A good thought - not sure if they would want to bother though as the money is only paid in dollars via PayPal or Payoneer, so has to be converted and moved about.
Anyway I’ll see when the time comes.
1 Like
This is starting to look all too difficult to achieve with any serious return. The nature of the business is such that clients will only want to deal with a UK-based company and the work would be a mixture of site visits in the UK and then subsequent report writing. I guess it would be feasible to stay in the UK after each visit to write up the reports but I’d much rather do it at home and the latter drives towards French taxes and social charges. I’m also not sure that I want to lose the UK as my competent state.
Having said all that, I’m considering it because it interests me, rather than because I need the money, so I could just grin and bear it by paying the charges.
I’m torn, decide for me! 
A friend of ours living in France works for TFL as a consultant, he set up a Ltd company in the UK upon retirement and his monthly fee/salary gets paid to his company and he then takes regular dividends which he declares in France. His works involves attending monthly meetings in London and ad hoc “zoom” calls, he’s been doing this since he retired 15 years ago.
1 Like
My advice would be to ‘suck it and see’. You can always chuck it in if the plusses don’t outweigh the minuses. Also, might get you through that bewildering time of ‘Now I’m retired what to do all day!’
Good luck and Bon Courage whatever you decide for this next stage of your life’s rich tapestry 
I guess, technically, that’s working in France but trivial enough that it’ll fly under the radar. My work in France could be rather more substantial and, given the nature of the work, I need to be whiter than white.
I think as an ‘amateur’ artist or photographer, you can earn up to €3000 pa without having to become a micro-entrepreneur
That’s useful - do you have any more info on that? Not heard of it before…
but It’s the S1 entitlement I’m most concerned about, and making sure I’m on the right visa… can’t be doing with arriving on an “inactif” ticket and then getting hassle from the fonctionnaires…
Unfortunately can’t give you a link, but there seems to be a category below ME which allows ‘amateurs’ to sell the creative outputs up to a certain value without having to have the accreditiation of les maisons d’artistes (people best avoided).
My wife has an S1 but became an ME because she was selling quite well through Saatchi’s website and locally, but then they tried to claim several thousand euros in social charges even though she had an S1. The system didn’t seem to absorb that one could be a retirée, but still selling paintings. It took us two years to sort that out satisfactorily and it was only later that I discovered ‘amateurs’ could sell work up to a threshold without being an ME or a member of the Md’A.
1 Like
It sounds from the above that you can earn a certain amount if you are resident via a WARP card, but I will be arriving on a non-EU economically inactive visa, which isn’t quite the same thing, so I wonder if that exemption would apply to me.
What I have understood to be the case (so far) is that it’s an either-or situation = either you are coming in to work in which case you have to have a viable business plan, or else be retraité with purely passive income from pensions and savings.
I hope I have understood it correctly. The loophole that was suggested to me was that photo royalties earned from overseas would not constitute “operating a business in France”, but would fo coruse count for income tax and might also attract social charges.
Hmmm, I don’t think so. You can sell your personal goods as a particulier without tax or social charges, or setting up a business. But all the platforms must report if you sell more that €3k in a year.
Anything creative is excluded as this is automatically professional.
Happy to be proved wrong.
1 Like
France’s official attitude to artists is literally mediaeval as les maisons d’artistes operate like mediaeval guilds. Nevertheless plenty of amateur craftspeople make and sell things on a comparatively small scale.
I find the art scene here very depressing - lots of great venues but also lots of highly derivative mediocre art that wouldn’t be seriously regarded in the UK. Art Brut and la Figuration Libre still dominate after several decades - in France they’ve become an orthodoxy, a present day académie.
Well yes because as soon as you register a professional activity the S1 is automatically cancelled. You cannot simultaneously have two routes to healthcare and the professional route takes precedence. It is not a case of what the system can absorb, it is a case of what the system allows, and it does not allow you to both hold an S1 as an inactif state pensioner or dependent thereof, and at the same time be economically active
1 Like
Of course. It is very easy to set up as an auto-entrepreneur, and if small scale then the charges are low. Others of course do this under the table.
I am quite amazed that you have managed to retain an S1 if generating French income.
No. It is from the first euro. Either you are a professional or you are not, you cannot be just a tiny bit professional.
1 Like
The big problem with doing nothing is that you never know when you have finished.
1 Like
No but your family knows and they put you in a box.
3 Likes
Since I was never a completer/finisher, that works quite well for me
3 Likes
You amaze me. 
1 Like
Yes this is the bit that bothers me - I don’t want to disqualify myself from the S1 and nor do I want to go the entrepreneur/prof lib visa route because that would mean having to ramp up to full-time income level which I don’t want to do. So if my only choice is between not qualifying for the inactif status and giving up a few hundred euros a year in royalty income, the royalty income gets sacrificed!
I’ve got a fairly short attention span and I’m more of an ideas for the team to implement kinda guy
1 Like