Exchange Rate for French Tax Return

Hi
Apologies if this has appeared before, but im having trouble finding the GBP to Euro exchange rate that we need to use on the French tax return this year (Income from 2021). Does anyone have it to hand?
Many thanks
F

£1 = €1.1499

The following is from the Connexion’s current tax guide

'If you use the annual average method described above and do optionally want to make a note
about the method used to obtain it so as to avoid any questions from the tax office, you could use the
following wording:

Revenus étrangers déclarés avec un taux d’échange moyen pour l’année 2021, calculé à partir d’un moyen des taux de fin de mois de décembre 2020 et décembre 2021, suivant les recommandations de la DGFiP. Les taux de la Banque de France pour la livre sterling étaient £0.89903 et £0.84030.

[Translation: Foreign income declared with an average exchange rate for the year 2021, calculated using an average of the month-end rates for December 2020 and December 2021, following recommendations
from the DGFiP. The Banque de France rates for sterling were £0.89903 and £0.84030.].

If it would help you @Fenman , the method I have used for many years is as follows.
All our UK pensions are paid into our UK bank. When I need, and when the exchange rate is favourable, I simply transfer via Worldwide, the amount I want and they usually do that at just over one cent less than the exchange rate on the day. No other charges. Other companies are available.

The advantage is that I just add up all the paymnents I have made to them over the year and then, using the actual Euros that appeared in our French account, arrive at an exchange rate. This has never been challenged by the tax authorities.

I just send them a message asking for the rate.

I was led to believe a very long time ago that there was no official national exchange rate and that individual offices were the places to go, but they didn’t always agree with one another. So that is why I started to do it my way. Right or wrong, I don’t know, but as it has always worked for me without challenge I thought better to keep doing it.

OK, but you could still ask the fisc, and if they gave you a better rate, then use it. You have proof if you keep their reply.
But I don’t think it really matters as it’s only a question of a few Euros or so.

There is an official exchange rate! It was published by the Banque de France but they now just point you to the ECB. The exchange rate from 4 Jan 1999, updated daily is
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/policy_and_exchange_rates/euro_reference_exchange_rates/html/gbp.xml
You can look up the rate for each day you received a payment into your UK bank.
It is fairly easy to process the relevant section of the data and to create a spreadsheet lookup table, which is what I do. I then use a lookup to do an automatic conversion into euro from my accounts data I keep in MSMoney.
I used to publish a link to the spreadsheet lookup on other forums but have not done so for a couple of years.

That link didn’t work for me Elsie, but although I realise that the correct method is to calculate when the money is received in the UK, not as I do when it is received in France, nevertheless I think that mine is an easier method.

Rather than recording 4 exchanges per month I only record 4 per year. I also realise that this works for me without challenge because I know we are going to be below the limit. If we earned much more I agree it is important to be scrupulously accurate.

The link is to an XML file which opens in the various web browsers I’ve just tried.

The original link to it Download XML (SDMX) is on this page ECB euro reference exchange rate: Pound sterling (GBP) (just scroll down to Analyse the results). If you right click on Download XML (SDMX) you can save the file directly to your computer (is is saved as gbp.xml) and you should then be able to open it in any text editor.

Yes I see it now, thank you, but still more work to do as that is not for 2021 which is what is required in France.

The average there is 1.18, I worked it out to 1.17 but someone else was guided to 1.14.

The download has the euro/£ rate for every business day from 1999 onwards!
You can change the dates in the Period boxes.
Change from 4 January 2021 to 30 December 2021
Min (22 November 2021) 0.83923
Max (6 January 2021) 0.90635
Average 0.85968

Hopefully you won’t be asked why you are using the most favourable rate to you rather than the actual date you received the money into your account.

But I haven’t been have I? I used 1.17 and according to that I should have used 1.16, thus diddling myself, not them, surely.

In any case their rate is an average of the year, as is mine.

In return for them not complaining about my apparent miscalculation, I haven’t complained about their assumption that I received €2 more in French pension than I actually did. :rofl:

That average rate is only an indication. Nowhere does it say it is the rate to use for declaring income for tax or any other purpose.