CGT & Social Tax on house sale

We retired to our maison secondaire, intending to use it as a base while we searched for a full-time home… as it happens we found that fulltime here is great

But it is reasonable to be considering the possibility of selling… so many folk find holiday and real life are very very different…

Corona is thinking about the exact opposite though.

surely what he means… retiring is when he can take up residence in France … :wink: I don’t think he intends to work in France…

Actually, for us it was early retirement, since we just stopped working…

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Yes thats it.

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Still don’t get why CGT etc comes into this if you’re not intending to sell, what am I missing?

We will sell at some point, the travelling might get too much, our friends are all older than us and we have such great times but for how much longer? So just forward planning. Also will be moving in the UK at some point this year we expect. Maybe needing to sell france to increase the budget, just trying to get the heads up. Would love to spend a couple of years at least in France as residents and relax a bit.

Understood.

Obviously you’ll only pay CGT etc if you’ve made a gain. :wink:

I’ll call in an immobilier :joy:

the moment you come into France intending to become Residant… change your House Insurance to Residance Principale from Maison Secondaire… just a quick call to your Insurers… and a first step foward…

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I have no personal experience of this but I suspect it is another of those areas where France is careful not to make it a tick box exercise because it takes each case individually and looks for the good faith aspect i.e. they look not only at how long a person was “resident” in France but also at the reasons behind the move to France and the move back out of France. Arrangements that they feel have been put in place primarily to avoid tax, tend to be discounted. I know that this applies in terms of setting up a business and tax liability, and I imagine it applies in personal tax matters and tax liability also.

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Andy
Many thanks for this - sorry for the late reply but I’ve only just seen the e-mail. I’ll take a look at it. I had my ‘flu vaccine on Saturday along with a one-off pneumonia one which they gave me as reached 65 this year :scream:.
Had a very tiring trip back from France on Thursday but also had no sleep the night before due to the horrendous wind etc on Wednesday night. I think my tiredness has perhaps made me feel the jabs more.
Re the fiscal - I still think the reason for it is to create jobs for people ie the Notaire’s were capable of this before.

Notaires are capable certainly but they are very busy people. They have wide ranging experties from many years of study and dealing with property sales is only one aspect of their work. Calculating tax is basically a mechanical task that involves following rules and does not require many years of legal training. I would suggest it is not the best use of a notaire’s time.

Things seem to go wrong in France when different parties have to be involved so I would hope no one seriously thinks notaires are not capable of calculating relevant taxes. They can phone govt offices if they have any query.

I agree with the @PollyP it’s just a job creation scheme and will lead to inefficiency and another set of escalating fees we all have to pay. And was not necessary.

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Just to point out that it is not a new thing. The reason the requirement applies to Brits now whereas it did not previously, is because residents of other EU member states who sell a property in France are exempted from the need to use an agent. Residents of non EU countries had to use agents. It is a Brexit benefit.

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Ah…now I understand.

It seems whilst we were in the EU, all sorts of forms of discrimination we were protected from in France. Often involving a price gouge for an essential service (like insurance) or a government cost (like issuing, applying for or replacing some types of official documentation).

Where will the un-benefits of Brexit end?

Exactly. Although I would not exactly say that it was about being protected from discrimination. I am not sure that losing a privilege and being discriminated against are two sides of the same coin exactly. Discrimination suggests that the more privileged position is the norm and a minority are being discriminated against, whereas in fact, it is the less privileged position that is the norm and the minority who have the special privilege. I do think it is sad that so many people were so blind to this. There were even Brits who seemed to think that the whole concept of cartes de séjour and visas were something new that France invented especially for them when Brexit happened. Whether they thought that no other third country nationals have ever immigrated to France before, or whether they thought that other third country nationals are able to immigrate visa-free and the only point of visas is to punish Brits, I never managed to understand.
Notaires never did and never will have time to handle all the tax calculations on all the second homes sold all over France by people of every nationality. Essentially they are specialists in domestic and family law, making sure that the various French codes are applied correctly in various walks of life. They are not primarily number crunchers.

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Notaire’s are still capable, but you are a non-resident non-European so there is no choice but to use a fiscal representative.

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Jane
Thank you for this info :pray: - I didn’t realise it was non-residents only which were subject to this.