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Everything you always wanted to know about France |
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Now the Hurly-Burlys Done
The harvest is finishing and the smell of fermenting grapes hovers over most towns and villages in our region - next month there will be a series of festivals with the fresh new wines freely supplied. The entry price is to listen to speeches from the mayor and a few dozen of the local dignitaries - the trick is to appear late enough to miss most of them , but not too late so as to be rude. I am still looking for a partner to work with me to develop our rentals and property websites. We are a year ahead of the rest of the world with our Pay Per Action technology and advertising systems. The big search engines are just beginning to realise that this is the way forward and it would be fun to be better and quicker than Google to get into this market. If anyone is able to help with developing some database driven sites, drop me an email to mailto:tony@frepro.com. tony@frepro.com Over the next few weeks I will be changing this newsletter so you can access the information you want from forums, RSS feeds and from a smaller, more regular mailing. I have to do this as the time to assemble and format a newsletter like this makes it too irregular and some important news gets out of date - I have over 300 articles and letters I have replied to ready for publication - to keep the help and advice free I need to present the advertising.My aim is to send a shorter newsletter three days a week - any thoughts and comments on this would be greatly appreciated. In this newsletter. 1. Lead, Termites and Asbestos in French Homes 2. Inheritance in France - this can affect you 3. Haiku 4. Out Of Date Passport - a Cautionary Tale 5. Using your Pension Fund to buy Property in France 6. Missionaries in France 7. Registering a Car in France ======= There are over 1,000 articles in our archives at... http://francevoila.com/archives/ Archives Our holiday/vacation rental site is at... http://rentalsfrance.com/ RentalsFrance We advertise holiday villa and gite rentals in most parts of France, established in 1998 we are one of the most prominent and successful villa rentals sites on the Internet - and aim to stay that way. Do browse through our websites and please use the advertising links, they help pay for the site. ======= 1. Lead, Termites and Asbestos in French Homes Buying or selling a house in France - then you must check the expert reports on asbestos, lead and termites. The seller is legally obliged to pay for reports from approved experts which check the property for any traces of asbestos and lead and must also have an expert to inspect the property for any evidence of termite infestation. So what are the problems and health risks? === Asbestos - Used for insulation and for some structural and roofing materials - asbestos is a nasty substance which is very common in properties more than twenty years old. There are different types and some is much more dangerous for health. I have heard so much about the risks, but never knew exactly what this was , so I made this page describing the dangers. http://francevoila.com/mesothelioma/index.html Asbestosis and Mesothelioma The report should find all asbestos materials and it is highly recommended that all are removed and replaced as soon as possible. The seller is not obliged to do this work, only to report it to the buyer. === Lead - The local water company is obliged to bring water to the house in non-lead piping - but from the water meter the responsibility is that of the owner. Most older housed had lead piping bringing ware into the house. Lead is a poison, but most piping gets a coating inside the pipe which reduces the lead getting into the water. However the only safe solution is to remove all the piping. lead is also a very common ingredient in paint - this is dangerous as children can pick at loose paint flakes and put their fingers in their mouth - most older French houses will have some lead paint in the shutters and often on the walls. Again the seller in not obliges to remove or replace this. There is some more information on this page - http://francevoila.com/lead-poisoning/index.html Lead Poisoning === Termites - Termite infestation is spreading from the Atlantic coast and is now endemic through southern France (and Paris) - a recent report showin the areas affected can be seen here. http://www.forestprod.org/Jermann1.pdf Forestprod I have put more information on this page http://francevoila.com/termites/index.html termites If termites are found in a house then the owner is legally obliged to eradicate them - the local mayor has the right to do the work and change the owner, plus a fine. A tenant must report any evidence of infestation directly to the mayor. The seller is obliged to supply the buyer with a current certificate that the property is free from termites. ======= 2. Inheritance in France - this can affect you Tony I've just read your very interesting article on Wealth Tax in France. I was surprised by the comment that you become resident for tax purposes in France if you spend more than 183 days any calendar year there. I used to work for the Inland Revenue and as a personal tax advisor until a few years ago, when I retired, and my understanding of British tax law has always been that I would remain resident and ordinarily resident in the UK whilst I have "accommodation available for my use" in the UK (and am not in full-time employment overseas), for any tax year when I am physically present for any period of time in the UK. My husband and I bought a holiday home in France in November 2002, currently worth about £120,000 and we have spent considerable periods there, probably exceeding 6 months per annum in 2003, 2004 and the current year. All our income (pensions and investments) arises from UK sources apart from a few euro interest on our Credit Agricole Deposit Account. As we still have our home in the UK and are not working abroad, I have always assumed that we remain resident for tax purposes in the UK for any fiscal year during which we spend time in the UK. I know, from my professional experience with clients, how hard it is to lose one's UK Resident status and that the Inland Revenue would insist that we are R/OR here whilst we retain accommodation in the UK. I have therefore assumed that, under the terms of the Double Taxation Agreement between France and the UK, we could not be liable for French taxes on our non-French income or non-French capital. Your article has now thrown some doubts on my previous conviction and I would like to educate myself further. I also need to go further into the implications of French Inheritance Tax, as I believe the law has changed fairly recently and we could now arrange things better so far as the joint ownership of our French house is concerned in order to mitigate any liability to French IHT if one or both of us were to die while we own the house. Can you please recommend any reliable sources of information, recent publications etc so that I can read up on these issues? Our only attempt, at the time we bought our house in France, to obtain "professional advice" (from UK based solicitors who were supposed to be expert in French tax law) left us extremely sceptical and disappointed, and our local Notaire in our little backwater in Charente Maritime appears to know less about the ramifications than we do! We enjoy and appreciate your website very much and recommend it to all our friends who are in France, either part-timers like us or full ex-pats. We find it rather scary that so many Brits uproot themselves and try to make their permanent home in France without really researching or understanding the differences there, and indeed without any working knowledge of the French language. You are providing a very valuable service for all of us. Keep up the good work! Best wishes Liz == Hi Liz In the UK there are three levels of "residency" - in France there is only one - if you stay in France for most of the year - you are a French resident and your global income is taxable in France. You may also have British residency, but this dozes not negate the French residency and tax obligations - British Tax law is irrelevant - except that there is a double taxation treaty with France for many things (but only when is complies with French rules - for example a premium bond win would be taxable if you are a French resident) It is impossible to mitigate French Inheritance tax (or wealth tax). It has take me 16 years to find specialists in these tax minefields who know what they are talking about - in most cases it is pointless asking a UK specialist. You must know the questions to ask anyone in France and if you ask five experts you will get more than five different answers. My information is based on personal direct experience with the tax authorities here. Hope this helps Tony === Inheritance law is very specific and absolutely rigid, it cannot be altered by a will or in any way. In simple terms - you own up to half of the property and all children will own an equal share of the restf This is all children legitimate, illegitimate from any marriage for both of you. Here are some guidelines I found on other sites... French law recognises that the law applicable to the estate of an English person is determined by the domicile at the time of death. The main exception concerns real properties (land and buildings). Both French and English laws state that in this case it is the local law - i.e. French law - which is to determine what should happen to the real property on death. Of course, for most English people their only substantial asset in France is their home. What happens to that home will therefore be determined by French law. Their English testiment can be accepted as valid in France, provided that it does not breach the entrenched inheritance rights of the deceased's children, laid by French law for their benefit. Is there a French will? Even if you think you know that there is no French will it is always advisable to make a thorough search amongst the deceased's affairs to ensure that this is the case, and also enquire at the local notary's office whether the deceased had made a will. If there is a French will Provided it is valid and has not been revoked it is likely that the contents of that will will determine what is to happen to any assets in France. French law, however, provides for only limited freedom of testamentary disposition. A person making a will can say what he likes in it but certain groups of people - mainly the children - have priority rights which, if not reflected in the will, can allow them to challenge it. In a typical case of a man with a wife and children the man will only have total freedom to dispose of one third of his estate (La quotite disponible). Two thirds must pass to his children equally (La reserve). The final third is his to deal with as he wishes. The surviving spouse does not have any entrenched rights. Her or his entitlement will depend upon various factors such as the number of children/parents/brothers and sisters left by the deceased person and also whether specific arrangements - as permitted by the law - have been provided by the testator in his/her will. If there is no French will Is there a valid English or other will covering the assets in France? If there is a valid non-French will Subject once again to the possible superior rights of the children, then the assets are likely to be distributed in accordance with the provisions of that will. Few English wills will be drafted in a way which recognises the impact of French law. They can, therefore, give rise to an expensive challenge. This tends to be a problem particularly in the case of children ignored in a will in favour of a young stepmother. If the will is to be used in France then various steps will need to be taken: 1. It will need to be translated - by an official translator - into French 2. We will need to obtain official copies of the Grant of Probate of the will and of the death certificate. In all cases, official copies of birth and marriage certificates are be needed. These all need to be translated into French. 3. All of the documents for use in France need to be certified by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office for use in France. 4. We may need to prepare a certificate of law to confirm to the French authorities that the dispositions in the will are lawful. 5. The money needed to pay the taxes has to be collected and sent to France. Once this has been done we will liaise with the French Notary dealing with the winding up of the estate. If there is neither a French nor any other will The deceased's estate automatically vests in the beneficiaries entitled to it according to the relevant succession laws. This is referred to as La saisine. In the case of English or non-French beneficiaries claim have to be supported by the appropriate documentation, duly translated into French & authenticated. We may also need to produce a certificate of law for presentation in France. We then arrange for the payment of the taxes, the signing of the inheritance documentation and the registration of title as described above How can I reduce the effect of French succession law? It is possible to get round French succession rules if you are buying property jointly. When you bought your house in England, you probably bought it jointly with your husband or wife. Your solicitor will have explained to you that there are two ways of owning property jointly. One is that on your death the property passes automatically to then survivor (in English 'joint tenancy', in French en tontine) and the other is that each of you own a part of the property which you can deal with separately (in English 'tenancy in common', in France en indivision). You probably chose the former method and your solicitor would probably have been very surprised if you had chosen the other method. In France, the same two ways of jointly owning property exist, though for quite different reasons. The French almost always use the en indivision method for the very reason which makes it usually disastrous for the English to do so: it does not avoid the normal French succession rules. The English should (subject to advice) always buy en tontine which is how they would buy in the UK and the property will pass automatically to the survivor. It is quite impossible to say how many English husbands and wives whop have not been properly advised on this point are horrified to learn that they have made the wrong choice. In fact, usually they have not made a choice at all but have signed papers prepared by a notaire who assumes that English law is the same as French law and that all English couples buy jointly in the same way as French couples. Usually, it is far too late to do anything about it except at great cost. If you are buying jointly, get advice from a lawyer who knows English and French law and who, if the circumstances require, will ensure that the notaire does the right thing. It is worthwhile giving an example so that you may see how important this is. Remember that if you are not prepared for it, the problem will arise just at the moment when one is least able to cope with it i.e. on the death of a husband or wife. Take the following situation, which is not unusual. Mr and Mrs A are married. They have one child. Each has been previously married. Mr A has two children by her previous marriage and they now live with their mother who has remarried. Mrs A had one child by her previous marriage who lives with Mr and Mrs A. Some of the children are under 18 and some are older. Mr and Mrs A have bought a holiday home in France for FrF 750,000. They have bought it by the standard French method of joint ownership (en indivision). Mr A dies. Mrs A owns one-half of the house as her own property. Three-quarters of Mr A's half share is divided among his three children (by his existing and previous marriage) and one-quarter goes, if his will says so, to Mrs A At best, therefore, Mrs A has five eighths of the house and her joint owners now include children whom she may never have known and with those of whom are under 18 she can come to no legal arrangement. It is true that arrangements can be made so that Mrs A can be given a life interest in her husband's share so that she would own one-half outright and one-half she can use for as long as she lives. This is, however, hardly a situation which Mrs A wants to learn of for the first time on the death of her husband, She may well have assumed that because her husband's will in England leaves everything he has to her, she now owns the whole of the house. She is mistaken, however, because French law overrides that will. If Mr and Mrs A had bought en tontine none of this would have happened. On the death of one of them, their holiday home would automatically have passed to the survivor. It is true that this method of joint ownership may involve the payment of French inheritance tax whereas the other method might avoid it. Usually, the amounts involved are only a small price to pay to avoid the confusion caused by the imposition of the French law of succession. There are notaires and others who say that there are dangers in using the tontine method because children who have been 'cut out' can claim to be 'cut in'. Take courage from some recent cases on this point which say that it is almost impossible for children to succeed if care is taken and the documentation is correctly prepared. This applies to any Power of Attorney given by the buyer and to the acte de vente itself. It is worth taking the right advice to ensure that this happens. If you buy a property in France, your ability to give it away or to leave it by Will is governed by French Law. This gives your legal heirs entrenched rights to a certain proportion of your French estate. This proportion is known as the `Reserve Legale'. It is only the remainder, the `Quotit disponible that you can freely give away by a lifetime gift or a Will. To explain this complex situation it is probably best to give an example. Say, you are survived by one child then you can not give away any more than half your French estate either during your lifetime or by Will. If you are survived by 2 children then this limit is reduced to one third and to one quarter if you are survived by 3 or more children. Should you have no children then other members of your family may qualify as legal heirs and so enjoy entrenched rights to a proportion of the estate. You cannot vary the share of your French estate which each of your legal heirs is entitled to take in their capacity as a legal heir but you can vary out of which part your legal heir can take their share. A husband or wife is not a legal heir and has no right to the legal reserves. French law, does however, allow you to make certain disposals to your spouse which go beyond what she would be entitled to if he or she were a mere stranger. ======= 3. Haiku Tony Good to get your latest newsletter with its account of a walk in August plenty which read very interestingly -- almost like a Cid Corman reading of Basho. Well we're back in Blighty in the rain but we drank to your health with a glass of Puisserguier Coop best in our little courtyard one balmy evening around the time you were taking your walk. Trust all continues well. Very best John and Pat === John and Pat Many thanks - I am highly flattered - a haiku format for the newsletter is a most interesting idea ...A stillness of grapes waiting the glass the tractor is now silent... best wishes Tony ======= 4. Out Of Date Passport - a Cautionary Tale A friend of ours, David McEwan who has a site at http://paintfrance.com/ PaintFrance had this experience recently - knowing David, who is a awesome caber munching Scot of the wild and Wooly variety - I was glad not to be in nail-spitting distance of him during this time. === We had been looking forward to our few days off for months. A Holiday, almost unheard of for us, we spend all our time making sure that other peoples holidays are memorable. We do Bed and Breakfast and painting holidays so the thought of us taking a break during the August Harvest was unusual, no, it was unprecedented. So, plans made, packing done, dogs catered for we set off Montpellier Airport in almost hysterical high spirits. But! We were not alone. We didn’t know that the little demon that causes chaos was riding on my shoulder! We were at the gate when we discovered that my passport was out of date! Oh, bum! So we spoke to two nice helpful lady customs officers who thought for a while and made phone calls and then, of course because we were in France, they filled out a FORM. Then they said to us that it would probably be O.K. because I had my Carte de Sejour with me, as long as l spoke to B.A. and then got my passport renewed as soon as possible. They did say that it might be problematical returning but as long as the carrier was willing to take me, well..( Gallic shrug ); SO, we went and had a fantastic five days at Hickstead and Brighton and on Monday morning at an unearthly and hitherto unknown hour we flew out of rainy Gatwick for sunny Monte P. I bet that you’re ahead of me by now. When we went through passport control in the U.K. they couldn’t have cared less if my papers had been a hundred years out of date. We spoke to the senior lady and she said that it would be O.K. because if any French person who was resident in the U.K. arrived with out of date papers they would let them in and let them contact their embassy. But..when we reached THE GATE, the same customs lady was there. However there had been the sort of change in her that you only see in bad B. S.F. movies, she looked the same, kind, helpful and compassionate, but inside she was gleefully malevolent. She refused me entry. Ignored everything that we said about what she had said a few days before and ... shrugged. . Then she filled out a form. So, back to Gatwick with no clothes or very necessary medicine. Ah, well. Of course I arrived too late to get to the Passport Office, they’re Civil Servants so the office is only open during user unfriendly hours. I tried to find the cheapest possible hotel which would give stateless persons and illegals some measure of comfort. It not only gave me comfort but also charged me £15 for a two minute phone call and £6 for half a pint of beer ( don’t ever tell me that Paris is expensive!). The following morning at seven o’clock I found myself - wearing yesterdays socks which had turned into sandpaper - with about sixty other people outside of Globe House. All of us were desperate to leave the U.K. and I thought Tony Blair should know. Thank goodness for free movement within the E.U. An appointment is needed to get in, but you can’t phone up to get one. Catch 22; so you have to wait in a winding line to get one. So I waited, and waited and then waited some more. I saw three different people and told each my story and each of them said that they could not believe it and then passed me on to another queue. It felt quite chummy after a while, we were all brothers and sisters in adversity and everybody said that they couldn’t believe my story. I was surrounded by Victor Meldrew clones! Finally I paid a lady £89 and was told to pick up the new document in four hours; Four hours??!! Q makes a passport for James Bond in about five minutes! I have to say that everybody that I met in that office was kind, helpful and compassionate. French Customs please, please copy. Four hours to fill. Dr. Johnson said that when a man was tired of London he was tired of life, Well he didn’t have my socks or the insoles which were beginning to self destruct. So a bus tour seemed an option and I learnt all kinds of things that I didn’t need to know, but at least I was sitting down. Time was dragging slowly on and it was only when I saw that there was a major exhibition of the work of Stubbs at the National Gallery that time speeded up. I specialise in painting horses so the opportunity to see the work of the greatest horse painter of all time was not to be missed. I missed it of course. I had very little time to cross London, pick up my new passport, recross the city to get on the train to Montpellier. Deep joy, more queuing! Waterloo. My feet now seemed to belong to a very old elephant with terminal bloat. I hadn’t eaten for hours but what a choice! It was salmonella city. I have never seen so many outlets selling such inedible food to so many grey, sad, hopeless, harried and hurried travellers. So a questionable pasty later I was in another queue. Then another queue later with not a little pride I handed my pristine passport to a French official who nodded me through without looking at it ...Without Bloody Well Looking At It. I don’t believe it. ======= 5. Using your Pension Fund to buy Property in France A tasty Sipp for the rich? Pnsions used to be thought of as boring, but from next April they will be anything but that. After "A" day dawns, there will be tremendous fun to be had deciding what to put into that self-invested pension plan (Sipp). What about some fine wine and a few Hockneys as well as the long-coveted holiday home? Fancy a 40 per cent state contribution towards that luxury yacht? Then now is the time to start browsing. Excitement over what might be stashed into a self-invested personal pension is mounting as people realise just how wide the choice of asset classes that will soon be available to them will be. But excitement so often comes allied to danger, and there are plenty of dangers ahead with the extended Sipps. The worst of these is unlikely to be that feared by the Affordable Rural Housing Commission: a rise in the price of country properties as weekenders rush to buy a cottage for their Sipp. Early indications are that the stampede will be for second homes in Spain and France. The owner of the pension fund will have to pay rent for the pleasure of using the property but, since the rent accumulates in the pension fund, this is hardly a disincentive. But handing this sort of benefit to the wealthy is surely not what pensions policy should be about. As the LibDem Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay pointed out yesterday, it is wrong in principle and perverse in practice to give top rate taxpayers a 40 per cent discount when they buy holiday cottages in Britain or even villas in Barbados through a Sipp. The impact of the changes has not been properly thought through. Pensions have been boring because they were supposed to be safe. That has not always proved the case, but encouraging people to think that a favourite watercolour could be safely put inside a pension wrapper is madness. Much more progress would be made in alleviating the impending pensions problem if the stakeholder pension could have been made a more attractive product. Policy-making on the hoof produces nonsense. Teenagers can see the lunacy in insisting that taxpayers should hand them a sizeable cheque to celebrate their 18th birthdays. The Child Trust Fund made fine headlines but it will be an expensive joke if the money is frittered away on traditional teenage pursuits. The Government needs to ensure that the money is put to good use. It has not yet thought beyond the headlines. ======= 6. Missionaries in France The traditional image of the British missionary simmering in a cannibal's cooking pot or trekking through the African bush can finally be laid to rest. New figures show that the modern missionary is eschewing countries such as Nigeria, Papua New Guinea or India in favour of that unlikely heart of darkness: France. The latest edition of Religious Trends, a compilation of Christian statistics published last week, shows that France overtook Kenya last year as the leading destination for British mission agencies. In further evidence that Europe is increasingly seen as more spiritually needy than Africa or Asia, in third place is another country with strong Roman Catholic roots, Spain. The situation has shifted markedly since 1991 when France languished behind Zimbabwe, Kenya, and South Africa and Spain was eighth in the list, the report by the Christian Research organisation shows. Despite its cathedrals, clergy and plethora of saints, France is now considered one of the world's most secular countries, partly because of its clear separation of Church and state. Its geographical proximity and relative lack of Bible-based Protestant churches has made it increasingly alluring territory for British evangelicals. Moreover, large parts of the Third World are now so teeming with Christians that they are no longer seen as obvious destinations - and they are even exporting their own missionaries to the West. "There has been a crisis of confidence in Christianity across Europe," said Martin Thompson of the Church Mission Society. "We are beginning to see Europe as a strategic priority." According to France Mission, there are more mediums and occult practitioners in France than there are registered doctors, and practising Muslims outnumber practising evangelical Christians by 12 to one. By Jonathan Petre ======= 7. Registering a Car in France If you want to bring a car into France or are registering a car in France. The best information is on - http://streetwise-france.com/car-france.htm ======= I really do try to reply to all mail, most is about property or living in France. I publish comments in this newsletter which I believe are of interest and may help find answers for people wanting to come to France. The best place to stay in France is at Villa Roquette |
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