache!]

You are so right Alexia. There are a number of gite owner posters on a particular French forum who are not above the income limit as Aillis was, they run their gites as micro entreprises and yet are registered with the Ch de Comm and are always saying that there is no choice in doing this and paying the hefty cotisations. With this and the info given by my accountant, I was starting to get worried. The advice given by LMH posters is far more accurate (thank goodness!)

[aillis]

Yes you are right they hit me for another 3000€ last month for the social security but the income tax wasn't as much as I expected there was some weird organisation we joined ( accountant advice ) called "Gestation de something " cost 300€ but it knocks 20% off your taxable profit , like a tax savers club. The accountant was a total wimp would hardly put anything as an expense as we do all the work and only buy material but the final meeting with the boss accountant changed everything ( he used to play sax in the local band with me ) and we got a lot more reductions. Its all about who you know.

[Paul Carmel]

Hmmmm . . . We are registered as microbic, and pay both taxe d'habitation and taxe professionnelle. This is what the centre d'impots decided, although here they never seem to really know what they are talking about. I'm not sure if our situation is different because the house we rent out is our primary residence (as we live on a boat in the summer and back in the house in the winter), but in any case it is registered as 'location de logements' on our tax return. I've always assumed that taxe prof is connected with the microbic, and that that's why we pay it, and that taxe d'hab is to do with simply being resident in France on 1 Jan of that year. But after reading the previous posts I'm wondering if we should in fact be paying taxe professionnelle, but as it is a nominal amount (under €100) it's perhaps not worth opening a potential can of worms.

What do you think?

[la vache!]

Paul,
I wouldn't bother them if you don't feel you are paaying too much. I had to go to them today to tell them that I hadn't had a bill or paid any contributions sociales for 2004. They then informed me that they had miscalculated my taxe professionelle and another bill was on the way.

This is what the centre d'impots decided, although here they never seem to really know what they are talking about

I think it is true of centre d'impots everywhere! I do feel less nervous of the French tax system now, it's clear the tax fonctionaires are even more confused than the people who have to pay.

[alexia s.]

This should be on the Christmas Quiz subect, but it's more useful here. How many variations are there of the theme:
"Let sleeping Dogs lie", "If it's not broken don't fix it".......?
The answers are for Paul, but let's all see how many there are!

[Alan Knighting]

Susan,

I have revisited the previous thread and it makes for very interesting reading. So much so that I don't propose saying anything more, except:-

If you find your rental income hovering on the limit for Micro Bic then perhaps a bit of financial massage is necessary. I'm not recommending it but in professional and government circles I think it's know as "creative accountancy".

Alan

[alexia s.]

A lot of people around here would consider it "responsable accounting" (after all, they're responsable for their family).

[Alan Knighting]

Alexia,

How true! Would you tell Dick Whittington how much you had in your purse?

Alan

[tansy]

why do so many restaurants refuse to serve you after 1 p.m. ... because they only want to take X amount.

Why are so many French companies still taking a 2 hour lunch...

Why do I not take more than 32,000 Euros per year - (we are micro bic.)

Why have so many French entrepeneurs departed or live in Calais with their offices in UK

Why is the French economy so, well...noir.

It's madness but there we are.... it does make me chuckle that when the Euros came in the French Government had to do the amnesty and have to amend it so many times (what was it 60 Billion Francs in the end) so that all the Francs could come out from under the beds... I've never seen so many new cars on the road in such a short space of time, new tractors you name it..... I wonder how much in terms of Euros are now stashed under the bed?

[la vache!]

I don't think the 2 hour lunchbreak causes a problem for the economy, quite the opposite for the restaurant trade in fact. I do some work in France Telecom and people work a lot later in the evening than UK workers to make up for the lunch break. They don't take the obligatory coffee and tea breaks that workers in the UK do either. I think one of the main problems is the 35 hour week, which has resulted in larger companies who enforce this giving their staff 4 - 5 weeks extra annual leave (RTT) each year (on top of their usual 5 weeks leave). It is impossible to compete globally with this legislation. It is also going to be impossible to remove it, after all if you had been given that amount of free time (for nothing) would you let it go easily?

[alexia s.]

Tansy,
Microbic has been a lot more than 32,000 Euros per year for a long time!!! You can earn up to about 76,300 (too lazy to check exact figure) as micro.

[Alan Knighting]

The 35 hour week; the minimum wage; the high "social" and "emplyment" taxes; they all make a contribution to the problems of running a business.

On the other hand an excellent infrastructure, superb road and rail networks, decent state pensions and the world's No 1 Health Service are very expensive things to maintain. I guess you can't have it both ways.

Nevertheless, in France I pay a lot less tax in total than I would on the same income in the UK and I still find my cost of living in France noticably lower than it would be in the UK, despite the relative weakness of the pound compared with six years ago.

Alan

[aillis]

With my back problem last week where else could you get an offer of x-ray and a scan the following week. I guess its something back on the 6000€ + I pay on social security

[Alan Knighting]

Aillis,

Joan and I get the same benefits but without the payments. That's because we are OK, in the sense that we are Old and Knackered.

Perhaps the formula is to work in the UK and to retire to France? As things stand it’s the best of both worlds.

Alan

[la vache!]

For retirement I agree, France must be great. I also think if you work for a biggish company in France and benefit from the 10 weeks leave a year courtesy of the 35 hour week, France is OK to work in. The problem is for small businesses (such as Aillis') where the cotisations are so high it prohibits you from taking on staff, so you end up working extremely hard for not a great deal of profit. No wonder unemployments so high. Succesive governements have promised to look at the situation, but in fact have done nothing. As Tansy said, it's no wonder that there are French businesses re-locating to countries which are less financially prohibitive to entrepeneurship and small businesses.
At least with rental only, you have the 76,300€ ceiling of a micro-bic, I don't know how chambre d'hotes manage to survive as they have to be registered and pay TVA, so presumably the cotisations are high too.