French healthcare - should I swap to S1 on retirement?

Yes I believe so if you set up a new professional activity, but would need to ask an expert. And there may well be a distinction if you have or haven’t already started to take a pension. We were sufficiently worried about it to make sure that we stayed as non-professionals.

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Am I right in thinking that there is a code on your attestation that indicates whether your healthcare entitlement comes via employment, an S1 or whatever. If you start working (legally) you will start paying cotisations. URSSAF would presumably change your code and that would automatically cancel your S1 cover since you would then be covered under a different code via a different route. You couldn’t have two different codes on your attestation and if you are paying cotisations through work, that would have to be reflected on the system since as a worker you also qualify for sick leave and other “in-work” benefits that an S1 does not provide for.

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Yes, those with health cover through an international convention are 70. The standard is 10, but many other codes for specific employment categories. It’s one way of telling whether your S1 has been registered, so I guess also works in reverse.

Phew, this thread has got quite long and is very interesting.

If I’ve understood correctly, @Linz needs to contact her French folk to ask about Pension/Health Cover as they are the latest “employer”.

However, nothing is lost if she also asks UK to clarify her S1 situation and future prospects re Pension/Health Cover.

If by any chance she is able to “choose” at least she’ll have all the details with which to judge/make a choice… and if NOT able to choose, well that’s fair enough.

Have I understood things correctly ???

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I understand there may be a difference here between pension rights earned in France and health cover? My partner worked, extremely briefly, here in France as an ME, after we left the UK. He then got his S1 and CPAM were very happy with it. Nobody raised any conflict issues at all and the S1 has been accepted by both states.

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There is another question raised by the OP that I don’t think anyone has really answered (unless I missed it of course!)
@JaneJones mentioned working (after retirement?) as non-professionals. How does that work exactly? Is it just miscellaneous income that gets mentioned on the Tax return only? Does it mean you can have a SIRET number without being a business or does it mean that you don’t need a SIRET number?I’m a bit confused here.

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There is no reason for CPAM to not be happy with an S1. It means they are not responsible for that person and won’t have to spend a cent on their healthcare. I do not suppose they are bothered about whether the S1 should or should not have been issued, all they are interested in is the fact that it was issued.
I think that compared to France the UK is far less rigorous about checking people’s entitlements and I would not be surprised if it issues S1s to many people who technically are not entitled to them.

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Everyone who carries out any sort of commercial activity should register for a Siret - free and doesn’t generate specific obligations. Professional or non-professional doesn’t matter if you take money from someone else that is business. I know many people who haven’t bothered but that doesn’t mean that is right.

If you do something professional or salaried after retirement it seems to be a complex web to unpick: look up cumul emploi retraite and get a headache!

For non professional stuff you can earn quite a bit (depends on type of activity but can be up to €72k) and you just declare as microBIC on 2042 C Pro.

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That’s very useful, @JaneJones - thank you! I had assumed (obviously wrongly) that a SIRET number was inextricably linked with a business…

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Given that he earned nothing during the short life of his business, I doubt if the French authorities would be that bothered either! Very useful to know though - thank you @Sandcastle

I have avoided mentioning so far, because I was trying not to over-complicate things… but I am also a UK-qualified lawyer and on the books of a specialist litigation firm as a consultant. They recently asked me if I would like them to renew my practising certificate so they could call on me if they had a panic on a big case. I said yes, because my few remaining brain cells might benefit from the challenge.

I haven’t actually done anything for them for a few years, but if they do suddenly call on me and I’m ‘retired’, I don’t suppose legal consultancy work would be anything other than ‘professional’, but will see if I can dig out a definition.

I guess I could keep the ME structure going, just on the off-chance of getting some consultancy work, but I think you’re supposed to have more than one client (and my client would be the law firm itself, so just one) and if they didn’t give me any work I would get closed down anyway after a couple of years of nil returns (I’ve had one already in 2021). What I would like to do is simply retire, and then declare earnings from any occasional work on my annual declaration, but… maybe I’ll down a couple of prescription painkillers and look up cumul emploi retraite… :woozy_face:

Thanks for your input - much appreciated.

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Don’t look up cumul emploi-retraite! Can your conscience accept that you would be popping back to the UK to “do a bit of teaching”? As that is considered acceptable as a petit boulet for rétraités.

https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F31725/personnalisation/resultat?lang=&quest0=0&quest1=0&quest2=0&quest3=0&quest4=0&quest5=0&quest6=0&quest7=0&quest8=0&quest9=0&quest10=0

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Well now that’s interesting. I would probably do the work remotely (we have a fancy file management system), but I could quite legitimately be guiding/teaching junior members of the team.

Thank you!

If you are a salaried employee for a UK employer then you can’t work from home here without complex arrangements… but since this is all merely a possibility don’t fret about it now.

OK, but I wouldn’t be salaried - I’m a self-employed consultant. So I would just charge on an hourly basis, especially as the work would be irregular (if it happens at all).

Is that 23K for two people - or one?

We declare as a household, so this is for the two of us.

I think declaring work done in France as a lawyer may turn out complicated in any event. Everybody is supposed to be registered under the correct NAF code for the activity you actually engage in, and avocat is a profession réglementée so unless you meet the French requirements you could not register under the correct code for that activity (unless perhaps you are already registered for it?). Being registered for a different activity than the one you engage in, is no great improvement on not being registered at all, it would still not be correct and I see no great benefit in making an incorrect declaration, that seems to me the worst of both worlds! But, you are the lawyer…

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When I first came here I was a self-employed consultant in the UK. I kept a couple of clients and would travel over every few weeks to deal with them. I was not a self-employed consultant in France. But I declared my profits in France. The tax people didn’t seem to have an issue with this.

(Edit, but I did make sure not to spend many days in UK and jeopardise my french residency status. I think it was max of 9 days or something like that)

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Perhaps you would consider yourself a frontier worker like myself and @larkswood12 .

At present there is an exemption through to June 2022, for frontier workers, from the normal 25% maximum of your working time that you’d be permitted to work in France for a foreign employer, before that employment (employee and more importantly, employer) was required to have French social charges etc. paid on it.

There are a few other threads where this has been discussed. Note that the snooper’s charter is currently operating in France, so online activity can be analysed by the powers that be if they wish.

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