A long shot, but could I reclaim my French TV licence cost?

Oh, Doreen, how dramatic. I am not rebelling against anything, I have spoken with the man who came to check up on it, told him the truth, that I HAVE an old dinosaur television set, and that we have no antennae/ariel/clothes hanger/satellite dish, and he was quite happy to tick some little box on his clipboard ,and skip along his merry way.

Why do people seem to think I'm either holed up in a bomb shelter, or just being "rebellious"... I am simply not paying for something that I donot use.

Would you subscribe to France Loisirs, and not buy any books? What about pay a monthly magazine subscription to something like "scorpion collectors monthly", only to throw every issue in the bin.... just because it's beamed into your sitting room it isn't any difference, it's a subscription, and I don't subscribe to it.

lol

Terry, my post wasn't about you, no need to go on the defensive and start justifying yourself... I'm simply stating that MANY expats are all about pulling others up on "how to be French", yet they're the first ones to skip the queue in the post office.

Again, someone else may come along, and say they do, and should skip the queue, but what I mean is.... there are a lot of people trying to dictate what others should and should not do, while they, themselves are on the take in another way, be it smuggling wine (yes, doesn't sound as classy when it's put like that, but you all KNOW that's what it is), or driving over here in an unregistered and barely insured foreign vehicle.
My TV set isn't going to be taxed. That's all.

Your point is well made Terry. In my opinion one needs to explore everything one might be entitled to, having paid taxes and social security contributions for decades. At minimum I belive social security contributions paid in EU states can be combined for pension assessment purposes.

I don’t know how I’ve got sucked into this debate but… that’s not the case Irene. From a quick scan of the webpage David identified if you have, for example, a DVD player with a tuner and a screen without a tuner that counts as a “TV”. Why there is an expemtion made for a TV card in a PC Heaven knows. Maybe they realised the difficulty of having to open PCs to check?

Looks a bit like my local Hyper U on a saturday afternoon before xmas !

Here's the proof :

Donnybrook Fair !

The rules changed in 2009 I think Terry. Adverts were banned on France 3 from 2000-0600 but have been re introduced recently as a 'test' in certain regions. This happens at 2010 for 1 minute and it's estimated this daily minute of adverts will bring in about 10million € !

France 2 and France 3, among others, are are part of state-owned France Televisions and do not have advertising in the evening -- something Sarkozy brought in I think. So the licence fee pays for them.

Zoe, just for the record, in certain cases (mine actually) you are entitled to state pensions from both countries. Because I worked in France before the UK joined the EC I paid French social security contributions. At the same time, my company (rightly) insisted that we continue to pay minimum contributions in the UK against the day we were returned, kicking and screaming, to base. Because the UK was not in the EC at the time, the EU rule that you only get a pension from the country where you've made the most contributions does not apply to me and the French insisted (they chased me up when I ignored their first letter so I gave in to stop them pestering me) I get a French pension based on the pre-EC membership years. My wife, being French and having worked here, also has a French pension. But to our enormous surprise the DWP insisted that she was also entitled to a UK pension even though she had never worked in the UK; but because I had been paying contributions which entitled her, as my wife, to have a pension.

But this has got nothing to do with French TV licences so let's get back to basics :-D

What I don't get is that in the UK the argument for the TV License is that it pays for the BBC to remain advert free. But here they have adverts, the revenue of which should more than make up the costs incurred.

Or is this just another way to bleed us dry and pay for the DPRF?

One thing I find amusing in France is when a law has been created the instinctive reaction is for the french people to try to find a way around it as opposed the the more 'oh, let's accept it and learn to live with it' British bulldog attitude !

John - This may be akin to 'angels on a pinhead' & I may have had both a Christian Brothers 'education' and worked far too long in a bureaucracy, but I didn't make the law here.

That law, like many laws here & elsewhere, was written for the convenience of the administration rather than the good of the people. I consider it a strike back for the people to find a mechanism whereby an honest citizen does not have to pay any tax to which they should not be subjected. If that requires a 'pinhead'-style argument, that's because of the way the law was written.

Perhaps, John, but in Ireland, people already pay Tv licence fees, and the communications tax is an add on.....

The state broadcasters also make their bread and butter with advertising and brown envelopes, don't worry about that.

that really reeks of retirement cabin fever.... going on other websites, looking for little bits of bitchiness to bring back to the nest...

whatever revs their engines....

You’re getting into the realms of how many angels on the head of a pin now Peter. Because, of course, if you have a TNT box but no screen you should pay the tax. Even though you can’t watch anything. I doubt the legislation differentiates between analog and digital receivers anyway. This whole debate will probably become irrelevant when they follow the Irish Governments initiative (tax is all they’re any good at) and introduce a “communications tax” to replace the TV/Radio license. They have to fund the State stations somehow.

Are you sure he/she’s here Zoe? You’re maybe just tilting at windmills. Anyway they obviously have little to occupy them, better to ignore and not encourage IMHO. I like the practice of having our names front and centre here. I wouldn’t bother conversing with sad Foxy from cyberspace :slight_smile:

In my opinion, that makes it no longer a television as it doesn't have a tuner that can receive any currently broadcast tv programmes. That means that you can truthfully return them their form declaring that you don't possess a TV. (It's important that you don't own a TNT box either, as that does have the requisite tuner.) I still wouldn't let them in the door, though, just in case they are ultra-bolshy. Tell'em that your declaration is sufficient!

Hopefully, life could then return to the important things.

Vic, with all due respect you are misquoting me and typing rubbish.

In the interest of clarity here's what the government says

http://vosdroits.service-public.fr/particuliers/F88.xhtml#N101C7