Stella, we are benefiting from garden produce at the moment and we have had a good season with the gite.
Like you, we scan the supermarket promos and I will buy four chickens if they are at the right price.
Also, I cook!
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Let us hope Jane that we have good reservations for next summer.
Maybe we should be retired? But it is good to work and meet new people every
year.
How do you get zero TdH unless you had zero last year. TdH is not calculated on zero tax but on a household income of less than âŹ16500.
Isnât Macron raising the threshold for exemption of TH⊠to 20,000 euro per household from 2018⊠Iâve seen somethingâŠ
I believe that Tax dâHabitation is calculated according to the RFR (Revenue Fiscal de Reference) that appears on the yearly âtax payable noticeâ (Avis dâImposition) that we receive after our income tax declarations have been processed.
From that article you posted, it would seem that households with a RFR of less than 20,000 per part will be exempt from Tax dâHabitation. The âper partâ reference is very important, as if they have got that right, it would mean that a household of two people (2 parts) having an RFR of less than 40,000 would be exempt from Tax dâHabitation.
That will be a nice little boost for the budgets of many folks but it does make me wonder where the money to fill the hole in the local council budgets will come from.
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How would that affect those with a maison secondaire that pays no income tax in France?
Hi David⊠the tax exemptions due to low income, are applied to Residents onlyâŠas far as I am awareâŠ
If the non-resident does not use the maison secondaire⊠there are steps to be taken, to enable exemption from this tax.
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As Stella says - only fiscal residents are entitled to tax âperksâ and benefits in France. As indeed is the case in most countries.
As I understand it, the only way for a non-resident to be exempt from taxe dâhabitation is to have a house that the commune classes as âuninhabitableâ. Different communes interpret this in different ways. Some will exempt you if the house is completely empty of furniture, but others take it more literally and will only exempt properties that are literally uninhabitable, ie no utilities connected, holes in the roof etc. (And in certain communes, notably tourist hotspots and towns with a housiing shortage, taxe dâhabitation is then replaced by a âtaxe sur logement vacantâ or tax on vacant accommodation, to discourage owners letting properties stand empty. And this tax just happens to work out the same as taxe dâhabitation - so in effect you donât gain anything and you lose the ability to spend holidays there! But not every commune charges this.)
One has little liking for people who have no sympathy for others.
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I think âfeeling sorry forâ and âhaving sympathy forâ are different things. I can feel sorry for people without having much sympathy for them. In fact I feel sorry for just about everyone whoâs unhappy or worried or in a tough spot, because basically I would like everyone to be happy.
But I tend to only to feel real sympathy for people when they donât seem to me to have contributed in any conscious way to their situation. Eg I would feel sorry but not sympathy for someone who has ended up homeless and destitute because he couldnât hold down a job and he gambled and drank his money away. I would feel sympathy for someone who ended up homeless and destitute because he was a victim of crime or fraud or an accident. In between those two extremes I feel graduated degrees of sympathy according to how foreseeable and avoidable the situation was. Does that make me uncaring and unlikeable? Maybe it does, but to me thereâs a big difference between a situation that is the result of a conscious decision, and a situation that is a result of a random twist of fate. The consequences of Brexit are between the two poles because whilst Brexit itself wasnât exactly predictable, currency fluctuations and changes to the rules have always been on the cards.
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Perhaps I have been influenced by the Brexiteer Europe and especially France haters who seem to take great and perverse pleasure from the pain and misfortune of others, including pensioners whose income has been dininuished by the poor exchange rate. I do not object to people supporting Brexit, although personally I donât. I do object vehemently to vile, offensive remarks made against people who voted to Remain, and my own host country France. My French friends would be appalled by the remarks made in British newspapers and in their websites. I have been in France off and on for 50 years, and permanetly for 12, and apart fro a few inebriates have yet to find a French person who detests Britain, or read anything in a newspaper that spread bile about Britain in any way comparable to the stuff you seeor hear in Britain.
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Me also .
But not a lot I can do about it .
Sad but true .
David you have to learn to read AND understand, I said âI have little sympathy for those that moan that the rate has dropped, what made them think it wouldnât?â I never said I have NO sympathy, Anna Watson explains it quite clearly,
" thereâs a big difference between a situation that is the result of a conscious decision, and a situation that is a result of a random twist of fate. The consequences of Brexit are between the two poles because whilst Brexit itself wasnât exactly predictable, currency fluctuations and changes to the rules have always been on the cards."
Thinking that the exchange rate would never fluctuate is stupid and as I have said I have LITTLE sympathy for those people that thought it never would.
There are many , many occasions when I sympathise with other people, for instance as an eight year old I contracted meningitis I didnât walk for 18 months some people including kids died or lost limbs, I was lucky I survived and ended up playing professional sports and represented Great Britain. Did I sympathise with those that died or lost their limbs? OF COURSE I DID.
Anna talks of fate, back in 2010 I woke up in the throes of becoming paralysed I spent over a year in a spinal unit, hours from death. Didnât walk for two years but now I cycle 12 miles a day and swim one mile per day. I canât feel my body properly my feet donât lift up I watched six people including a ten month old child die due to their complications during the year in the spinal unit. Do I have sympathy for those that are disabled? OF COURSE I DO. I donât believe in God mind you. I fund over 50k sterling per year (depending on the exchange rate 
) on a hospice for young children it gives them and their parents a little respite. Sympathy, moi?
Barbara, we were surprised how many weeks were sold to Brits. I canât see that happening next year with the exchange rate so poor. Fortunately we are in the east and benefit from Dutch, Belgian and German guests. We also had a very nice French family this year.
We always have a get together with our guests as, as you say, it is good to meet new people.
Thanks for explaining all that to me David. I never said that I expected exchange rates to stay the same. Why would I? After all I have been travelling and experiencing life in France in particular for rather a long time. My concern would be that I know that there are some British people living in Europe who are finding the current rate very difficult as they have very small incomes, whether you think they are stupid or not. We all try to make the best life we can. Those with larger incomes have the benefit of a cushion or two, and plenty believe in helping others to the best of their abilities. You seem to have suffered but met your adversity with determination and good luck to you. As it happens I know personally what back paralysis is like, but luckily my own experience was clearly less severe than yours and temporary. (Are you part of the Wandsworth Naylors by the way if so I knew the family).
I think there is a good case for a class action by exPats against the British govt. for the pain and financial penalty that we have suffered due to brexit.
You chose to live in another EU country knowing that any income from the U.K. would be vulnerable to exchange rate fluctuations. How can you or any other expats expect to blame others for the position that you put yourself in?
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David, I kind of think you are missing the point. When we make decisions in life, we make them on available information and probabilities. For example if I want to live in a country that has close ties to the one I currently live and lots of agreements for trade, social, free movement, etc it seems preferable to moving that country rather than one that does not have those things. The financial element taken into consideration is that yes there is always fluctuation but within reason IF the powers that be donât decide on radical changes and so on as in this case. Now on a political level; if you manage to conjure financial magic in front of 8 million viewers sorry voters and 52% are taken in; how can you plan for that?
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Regarding the current trend in rates of exchange, I think that it is all too easy to blame it on the weakness of the ÂŁ. A more accurate picture is to appreciate that it is the strength of the ⏠that is causing much of the current difficulty for the ÂŁ against the âŹ.
So far this year the ⏠has risen nearly 15% against the $, and this affects rates across the board. Iâm not denying that there is a Brexit effect, but the one thing that will most quickly improve the ÂŁ to ⏠situation is a hint of an interest rate rise in the USA.
Perhaps we should all start petitioning Janet Yellen.
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Spot on Robert but you will find most people do not read the financial pages of newspapers If they did then a lot of them would not move abroad because of the risks involved.
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