We own a second home in France though for the time being are UK residents. Having just received the Taxe d'habitation bill today I see we also need to pay the TV "licence" fee.
We certainly own a TV in France though we have no television service hooked up (or available) at all and on purpose. We use the TV purely to watch DVDs.
So my question is of course, do we still need to pay the licence fee element?
Thanks in advance for your help.
Adrian
Your old portable TV is a TV and therefore you need a licence even if you only watch DVDs on it.
Hi continuing Adrian’s query, my TV is an old portable for videos and I have no aerial socket in the house or on the roof and no satellite dish either. I forgot about letter ive received in the past to indicate this as put it down to now living here not holidaying. So would it be the same as before & deducted/refunded or not entitled now? Thanks
Caz
simple answer yes - you have the possibility of recieving tv, you pay
When my French house was a second home I received a letter every year offering me the opportunity to not pay a French TV licence fee by ticking one of the many stated reasons for not needing one. All I had to do was ignore the letter and pay the fee as I have always watched terrestrial TV in France.
Basically, everybody pays whether they have a TV or not. From what I gather it is pretty difficult to go through the motions to get an exemption, plus the fact that at the beginning of this year a bill went before the French parliament to have it on streamed reception as well, which sooner or later will no doubt be approved and pass into law.
If you use a receiver capable of receiving a TV signal through an aerial you need the licence, even if you don’t use it to watch TV. At the moment you can watch TV through a computer without the licence. Watching DVDs on a TV means a licence, watching them on computer means you can be licence free!