Paying tax in France on an English Government Pension

[JaneJones]

@Richard_White2

somehow

I’m glad that you have grasped it. But I would seriously question the abilities of your accountant! Residence and needing to declare worldwide income here is pretty basic.

My only concern is that you said you have civil service pension. They are always taxed in the UK, so I remain concerned that HMRC have somehow missed that.

[JaneJones]

@John_Scully

I don’t think that’s the issue Jane, of course it has to be taxed somewhere. I think it’s something like if you have earnings derived in the UK of, say, 100 and a tax free allowance of 20. If 70 is taxed abroad in your country of tax residence (i.e. paid to you gross) you don’t get to apply your whole tax free allowance to the remaining 30. You only get an allowance in proportion. So 70% of 20. In other words, you do note get a tax free allowance on the 70 in France and in the UK. Anyway, I’m at risk of paying a dog (read accountant) and barking myself

No. Your UK personal tax free allowance is only “ used up” when it is offset against tax paid in the UK. If you pay no tax in the UK it is not used up. There is no adjustment for tax paid elsewhere. I’d leave your dog to bark by itself…

[John_Scully]

But there are allowances for tax payed elsewhere. Maybe it’s an investment income thing Jane, I dunno. But income upon which which I pay French tax on is somehow in my TFA mix. It all seems to work out fine, maybe even to my benefit a bit. So I’ll leave the worrying (be it tax or sheep) to my dog

[JaneJones]

We used to leave the worrying to our sheepdog, until we worked things out for ourselves and realised they had made two huge errors. One was something anyone can do, they had misplaced a decimal point, and we did get the overpaid tax back pretty quickly. It made us wonder if there were other errors…and discover a significant one that means we overpaid social charges by a fair amount. And we are still battling to get this back.

Unless you can afford these sorts of mistakes, I always feel that it is important to understand the position yourself.

We pay tax in the UK and here. Our UK personal allowances relates to UK tax only. But we do get abatements and credit impôt here that relate to tax paid in the UK, and for dividends, charitable donations and list of other bits and pieces. In general, now we have our S1, we pay less here than we did in the UK.

[Joninfrance]

If you have registered your new situation with UK Tax Office you will get an automatic refund each year - if it hasn’t arrived by Sept/Oct you can apply on-lne for a refund.

[JaneJones]

@CarlaJohnson

Hello @JJones , I recommend @AmamouFaten she can help you, she is an english speaking chartered accountant and tax expert https://escec-international.com/

Thanks, but I don’t need an accountant! We now do everything ourselves without problem. And for queries we have a French accountant we can call on. But perhaps useful to others.