French help please

[piskieinboots]

I have a pal who is living in France and is about to work and pay taxes over there, currently she pays taxes here.

She is having a major problem being about to obtain a SS number - any ideas on where she should be going? Currently she has been through all the departments she has been told to go to, only to be told 'it's not here matey' and so off she goes in a cirle again!

Ta muchly

[Nicos]

I'll ask my OH- he did his thingy last year.


PM/e-mail me if I forget!!

[piskieinboots]

thanks lots petal

[bobleponge]

How surprised I'm not.

I'm home Wednesday night, if you dont have an answer before then I will PM you details on Thursday.

[TonyF]

She will get an SS number when she registers with CPAM for her health care or when she registers with a Chambre for some sort of work. It doesn't depend at all on where she pays her taxes, it's about where she is domiciled/working.

Suzie, how old is she and has she been working, that's the first thing?

[piskieinboots]

Thanks guys

Tony - she is 35, she is self-employed working from home on SEO stuff - will these cause any issues for her that you can think of?

[TonyF]

Ummmm, she may well have problems. The French really strengthened their laws about 18 months ago to stop people from elsewhere in the EU ever becoming an economic drain on the French system.

So, if she is going to work in France, she needs to register her business immediately with the French authorities, through one of the business schemes and that depends on things like turnover, not profit, what she is doing, how she will be classified etc etc.

If she's working here already and hasn't registered with one of the Caisse, she's working illegally and could theoretically be deported (ok, it wont happen) and if she's resident here, she should be paying taxes here under the dual-taxation agreement. Failure to do so is taken very seriously and could invoke all sorts of penalties.

May be better if she speaks to me direct Suzie.

You CANNOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, mix and match the French and UK systems - she lives in France and works in France, even tho it's work directed at the UK or online, she MUST be registered here and that will get her a SS number and will also get her access to the French healthcare system, without which, she's an illegal economic migrant!

[Hazel at the Hill]

KK has recently (within the last 6 months?) had to go through the process of registering as a business so that he can do web design work - if you pm Scarey she might have some tips too.

[scarey55]

He has indeed, Hazel. He is registered as an auto entrepeneur which allows him to pay tax and cotisations (sort of national insurance but not) on his earnings without the hassle of running a business.

I have resisted answering this thread - mostly because I am not the one who does all the work on this sort of thing. Keith is the expert and, as you can see from the paragraph above, I don't really understand enough to be of use

I am not being deliberately vague but, I am afraid that any information I can give you will be useless at best and could get your friend into trouble at worst

[TonyF]

Right. Your friend needs to register with the appropriate Caisse in whichever classification of job she has - profession liberale, employed etc etc. There are a few Bureau/Offices that may cover whatever she is doing.

Registration as an auto-entrepeneur or on a micro-bic regime is actually registering in a taxation scheme, aimed at people with a small business but with different levels of turn over or liklihood/anticipation of earnings. The new auto-entrepeneur is easier and you pay the government as you earn the money rather than up-front, with the reconciliation for year one being done in year 3 - in effect you loan the government money in a micro-bic.

But, in France the individual is responsible for their tax payments etc, tax being paid annually in arrears, the tax year is Jan - Dec and payment of tax is one of the few ways of accessing the French health system and more importantly, if she intends to stay in France, to prove that you live here full-time.

If your friend has been working in the Uk and paying NI contributions, she may be entitled to one of the various E forms that we all have when we arrive, which may give her access to the health system and get her the SS number that she needs. If she has an E form or not, she needs to GO to her local CPAM office and talk to the people there about her circumstances because they WILL give her help.

Where does she live and work Suzie, may be able to give her some pointers of she's anywhere near local.

[organic]

Looks like some useful replies have been posted already, I have a suggestion of a more suitable forum though...

Tell your pal to go to TotalFrance.com and get on that forum. I got some great help on there when I was living in the Alps a while back. It's an absolute gold-mine of information about as wide a range of things as I can imagine your pal needing to know.

Wish them all the best, France is a truly fine country and one I'd love to go back to... if only it wasn't for my pesky family in Manchester!