Can anyone advise me about the 90 day rule. I have a 6 month vias for france which expires in jan. Can i stay past my visa expiry date and start using my 90 day allowance or do i need to be out of the country for 90 days before i can start using my 90 day allowance ?
No idea really but AIUI the Schengen clock does not ātickā if you have a visa so what you describe should be possible in theory - but I would tread carefully and get official advice because you donāt want to be viewed as having overstayed your visa.
I donāt have a definitive answer, but do have a friend who was in the same boat. They received conflicting advice but the consensus seemed to be that you need to leave France for your home country either before or at the expiry of the 6 month visa. Ensure that your departure is recorded as a stamp in your passport/visa as this is the evidence that you have fulfilled the requirements of the visa.
You are then free to re-enter France under the 90/180 regime - on the day you left, if desired. Again, make sure your passport is stamped on entry and exit.
This is what my friend did and he had had no issues on subsequent visits to France.
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I would have thought what @_Brian said is right - for the 90-day clock to start you need an arrival date, so leaving France for at least a day and then getting your passport stamped back in as a ānormalā visitor would seem to be the logical answer.
Otherwise as @billybutcher said, how would they know you were not just overstaying your six month visa?
Perhaps a quick plane trip to the tourist Mecca of Stansted Airport is called for. 
I must admit I was going to say the same as @_Brian in terms of leaving and re-entering French territory in a way that gets an exit stamp for the visa and an entry stamp for Schengen rules. However I was a bit wary of potentially offering incorrect advice.
It does seem the logical thing to have to do.
Me too!
This UK GOV web page
says:
If you cannot return to the UK before your visa-free limit expires, contact the nearest local prefecture in France.
(It would seem logical that the same would apply to the expiration of a visa).
I am fairly sure that the rules have changed and that visitors on a six month visa no longer have to return to the U.K. before starting their 90/180 days allowance. I will try to find something other than the Connexion that confirms that. I seem to remember that there are problems with adding time in France onto a six month visa, the most obvious being that if you spend more than 183 days in France in a single year that triggers things like income tax returns, car registrations etc. I suppose it would be fine for people who wanted to spend 180 days in France followed by 90 days elsewhere in the EU.
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Me too! My comments were describing the (successful) outcome of my friendās deliberations rather than suggesting it was a complete and accurate interpretation of the law 
.
However, wearing my ācommon senseā hat (which I know is not the same as a lawyers hat!), it all seems to make sense.
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Schengen Border code
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX%3A32016R0399&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR1_VzIGpOLYQNpXtnNf6v-azr1o5HhkopRDAQpOnyhDYhJ9XgQAWKG8OsA_aem_MIBV6T9fgZnvaAFbRiZo4Q
Article 6, paragraph 2
- For the purposes of implementing paragraph 1, the date of entry shall be considered as the first day of stay on the territory of the Member States and the date of exit shall be considered as the last day of stay on the territory of the Member States. Periods of stay authorised under a residence permit or a long-stay visa shall not be taken into account in the calculation of the duration of stay on the territory of the Member States.
Obviously only for people whose nationality is signed up to this. But to answer the OPās question yes they can be added together
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There are other complications with combining the six months visa and the 90 days rule. The six months visa allows the holder to spend their time in France not in the EU. The six months starts from the day of arrival. Any time out of France visiting another EU country comes out of the 90/180 but if you spent a month of your visa time in Spain you cannot add it on to your France time. If you did 60 days in France, 60 days in Spain then another 60 days back in France your six months visa will have expired and the 60 days in Spain will have come out of your 90/180 days. Iām fairly sure I read about a lot of this on a camping car forum where U.K. motorhome owners were discussing spending more than 90 days over the winter in Spain by exploiting the French visitorsā visa.
If one had a multiple entry visa then I presume one could wrap the schengen time around the visa time. Otherwise yes one could āwasteā bisa time going to other countries.
Potentially difficult to prove though.
Exactly like it would be for those of us with a CdS. If I was in that position I would want to be able to prove how long I had been in France or in another EU country to avoid any problem with tax residency. Bank statements should be enough, they read like a diary.