Finally after endless of searching i found an English speaking job for a Campaign Manager role online. I have applied for it and they have contacted me not long after. I had been scheduled for phone interview then she invited me for a face-to-face meeting in their office. We had a chat for almost an hour going thru my CV and competency questions. It was a bit casual and i felt relaxed. She said she was very pleased with me and would like to offer me to work with them in this upcoming project in January. Before the campaign starts i will have 2 days paid training in the office then i will be working from home after. The campaign is expected to run for 4-6 weeks. Because i am really looking forward to start working in france atleast to get me started on something, i have accepted the offer. Even without the guarantee of me getting anymore projects from them and they do not seem to give false pretense of offering permanent jobs anyway. She did mention that most of their employees have started at that level and maybe some of them they really liked and kept or promote but they cannot promise anything. Now i have been doing my research online regarding different working contracts in france, tax etc the more i read into it, the more im getting confused. Anyway because i wasnât familiar with it i asked what is CDD and from what i can remember she explained about paying the tax or something like i can go like freelance where i pay the tax or CDD where they pay the tax for me. So say they pay me 2000, if they pay the tax for me then they will only give me like 1500. Thought just to avoid all the paperwork and struggling to do things in french then maybe that would be a better option. Then again i have read that in france it is mandatory to do an annual tax return this would mean i will still have to do this also and still pay something⊠im just confused. Also i have read that any company that hires on a CDD are required to pay 10% of the total amount earned during the contract. She did not mention anything about this but also like to ask if they let me go upon finishing the contract but then offers me another project how does that apply to CDD and CDI? For me the way they hire is more like freelance positions because they offer campaigns for different projects but without guarantee of if and when there are work so now i can differentiate CDD and CDI but still not sure how will it be for me if i do anymore work for them after.
My advice would be to take the CDD.
Itâs not about income tax, Your employer is not going to pay your income tax for you. Itâs about social security contributions. If youâre an employee your employer is responsible for making deductions, if youâre freelance this is your responsibility. Setting yourself up as freelance in order to pay your own social security contributions is quite a hassle. But more importantly, if youâre employed on a CDD then you have significantly better social security protection, for instance you may be entitled to benefits when the contract ends. As a freelancer you have less social protection.
I think youâve misunderstood the distinction between a freelancer and a person employed on a temporary contract. A freelancer is a person who works for themself, pursuing their own business strategy and objectives, fixing their own fees, building up their own client base and offering services to a range of clients. Typically a freelancer finds clients from advertising, marketing their services or bidding on tenders. They work unsupervised and they decide what work to accept and how, where and when to carry out that work. If you have no business strategy and no client base, and your own business objectives are not separate from your employerâs business objectives, and youâre being supervised in your work, and offered a salary rather than telling the client what your fees are, youâre not really a freelancer are you? Youâre a temporary employee.
A CDD is what it is. Itâs not the same as a CDI and itâs not the same as being a freelancer. Itâs a fixed term employee contract and as you say there is no guarantee of further work beyond the end of the contract. As long as they can tick the boxes to say itâs a different project they can offer you another CDD and they donât have to make it a CDI. From the government website: âUn CDD ne peut ĂȘtre conclu que pour lâexĂ©cution dâune tĂąche prĂ©cise et temporaireâ so if these projects all have different specific requirements and an end date, they can keep offering CDDs for each of them.
Hope this helps you decide.
Firstly, well done for getting the job offer. Getting your foot in the door could easily lead to full time employment if you like the role, and they like you. You should take the CDD, and you are correct that when that ends, the company have to pay you 10% bonus as a premium for the âprecarityâ of this type of work.
They are incorrect to offer you the possibility of becoming self employed- if you only work for them, you would be reclassed as an employee, and fines all round for cheating! If you think you can build up a good and varied client base and want to run your own business, you can set this up later once this short term job is finished.
Enjoy the new job!
Sandra
Thank you Anna for your information and apologies for my confusion as to being freelance as you can yell i have never been one before. This really explained more about it to me and kind of put me in the right direction. Will i need to inform HMRC about starting this job eventho it is not a full time permanent and that i will be paying contributions into the french tax system?
I have not really updated my details with them yet because I am still unsure of my status here altho i have been out of the country for more than a year now.
Happy new year and all the best for 2018.
Kind Regards,
Farida
Thank you Sandra and Bonne Année to you! Its been really frustrating for me and made me depressed not being able to do things myself as i always have done before. I felt useless at times being overly dependent on other people well my partner mostly just to get things sorted for me. So now hopefully 2018 will be a good start, new beginning and find my way how to on on learning the language too, my 2 year old is starting to speak more french than me the papework i will get from this employment, will i be able to use in opening a basic bank account here? I have tried before but being unemployed it is not possible for me to.
Kind Regards,
Farida
In that case, I am doubly happy for you. People underestimate how difficult it is to get a job in France, particularly when you are not fluent in French, so well done you!
I would think that once you take your CDD contract to the bank and explain that you need an account for your employer to pay your salary, there should not be any real issue. If there is, you also have the possibility now in France to open up an internet only bank account, where no proof of salary is required. This should make some of the small, provincial, and stuffy banks take note and be more pleasant to their customers! I believe a bank account is almost a basic right, and these banks are wrong to refuse to give you one.
If only you had started to learn French as a toddler it would have been much easier, but now you have a real incentive! 2018 is going to be a great year for you!
Sandra x
You do need to tell HMRC that youâve left the UK. If youâve been living in France for a while, as your last post suggests, you should really have informed them already and given them date you ceased being UK resident. But you donât need to give them any details of your proposed work in France, theyâre not interested in that. All HMRC need to know is that you are no longer a UK resident taxpayer.
If you go along to a high street bank with a copy of your employment contract and all the other usual stuff (proof of ID, proof of residence etc) I donât think youâll have any problem opening an account. Just make sure you open the type of account you want, not the kind they want to sell you - bank accounts arenât free in France, and banks sometimes offer you account with facilities you donât need, and high fees to match.