On my CDI I pay about 23.5% in social charges....
Agree with Alan, especially Sophia Antipolis, I highly recommend that as a target area.
My recommendation would be for Laura to find a job first before moving. You should be targetting big towns like Nice/Sophia Antipolis, Marseilles, Montpelier, Toulouse, Bordeaux but areas like Pau are centres also for eg aeronautique and oil industry.
If you turn up and hope to find a job without French language skills I fear that you will be disappointed. France has a huge unemployment problem and priority is always for the French.
Good luck anyway!
Spot on Pauline, and artisans pay nearly 25% too (so really marginally less). And then of course there is the lovely CFE :-)
Working as profession libérale under the micro enterprise scheme you pay approx 25 per cent of your turnover in cotisations, i.e. for every 1 000€ that you invoice, you pay 250 € in charges. I think it's marginally less for artisans. It is intended to work out as near as possible to the rate you would pay under other business structures - 25 per cent of turnover for the average prof lib business should come to the same as 40-ish per cent of profit.
As an employee on a CDI you pay far lower charges because your employer pays around 50 per cent on top of your salary as their share of the cotisations.
Hi both,
If you should decide that Aquitaine could be for you then please do not hesitate to contact me as I am the delegate for the Franco British Chamber of Commerce and Industry for this area.
You may find the following doument useful
http://dordogne.cci.fr/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/BROCHURE-FROG-BD.pdf
Kind regards
Roger.
Hi Pauline ... sorry for the mistake ... I have a CDI and pay more than 14% of my salary in charges ... but perhaps these are different as I get more rights if things go pear shape! And AE is a lot better than being a professional liberale which was the only option for me when I moved here and as you say meant paying upfront and fixed charges without having earned a penny!
You said the South of France Kevin, and a few people who replied have mentioned South West, but maybe the South West was not your intention?
Just picking up on the comment that social charges are lower for auto entrepreneurs/micro entreprises - the charges are in fact not lower but the advantage is that there is no minimum charge, you always pay as a proportion of what you earn, so if you don't earn a lot while you are getting established you will not be in danger of having to pay more than you have earned which can happen with other types of business.
You'll have better weather and a different lifestyle but most self employed people who move here find they have to work longer hours here to make the same money they did in the UK. Do it, life is for living, but don't burn your bridges.
Hi Kevin .... from l'Herault in the LR ... French would be really helpful and make life easier but there are those who come down here and learn along the way ... i think you could become an auto entrepreneur where the social charges are lower and there is always a need for good and reliable workmen in both communities ... weather here is great although last summer was reminiscent of an english summer, where for the first time we couldn't rely on planning what we were doing because the weather was so unpredictable ... probably wasn't that bad but to make up for it the winter was been the mildest in the 12 years since I moved here ... god know what one could do with a science phd ... but there are those who do a lot with less ... a good education is always going to make life easier for those who want to grasp life with both hands ... why not give it a go for a couple of years before doing something permanent ... you are young and have plenty of time to experiment ... good luck. Sx
When I retired I came to the Sud-Ouest (Les Landes de Gascogne) for better weather and nature (a disaster in Flanders), if i win the Loto tomorrow I will move with my children to New-Zealand, so if Australia or NZ gives you a visa to work there leave europe, that is the best advice you can get ! Remeber London, Madrid, Paris, Brussels, etc. etc. it will never get any better, France : 6.000.000 people looking for work !
bonjour Kevin and Laura, great project and great questions: for a carpenter there will always be work in the south west of france, but you must speak french, it depends which part of the south west you go to but there aren't many brits nearby(near us any way), so your clientele will be mainly French; the other thing you have to consider is "taxes, charges" when you run a business, they are quite drastic here, that is why the local craftsmen are so expensive, the saying is you work 7 months for the governement and the rest of the year for yourself... we run a business too; as for property prices it all depends where you want to move, if it cheap that is because no one wants to live there and there is no work, if you want to live near a big city you have to pay the price, when we moved here we were about your age and thought it is so cheap in the middle of les landes we would buy there but after a few weeks of nothingness we thought we are too young to be away from it all, so we narrowed our expectations and bought very close to a city(bayonne), the beach and the mountain , and no regrets ; we did rent self catering in different spots in the middle of winter before we bought, and it is eye opening, good luck to you both and don't forget it is nothing like on TV!
Hi myself and my family are hoping to buy in France this year he's a builder by trade we're looking for a small b&b or gites just to cover our living costs and live a much slower life,I'm studying French at the moment and yes I do find it hard sometimes we think once we're over there it'll get better I'm 44 and my husband is 56 this year and my sons are 24 and 17 the youngest son is unsure of the move but the other one is ready to go today, the only problem we see at present is where to go I want to go down by the Spanish boarder for the weather as I suffer back pain and heat helps me a lot and he want limousine area we also don't want a city but a fair size town a few reasturants shops and somewhere the boys can have a social life any ideas I don't want to stuck in wales with my husband working himself to death just so we can live