David I’m referring to the NHS! ( the RSI can disappear…)
I still don’t understand why should any French resident fight for the NHS when it’s the RSI that might disappear?
The RSI was created because CPAM was struggling to cope with the workload it had, so it seemed like a good idea to split off one category and deal with it separately. It didn’t turn out a great success and RSI has made itself thoroughly unpopular. Maybe now, with today’s more efficient IT systems, CPAM would be able to take self-employed workers back under its umbrella. But the changeover will need to be carefully managed otherwise it could easily result in even more problems. Be careful what you wish for!
I’m not sure the NHS is the model to aim for. Yes it’s as simple as it gets for the customer but I doubt it’s fit for purpose from an administrative point of view. Lots of people get treatment at the NHS’s expense that aren’t entitled to it, either in the UK or by continuing to use an EHIC card when they’ve been living abroad for yonks. I don’t think they’re very good at keep tabs on all their members.
That only applies to TVA Registered businesses “l’obligation à partir de 2018 pour les commerçants et autres professionnels assujettis à la TVA d’enregistrer les paiements de leurs clients au moyen d’un logiciel de comptabilité ou d’un système de caisse sécurisés et certifiés.”
No - as explained in previous posts, the proposal in its original form would have applied to micros. Assujetti à la TVA doesn’t necessarily mean having a TVA registration number and paying TVA, it means being subject to TVA legislation, even if exempted from actually paying it because you are on the franchise de base, ie 0%, which is what micros are on, you have to write this on your receipts.
However in the latest version, as per yesterday’s press release it only applies to money received via till systems. Although the vosdroits website hasn’t been updated yet.
So it’s all good (unless you’re a market trader or shopkeeper or restaurant/bar/caff owner I guess).
Thanks Catherine (and Anna for your excellent replies). As am American dual national who’s recently “returned” to France and is soon to launch into auto-entrepreneurship, this article and the resulting thread was very helpful - not to mention realizing there are loads of knowledgeable people available with plenty of experience to answer questions.
One thing I keep hearing from the French is how impossible it is to earn a living in France as a self employed person - yet I see plenty of expats doing just that, happily and well, if sometimes frustrated by the bureaucracy. Can anyone comment on that?
I would believe the former !!!
I think a big factor is that security is so important to the French. The system is so structured that once you have a CDI you virtually have a job for life, you have paid holidays, you have healthcare sorted, you have retirement sorted, you can get loans and mortgages, you are secure. Self employment especially on a small scale represents precarity which is anathema to the French in general.
I guess expats on the whole are less bothered about security and are happier with taking a few risks.
Has to be said that for every expat who is earning a living happily and well, there are probably several who are struggling or have given up and gone back to where they came from.
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Yep, that sums it up.
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It’s also to do with national trends. Self employment has become far more popular in Britain (and possibly the USA) in the last few decades but it is less common in countries like France and Germany where small companies rule. There are big differences between being self employed in the UK and France and one of the biggest factors is contributing to the exchequer. Britain has encouraged self employment to keep unemployment numbers under control and to a certain extent it has worked. It’s not all rosy though as many self employed people in the UK earn far less than the minimum wage, are ineligible for benefits claimed by some others and tax revenue has fallen as the number of self employed has risen. In France the self employed are expected to pay their way from the start in the way that the UK newly established self employed are not. With immigrants moving to France from the UK there are additional problems; the first is language, how often have we seen new businessmen post that they will pick up the language quickly? Do they? Not if they follow the common path of only touting their business to the English speaking members if their local community. Then there are the regimes that the adopt. So often they arrive and register as a Micro Entrepreneur as that gets them into the system quickly with a minimum of fuss and only later do they realise that their income is limited, they are unable to claim expenses or employ staff. They are also troubled by qualifications, many people immigrating into France expect that their UK qualifications will be accepted and are surprised when they are not. Linked to this is the extraordinary number of people who give up salaried jobs in the U.K. to become self employed in France providing a service that they are neither trained for nor qualified in. We’ve all seen people who offer grass cutting services who claim that they ‘have’ to charge between €45 and €50 an hour because after they’ve paid for their equipment, MSA fees and expenses they need to earn enough to enjoy the new life they’ve given up so much to start. The trouble is that at that price there is no demand for their services and with no customers there is no business.
People who have the language skills and recognised qualifications who come to France and are employed by an established company will succeed. Those who move over and gamble everything on a wafer thin business plan will have the odds stacked against them. It’s not rocket science.
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Thanks for you answer David. Of course it’s not rocket science. (I am currently witnessing an expat couple who’ve started a business in which they had no previous experience circle the drain… it’s very sad) I have been self employed my entire life (and I’m no spring chicken) I am fluent in French and have skills that are marketable internationally as well as in France. My question was not specifically about immigrants working in France but rather about the commonly heard complaint from French people who say it’s impossible to earn a living…
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I have French relatives and they earn good livings in the same way that people I know in the UK and Germany do. Some of them are doing OK and have sufficient income to fund their chosen lifestyle while others are doing very well indeed. The big difference between France and Germany and the UK is that the younger elements in the European countries are able to buy their own property whereas that remains a dream for so very many of the young people in the British Isles.
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Of course, you needed a very good business head on your shoulders before the auto, now micro entrepreneur scheme was launched by Sarko in 2009. A lot of people haven’t taken the scheme on board. It seems to be dismissed by the older generation who haven’t had anything to do with micro themselves nor know anyone who has, they don’t take it seriously/distrust it/don’t understand it/have never heard of it. Auto/micro has had limited coverage in the media and some of that has been quite negative, bizarrely expats are probably more aware of the scheme than the French themselves. And although it’s a good scheme for what it is, it has limitations and I don’t know how much it has changed the bigger picture. At present you cannot make a “good” living on micro, the ceiling simply doesn’t allow it (max profit you can make works out not much over 20k pa). Macron may or may not change that.
Traditionally with other small business regimes, getting past year 3 was the crunch because that’s when cotisations bit hard.
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My wife and I run a Micro here and I concur with much that’s been said about the ability to ‘earn a decent living’, we have to work our a**es off every year and struggle to take much time off. One of the biggest things Macron could do would be to increase the turnover limit which is currently very constrictive, towards the end of the year we have to start juggling our income just to stay under the limit primarily by getting our clients to pay early in the New Year. Being forced to become VAT registered would end our business overnight as we would have to increase our charges by around 25% to 30% which mean an immediate loss of business.
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Been there done that but one day it struck me it was a bit daft to take every job that offered and work all hours to earn money that actually,was going to cause me a problem. Learning to turn work away was surprisingly hard but I have to say, now that I’m no longer working my a55 off I feel far richer somehow. But, I’m single and don’t have dependents nor expensive tastes and the limit is plenty for me.
I’m not sure Macron’s job is quite as simple as just increasing the micro ceiling. The current turnovers just happen to be exactly the thresholds below which VAT is not obligatory. The reason micros are on the régime de base is not because it’s written into the scheme - a micro could be VAT reg if it wanted, though it wouldn’t make sense for most - it’s because by definition all micros earn below the VAT theshold. So it’s not as simple as increasing the micro ceiling, either micros would potentially have to be VAT reg depending on turnover, or there would need to be changes to the VAT structure which I’m not sure how possible that would be. If the VAT threshold was raised, it wouldn’t only apply to micros - you can’t have a micro earning as much as other statuts but the other statut has to be VAT registered and the micro doesn’t. It has to be a level playing field.
I understand why the micro ceiling is set where it is but it has barely moved since we started our business ten years ago yet our general running costs have increased more so our capacity to earn a profit has been reduced. To be honest we do take on a few cash jobs which does help to keep us under the limit but we don’t like doing it.
The idea was for businesses to use AE as a toe in the water regime, then once they were established and had outgrown it, move onto a different statut. Macron may change the philosophy.
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As I wrote above, too many immigrants jump into the autoenterpreneur/micro entrepreneur system because they’re simpler and that’s the expat way, when other regimes are more suitable for their business.
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Our business was set up before AE existed and we were advised to start with a Micro Enterprise before possibly changing once we got established. However the next step (VAT registration) means an increase in our hourly rate, the compulsory and expensive cost of an accountant and a reduced profit UNLESS we manage to significantly increase our turnover.
That’s the dilemma isn’t it - do you launch a “proper” business and start playing with the big boys on equal terms, or do you stay in kindergarten where it’s safe, you don’t have the hassles that “proper” businesses have but the other side of the coin is that you have to stay small. Personally I would wait another year to see what Macron comes up with but if micro is stopping your growth, be prepared to move on.
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