Can anyone tell me the official Sterling To Euro Conversion / Exchange rate to be used on the current French tax form for 2015?
Thanks.
My tax office in Lorient, Brittany are using 1,32074 euros to £1 sterling.
Thanks for the reply to my question.
I got a response myself from the Mayenne tax office as follows:-
Le taux de change pour établir votre déclaration d'impôt sur le revenu 2015 est :
1 livre sterling = 1,3220 euro ou 1€ = 0,7564 livre sterling.
Which does make you wonder why the figures are slightly different between Mayenne and Brittany?
We've been told to take the Banque de France rate on 1 January 2015 and the one on 31 Decembre 2015, and average them out.
Interesting, I never knew they advised rates. I go to a historical rates web site and take the rate on the day the transaction took place. I don't have many, so it's relatively easy.
I track the Pound/Euro exchange rate on a daily basis and have records going back many years.
The actual average was 1.3767 (sum of all daily values divided by 365)
If you divide the starting and ending values then the "average" is 1.3199
If the Impots are advising 1.32074, then use it as it is clearly a good value.
my local tax office said I could take either the average of the mid-rates of the date of payment of my sterling income, or the rate on the 31st December.
So many different view points.
AFAIK, using the data from Banque de France monthly closing rates, average the 12 months for 2015 and this comes to 1,3774
I've asked my tax advisor if there is an 'offical' GBP/€ exchange rate that the Finances Publique apply. If so, I've also asked if there is an official source for it. If I get an answer soon I will post the response and source. To draft my return for 2015 I have simply taken a recognised bank rate (Banque de France) and applied that to my UK income on the day that it was paid to me to arrive at a Euro value for my income on the day it was received. I've done the same in the past too and just kept the spreadsheet in case of any questions. (I agree, both the Lorient and Mayenne rates seem good to use!)
Interestingly Paul, the BdF rate on 31st December 2015 is the same as the average closing rates for the whole year January to December 2015...
See Useful Links/Finance where I've updated the rates given by HMRC and INSEE. Which are not the same, of course, and are less favourable then the 1.32 some of you are being given. Paul is right in that businesses are supposed to use the rate on the day they received the money. So are we pensioners, probably, but my tax office has always been more than happy with an end-of-year average rate.
Thanks for the link Terry. One fly in the ointment though... the rate 0.7385 (which translates the otherway round to 1,3540 as given in your link to INSEE) is only to Sept 2015 - not the whole year so you might be a pit pushed to justify using that rate...
I have received the feedback that I requested from my tax advisor. Apparently, the French administration allows exchange rates to be applied as follows :
(1) For regular payments received throughout the year, a simple average of the exchange rates on 31/12/yyyy and 31/12/yyyy+1, can be applied to all such revenue received during the year.
(2) For ad-hoc payments, the exchange rate prevailing on the day that the revenue is received should be used.
The normal source for the Administration's exchange rates is Banque de France (Graham Lee's provided the link to their site for €-GBP exchange rates yesterday. If anyone needs rates for currency other than GBP then these are available in the same daily tabulation format from the Banque de France website (there is an English version). There is a link to all currencies on the BdF homepage, on the right hand side of the screen.
For information, my advisor gave me a rate of 1.323 €/£ yesterday and I used that for my tax return on-line. I have written into the 'renseignements complementaire' section of Form 2042 what exchange rate I used. When I received clarification of the source for that rate this morning I used the rates given on the BdF site and these result in a rate of 1.322 {2/(0.77890+0.773395)}. I will stick to the rate that I've used yesterday. It depends how many decimal places one takes the source exchange rates to exactly what number results, but the 1.32 bit seems consistent with the figures being given by local SIPs (and sources such as Connexion) who probably use the BdF data in the way that my advisor has mentioned.
Par for the course, I guess, Graham. They take for ever to update their data. No doubt if we look in a couple of weeks they'll have got as far as October!
Terry
I rather support Paul's view on this since it makes complete sense (hallelujah !).
So for me, using Paul's formula (BdF closing rate Dec yyyy + Dec yyyy+1 div by 2 then 1 div by result = 1.3207) is the one I'll be using.
The nice thing about the French is that even if you get it wrong in their view but can give a lucid explanation as to how you came to your conclusion and it's documented, it is extremely unlikely they will impose a penalty (unlike HMRC methinks).
It's a lot better than any rate I've come up with so no way I'm going to argue! I know the local taxman won't query it because he's always told me to use the best rate I can find and that will be fine by him.