February 2024 Move to France Q&A with Allison Grant Lounes
Hello, everybody. Welcome to the February 2024 Move to France Q&A. My name is Allison Grant Lounes. I am the owner of the relocation agency, Your Franceformation. We help people with comprehensive relocation packages for moving to France, so getting the right visa to create your dream life. And we work typically with
People who are moving as individuals who are retiring or especially people who are starting businesses. So we specialize in visas for self employment and the Talent Passport Entrepreneur visas. I am also the admin of the Americans in France group on Facebook and the
Author of Foolproof French Visas, which is in its 2023 edition. There are going to be a couple of changes, but we wanted to wait until the new law was passed before we started working on the updates, and ultimately there aren’t that many updates aside from some minor things that will concern our clients.
So if you’re interested in working with us on your relocation, I’ll give you some information on how to get in touch with us and how to get started on that process throughout the Q and A. I’m going to go ahead and get started with the questions that were pre submitted.
I tried to group some questions together that go together, so we’ll see how I did. Might jump around a little bit. All right, so Melanie, if I’m applying for an entrepreneur profession liberal visa to operate a business in France, and my husband applies for his own entrepreneur
Profession liberal visa, do we each need to make the average 1700 euros monthly? I thought I heard you say on a previous Zoom it was fine if 1700 euros is combined income. Okay, so it depends on whether or not you each have your own registered
Business or whether you’re going and one of you is conjoint collaborateur. So, if you each have your own profession liberale business, if you’re registered to do auto entrepreneur separately, like, let’s say, 1 of you as a graphic designer and the other 1 is teaching underwater basket weaving, then you
Would each have your own separate business and you would each have your own separate income requirement. Now, if you are working together and one of you is conjoint collaborateur which is valid for 5 years and you have 1 business that encompasses the
2 of you, then it would be combined monthly income of French minimum wage. So, French minimum wage is the number that you’re shooting for. Right now, 1767 is the SMIC amount that you’re looking to achieve. So, if you’re together 1 business plan that would work.
For example, we have 1 client who he’s the IT guy, she’s a graphic designer and they have, like. 1 IT consulting business. They do 1 set of invoices, they pay 1 set of social charges, but it’s 33 percent instead of 22%. And it covers both of them, Eleanor, I retire in 2 years.
My husband retires in 7 years. Is there a scenario for me to go through the process 1st and move after I retire? That would make it then easier for him to join me. It wouldn’t have any, you can certainly do it when you retire and then he can
Join you with his own visitor visa. When he retires, it doesn’t necessarily make it easier or less easy. I guess the easier part would be that presumably you already have a place to live that he would be joining you in. But other than that, it’s not easier 1 way or the other.
Jerry does a C corp work for micro enterprise regime as I want to pay myself through the C corp as a self employed person. And this requires a salaried position. If we apply with micro entrepreneur status, can we then form a C
Corp and pay ourselves a salary or is there a work around. If a company has a salaried employee in France, then the person needs a visa to be a salaried employee. So I don’t think your scenario of the C corp is a very good plan. A work around for that would be.
If you get paid a small salary that goes into a retirement account a contribution to, like, a 401k or a self employment retirement plan would sort of be invisible on the French tax side. Because it wouldn’t be taken into account and then the rest of your income could
Be paid as contractor 1099 income so that you can declare it properly in France. I mean, the other option is you set up an actual company in France and have the U. S. company pay the French company that pays you a salary.
But it doesn’t really make sense to set up a C Corp in this scenario. Kim, can you recommend websites or resources for a beginner search for professional employment in France? Not really without knowing a lot more details about the situation. LinkedIn is a good place to network, but without knowing what type of
Visa you need, and what field you are in, and what kind of degrees you have, it would be really hard for me to make recommendations. Emma, EU national in the Hérault or Aude. We have a whole colony of clients down there.
I’m struggling to find information on how long it really takes to get the recipissé, that allows you to work after requesting the spouse of an EU national carte de séjour. It varies by department. There’s no way to predict. Aude would probably be quicker than Hérault
Because Carcasonne then is a smaller préfecture than Montpelier. Montpelier is kind of slow. I cannot have months where I’m unable to work as we’ll have no income. So I would need to set up the French auto entrepreneur as soon as I can after arriving.
But I can’t do that until I have the recipissé, which is not the same as acknowledgement that I’ve submitted the application. If it’s going to take months, I might go down the route of getting a profession libérale visa instead, or keep working for the UK company while I wait.
But not sure how legal that is, or my husband who has the EU passport might need to set up the AE in his name. Unfortunately, there’s no way for me to give you any kind of timeline for the processing of those applications.
We always tell people to wait for having long term housing and proof of address before they submit these applications. And it depends on how long it takes you to find that. I would say that probably what you want to do is what I would advise in this
Case, if technically you don’t become a French resident until you’ve been in France long enough to establish residence. So, until you get a carte de séjour, you’re technically a tourist. I would say in that scenario, if you could keep working for the UK company and continue under whatever your current arrangement is, continue
With that until you can set up the auto entrepreneur and transition To the auto entrepreneur pretty quickly, that would be my advice. Setting it up under your husband’s name is not a great idea and applying for the profession libérale visa seems like an unnecessary complication.
So, I would say that as long as you’re living in the gray area, if you have not yet received your carte de séjour saying that you’re a French resident, then you continue doing whatever it is you’re doing so that you can pay your bills.
Tracy, my husband and I both have dual citizenship with the U. S. and Italy. What type of visa, if any, do we need to live in France for one to two years? You do not need anything. You need your Italian passport. We’re retired and don’t plan to work in France.
What financial requirements will we need to be able to rent an apartment? And how do we document that? So you’re going to want to work with a lease guarantee service and potentially an apartment search agent who is able to help you put together a dossier and who can advocate for you.
So we’ve had some really good luck with some of our agents who have found good apartments for our clients who have been self employed in the U. S. who have been retired, et cetera. If you want to send me a message with your email, I can introduce
You to the people that we work with. Holly, what do I need to do if I want to marry a French national? It depends on where you’re going to get married, whether or not you’re going to do this through the French consulate for the area outside of France where
You’re getting married, or if you’re getting married in France, you’re going to do that at the mairie of the town where you’re getting married. There’s going to be a whole lot of information to put together and documents. Both of your birth certificates, 1 of you is going to have to provide a certificate
Called a certificat de coutume. It basically says that you’re not already married or PACSed and that you were therefore legally able to enter into a marriage, proof of residence for both of you, and then you’re going to provide those documents to either the consulate or the mairie before the wedding.
If you get married in France, you should get your marriage certificate and livret de famille the same day or the day after, signed by the mayor. And that can help you get your Visa as the spouse of a French national.
If you get married outside of France like I did, you would have to wait for the consulate to get you those documents and it takes about six to eight weeks. We’re going to follow that up with Christina who wants to know about
The process to get a visa if you’re married to a citizen of France. You need these two documents. You need the the livret de famille and you need the Transcription of the marriage or the marriage certificate. If you get married in France, then you’ll have the marriage certificate
From the town hall in France and you can order that online and typically you’re going to need 1 that’s less than 3 months old. If you got married outside of France, then all of these documents get issued through
The service d’état civil in Nantes and you can order 1 of those online as well. So you need those 2 documents. You need your long stay visa form, your passport, a copy of your spouse’s French passport or ID, and not a whole lot else, because there aren’t really
Other documents required for getting a visa as a spouse of a French national. And typically, it’s about a week between appointment and getting your visa back. So it’s just a matter of making sure that you have the livret de famille and the marriage certificate or transcription before you go to the appointment.
Because if you go to the appointment and you don’t have those yet, you’re going to have to wait to get them. If you got married really recently outside of France, then it can take six to eight weeks to get the documents from Nantes if the marriage was never registered. A different Kim.
What kind of visa should I apply for if I’m retired and planning to move to France? I do not plan on working. I’m planning on marrying someone who has dual citizenship with France in December 2024. Curious if I should do a 1 year long stay visitor, then apply for
Something else once we’re married or just continue with the long stay visitor, even though we’re married. You can kind of do it either way. I would say that since you’re retired and you’re not planning on working anyway, you could apply for the visitor visa before September.
And then at the renewal in September 2025, that’s when you would switch to the Vie Privée visa. It doesn’t really matter if you switch to that, if you’re not planning on working. The main difference will be that if you apply for the visitor
Visa, you’ll be required to get the private health care plan. So there would be an added expense that doesn’t come into play when you apply for the visa, the spouse of a French citizen, but if you wait until after you’re married and then go back to the US
To apply for the visa, there would be the added expense of the trip. So. It is probably still cheaper to go with the visitor visa and switch your status at the end of the 1st year. That would be fine. I’m here on a student visa.
I’m getting married to a carte de séjour holder. He’s applying for French nationality this year. I have to end my study and I want to switch to a spouse or family visa to stay with him. So, you’ll have to do something called a regroupement familial sur place because if
Your spouse is not a French national, then it would be a regroupement familial procedure to get a private life visa and that depends on his salary and how long he’s been living and working in France and what his resources are.
And that process, you’ll have to begin through the town hall in your wherever you’re living in the Val d’Oise. I’m thinking of applying for carte de séjour as his wife. Could I stay without a valid visa until I wait for my card? It may take a year. I’m expecting a baby in July.
Will it help? It’s going to take a long time. So I would advise you to do what is possible to continue with the carte de séjour that you actually have until you’re married and can switch your status. And it’s also unclear if your child isn’t French, it’s not necessarily going to
Help you to have a child living here. But your child will be naturalized French when your spouse is, but if he’s just starting the process now it’s gonna be about two years probably before he’s French. Okay, Clive. I’m American and British.
I want to stay at my house in France longer than 90 days every summer, but never more than 180 because I don’t want to incur the French wealth tax. French wealth tax is only applicable to real estate holdings of more than 1. 3M and after 5 years of French tax residency. So.
You know, just be aware that you may have been scared away for nothing. What visa should I apply for? It sounds like you want a temporary visa that you would apply for every year. With the French 12 month long stay visitor visa, am I still limited to 90 days out
Of 180 in the rest of the Schengen zone? Yes. With any French visa with any residency permit, you’re still limited to 90 out of 180 days in the other EU countries. How they would know or count that? If we drive across the border to Spain or to Italy or whatever, and they’re
Not checking passports or stamping anything, nobody’s keeping track of your days in other EU countries, but then it would be a question of, you want to make sure that it’s clear that your main residence is France. Paul, if you have a long stay visa, do you get health care covered by the
State government health care system? After 90 days, you’re eligible to register in the French health care system. It can take several months before you actually get proof of health care coverage. Which private health care plans do you recommend for expats, retiring in Nice? Do you have a list of recommendations?
Yes, we have a couple of partners that we send our people to. I believe we’re having a conversation on Thursday. So I’m happy to send you a referral to the 2 partners that we use for you to pick the 1 that’s best for you.
We do get commissions sometimes from companies that we refer people to to be fully transparent. We meet with these people, we know they’re going to take good care of our clients. So we’re not recommending any companies that we don’t feel are going to provide really good service.
But we do occasionally get commission, so I like to send the referrals myself because it means that I can keep doing things for free, like hosting these Q&As and providing a lot of help in the Facebook group and things like that. And I really like to be able to help people for free.
So it’s good if we can then get some commissions for helping people. David, please explain the social security taxes applied for profession libérale microentreprise in which one spouse has the status of conjoint collaborateur. So, I covered this a bit earlier, but basically when you have 2 spouses in the
Same business you’re going to have 1 set of invoices and instead of paying 21. 2%, you’re going to pay about 33 percent off the gross income and that’s going to cover both of you for maladie, retraite, and all of your social protections in France.
Can book royalties be regarded as part of one’s Profession Libérale Mico Entreprise revenues when the business line is language services, including editing and writing? Yes, absolutely. The thing that’s tricky about royalties is if it comes from a publishing house, it’s going to be considered salary and if it comes from a publishing house
For a contract or for like a book that was sold before You move to France, then it would be taxed in France as salary, but not subject to French. There are weird rules about how it gets taxed. And I want to be careful in what I’m telling you about this because
This is my tax knowledge from over 10 years ago when I was doing taxes. This hasn’t changed. It’s in the tax treaty, but I want to be careful that I’m not super “au point” with all the details and nuances of this anymore.
So how royalties are treated when they come from a publishing house is different from how royalties are treated if they come from Amazon, because you’re self publishing your books on Amazon. Amazon income would be your self employment business. You issue an invoice for that income received. Dora.
What is the best way to find long term residence while living in the U. S. I would not advise trying to get a long term lease while living in the U. S. I always advise having an Airbnb or a temporary rental for 4 to 6
Weeks before you arrive and then spending the first four to six weeks hitting the ground running visiting apartments. Set up visits before you arrive, or talk to a real estate search person before you arrive. And then try to find a long term lease as quickly as possible when you get here.
I think it’s just too complicated to try to find a long term lease before you’re here to actually look at places and I would prefer that you get into a place relatively quickly, but knowing that it’s going to be a place you’re going to be in long term.
I would like to relocate summer to fall 2025. What’s the best month to visit the consulate for my visa application? You can apply up to 90 days before you want to arrive in France with your visa. So, if you’re looking at summer to fall, If you can apply in April and arrive
In July, you’re probably going to do a lot better for a couple of reasons. One, Summer is really busy for visa appointments. It’s a lot easier to get an appointment in April than it is in June or July.
So I would say either you want to apply in April for a move in June, July, or you want to apply early to mid September for a move mid to late September. I advise people to leave 30 days between visa appointment and departure date. Normally, you don’t need nearly that long.
It’s just for your peace of mind. Normally, people get their visas back in 7 to 10 calendar days, especially outside of peak times. I would say you want to leave longer if you’re submitting your application in July or August, you want to leave a good couple of weeks to get it
Back just because there’s so much more demand with all the students. Denise, for someone who’s in their 60s, what do we have to do to move there? So, you need to figure out what kind of visa. You say you’re in your 60s, so presumably you might be retired
And not planning on working at all. So that would be a visitor visa that’s renewable. You need the private health care coverage for the 1st year. And then when you arrive, you need to get set up on the French health care system. You need to exchange your driver’s license, if you can.
If you can get a driver’s license from a state that’s exchangeable before you arrive in France, then that would be ideal. So that you don’t have to take the test again. Things like if you are bringing pets with you, you have to bring
Your pets to the vet and get them certain vaccines before you leave. And then you have to bring them to the vet and get them registered when you arrive. We have basically 100 videos of different admin things that you’re going to need to do before and during the moving process.
And then we’re going to work on some for arrival admin, which is the stuff that we normally do for people when they sign up for 1 of our VIP concierge packages. Do they offer any incentives for your reduced health care to lure us here?
France isn’t particularly trying to lure anybody here although it is a really attractive place to live. When you are retired or when you live in France for more than 90 days, you’re eligible to register on the French healthcare system regardless of whether or not you’re working.
And how you pay into the system will be based on your income and it will be based on if you’re working, you’re paying in based on your income. If you’re not working it would be based on your passive income that is not government or state pensions.
So you’re retired and the majority of your income comes from retirement pensions, 401ks, IRAs, Social Security, UK government pensions, et cetera, then that is excluded from the healthcare cost. It’s when you have a lot of other passive income like rental income, interest, dividends, etc.
That are not in retirement accounts that you may end up paying PUMA and it would have to be a very high amount. Eleanor, struggling with wanting to continue to work a little while I’m retired in France. I’m a CPA and perform limited work during tax season as an independent
Contractor for a tax preparation service. I would only have 1 payment provider, but multiple outsourcing clients. My income would be a supplement to our already sufficient retirement income and funds to demonstrate for a visitor visa. I would like to keep active with my professional pursuits. Do not need the income.
Should I do the profession libérale visa or should I get a visitor visa and forgo doing any work? It’s really up to you. It’s much easier to get the profession libérale visa to have the the business income for a year, 2 years, 3 years, whatever, and then decide to stop.
Then it is to get the visitor visa, decide “oops. I didn’t mean to stop working. I really still want to have some kind of professional activity” and then switch back to profession libérale. So I would say that if there’s a chance that you really wanna keep working,
I would plan to do that and get the profession libérale because you can always stop, you can always reduce your activity. You can always switch to a visitor visa and just say that you’re retired. It’s much harder to do the other way because the process for switching is
Going to be longer and more complex. The other thing to keep in mind too is that you get sort of a better integration into the French system and if you think you might want to apply to be French at some point, it’s better to have
The record of multiple years of declaring income as self employed and paying taxes. Would I get the Professionnelle Visa first and then have my husband apply for Visitor? He would not be working. Should he propose to be some kind of English teacher and have us both get Microentrepreneur?
I mean, that’s really up to him if he’s not planning on working at all, you don’t have to create reasons to work if you don’t have to when you don’t want to. And he could apply for the visitor at the same time as you’re applying for the profession libérale.
That concludes the questions that were submitted in advance. So now I’m going to the questions that were submitted through the Q&A box. Kristen. We are going to France on a one year long stay visa. An international tax attorney said we could just not file taxes
And claim we are tourists since we still have our home in the U. S. and it is our tax base. This sounds too good to be true. Have you heard of that? That sounds like a really good way to get in a lot of trouble. Here’s the thing.
If you are planning on leaving France after one year and you do not intend to live in France long term, Then you could probably get away with that, and it would probably be okay. However, if you do that, and then you decide you do want to live in France long
Term, then you’re going to have a problem. And it would be difficult to, I’ve done it for people, smoothed over the, let’s say, ambiguities and grey areas of, Which country do I live in? Where should I be paying my tax? Where should my business be registered? It’s not fun. It’s hard.
It’s harder than doing it right in the first place. We’ve had clients who are very clear, like, look, I’m coming for a year, I’m coming from September to June. We’re going to do one school year, and then our kids are going back to school, and we don’t intend to renew at all.
And then I’m like, okay, well, it’s going to be long and expensive to do it right. It probably doesn’t make sense to try to get into the system because by the time you get everything set up, it’s going to be time to go home.
But we have some people who come and then change their mind. So it really depends. It’s not what I would advise. I would advise starting as you mean to continue. Come as though you’re planning to stay long term, give yourselves the
Option and then if you go back, you go back, but at least you will have been paying your taxes in the right place. If you do want to stay long term, you’re all set up properly. You don’t have to change your status.
You don’t have to fudge where and how you’ve been working or anything like that. Catherine, do you need to set up a company to run gîtes? You need to register a business activity. The type of business activity is going to depend on what the level of income is.
So under 23, 000 per year, it’s going to be considered non professional income and it’s still registered as auto entrepreneur, but it’s filed on a different place on your tax declaration. There are different boxes for declaring that income. If you’re over 23, 000 Euros per year, then it’s considered professional
And that’s where having a business plan, having a visa that enables you to be auto entrepreneur or professional is going to come into play. And normally the way I like to do it when I do a business plan is when you want it to be considered professional activity, you want to
Not just do you want to also include things like maybe you’re renting kayaks because there’s a nearby lake, or maybe you’re doing a table d’hôte, which is like, you can serve a meal to your guests as long as everybody is eating the same meal around one table. So it’s different from restaurants.
There are fewer restrictions, and fewer requirements, but it sort of adds more of a business y vibe to your business plan rather than just the short term rentals. There’s another question, so I’m going to answer that 1 before I go back.
I’d like to move to France and operate gîtes on a property that I buy. I understand to apply for a profession libérale visa, I have to provide a business plan. Is it a requirement that I’ve identified and bought my property prior to applying
For the visa, or can it be approved to allow me to go there, find, and set up the business during the 1st year? If a gîte is your only business activity or your main business activity. I would say you want to have the, property before you apply for the visa.
And the reason for that is buying a property can take, like, 3 months for the sale to go through between signing the compromis de ventes and actually getting the keys. And if anything happens in the meantime, the sale can be delayed even further. We’ve had sales that have gone a lot faster.
We have clients who bought in the Charante and the property had already been on offer to somebody else and the sale fell through. So all of the checks and everything had already been done. So they actually got the keys within a couple of weeks, which is fairly unusual in France.
Now, I’m pretty sure Melanie that your business plan is actually a different business and would be more of like an add on or a compliment to your income. So, in that case, I would say you can come to France on your visa, plan on renting a
Place while you look for properties that have gîtes and meet your requirements. Give yourself the time to find the right property. All while doing your other activity and then when you do find the right property and move in, register the gîtes as a secondary activity.
But I would say that if you don’t already have the property under offer or under contract when you move to France, that you’re going to have a really hard time having the sale go through and getting the business up and running and having
Income to declare by the end of the first year, when it’s time to renew your visa. My French boyfriend and I, I’m American, are thinking about getting married before he relocates to a country outside the EU. He’s keeping his home in France and will maintain that as his
Residence, but technically he’ll only be there occasionally. Do you see any issues with me moving to his house in France after we’re married? This will make life a whole lot easier to see him when he’s visiting France if I’m there.
It’s not clear yet if I can join him where he’s going and thinking being married will make it easier to stay together no matter where we are. Yeah, so it kind of depends on what his job situation is and what his contract is.
So if he is on some kind of expat contract where it’s a French company and they’re sending him to Saudi Arabia to work on the oil fields or whatever. This is fairly common scenario. He could be on an expat contract where he’s working outside of France
For a certain amount of time, but he’s still considered a resident of France and a tax resident of France. And that would also depend a little bit on what the tax treaty is between France and I’m using Saudi Arabia as an example, but whatever country he is being sent to.
One of the criteria for being considered a tax resident somewhere, or two of the criteria are do you own your home in France? Do you spend more than 183 days there? Is it the center of your economic and family life?
So if his contract is French, he owns a home in France, his wife lives in France, then, as long as both of your names are on the bills, he might have to come back to go with you to certain prefecture appointments, but he would
Still be considered a French resident and you would still technically have like vie commune, even if he’s being sent abroad for certain periods to work. So, it would depend a little bit on his contract and if he’s like an expat
Contract and still filing taxes in France and all of that kind of stuff. When married to a French person, I could start a business and have a job if I wanted. I don’t think you’re limited to one like with the other visa types. True. Correct.
If you were living in France and with a spouse of a French citizen visa, you can work part time, you can work full time you have slightly more options. The country is China only together 5 monthS. yeah, it depends on, it depends on what the contract is.
I mean, I suspect that he’s not going to be on a local Chinese contract and it’s going to be more of an expatriation contract situation. But if you’ve only been together for a couple of months, then the thing to consider too is if the police show up to check, which they could.
Because they think that you’re not in a legitimate relationship, what is the outcome of that going to be? So I would maybe talk to an immigration attorney before you get married. The partner is not usually required at the visa appointment, but could potentially be required at, like, renewal appointments.
But, yeah, if he’s getting paid in euros and still getting French benefits and has, like, a French contract, then he’s still technically a tax resident of France. And so if you’re living in his house, and both of your names are on all the
Bills, that’s still technically vie commune, even if he’s not physically present for a bit of the time. All right. I’m going to backtrack a little bit. Kristen, I agree on your tax answer. We would prefer to do the right thing.
So my other question is, if we are in France for three quarters of the year, so pay tax, but only decide to stay for one quarter of the next year, would we need to file them for 2025? Technically in that case
If you move to France in, let’s say, March 2024 and leave France in March 2025. Then, technically, you would file taxes for 2024 from the date that you arrive through the end of the year. So let’s assume that your salary in the U. S. was paid through the end of February 2024.
So, that wouldn’t be declared because it happened before you moved to France. Any income that you had from March 2024 through December would be declared in France. And for 2025, you would continue declaring your income through the date that you leave, even though you wouldn’t be spending the full tax year in France.
If you left on March 22nd, you would still declare your income prorated through March 22nd on your taxes. Okay, Cherry, I answered your question about being self employed through a C Corp at the beginning but it seems to me like that’s not really a great plan.
Following up to the question about being self employed and applying for a spouse of an EU national visa, how transparent would I be on the application as regards to income? Would I say I have a UK limited company and would transition to AE once I get the paperwork? They don’t ask.
They don’t ask. When you’re applying for a carte de séjour as the spouse of an EU national, they do not ask about your income. They ask about the spouse who is the EU national. They ask about their Health care coverage and their income or financial resources.
They don’t ask about what you plan to do for work once you get your carte de séjour. All right. I’m applying for a long stay visitor visa. I have secured accommodation for 6 months, not Airbnb, not hosted, but renting. What category of accommodation do I indicate on the application form?
And as a letter from the person I’m renting from explaining our agreement enough for the interview process? There’s no legal lease for a visitor. Somebody with a visitor status for 6 months, so I’m a little bit suspicious.
It’s also not a great idea to have a 6 month lease because you are going to need to do things like register for the French health care system and potentially exchange your driver’s license and there’s going to be mail involved and
You need a long term address where you’re going to be able to have your name on the mailbox and get mail and typically for a six month lease, you can’t do that. So I would rethink that plan. It is open to lengthening for one year after our six months is up.
Yeah, that’s not a legal French thing. So leases are very highly regulated in France. And some people like to just make up their own agreement on a piece of paper that do not fit into any kind of legal lease scenario. And it sounds to me like that’s what’s happening here.
You need to pick a lease template that is a legal French leasing setup. Alright Okay I’m gonna put the link to schedule a consultation with me in the chat. Normally these Q& As are an hour. So, we’re still well within time. I allow people to submit 2 questions in advance.
At some point, I’m going to stop being able to answer everybody’s questions. So, right now, I’m not ignoring people’s questions that they’ve already submitted to, but there are some people who’ve submitted, like, 10 questions. So, just be aware that you can schedule an individual consultation with me.
It’s a good thing to do if you’re, like, pretty far out from your move, if you’re not exactly sure. You know, what you want to do, what the scenario is going to look like, what your timeline is, we can do things like map out your timeline, answer all of
Your individual questions with personal details that I don’t really want to share or read in, you know, out loud that on something that’s going to be on YouTube. So you can schedule a consultation with me if you have individual questions
And want to sort of look at the whole situation holistically We can do that during a 1 hour consultation. Okay. Questions about French social charges. Is it the same for over 70s and 30 year olds? Are they applied from the 1st year of income?
Or is there some sort of floor beneath which they’re not charged? So it depends on the type of income. If you’re working, then you’re paying in on the basis of what you’re working and there are different rates depending on what type of contract you have, what type of company structure
You have, or self employment activity. So if you’re self employed and you’re selling artisanal objects that you make, you’re paying 13 percent social charges, but you can’t deduct expenses from your gross business income. So you’re paying 13 percent on the whole amount of business income.
If you’re self employed doing services on a business that doesn’t have a lot of expenses built in, like tutoring or whatever, you’re paying 21. 2 percent social charges. If you go over 77, 000 euros per year and you get kicked off of auto
Entrepreneur, then you’re going to pay more like 40 to 45%, but you’re going to be able to deduct expenses. So you’re going to be paying that amount on the net. If you have a salary, you’re going to be paying 22 to 23 percent out of your gross salary.
And then the employer is going to be paying 22 to 23 percent on top or 24 percent if you’re a cadre. If you’re the director of a company, it depends on whether you’re the minority shareholder or the majority shareholder or owner, and whether
Your status is gérant who’s considered to be self employed or president. So I’m the salaried president of my company. I get salary that I pay social charges on and then I get dividends, which I don’t pay social charges on. But the social charges on my salary are over 60%.
So it really depends what your status is and how much income you’re talking about much more than the age of the person concerned. In terms of whether they apply from the 1st Euro. Again, that depends on the type of income. If we’re talking about Puma premiums, which are on passive income because
You’re not paying into the French system on the basis of earned income, then there’s a floor of like 11, 000 euros per person where you’re not paying into the system if your income is below that. Income meaning things like rental income, dividends, interest, pensions aren’t
Taken into account, so it’s complicated is the answer to those questions. You said earlier, we could apply for a driver’s license before arriving to France. If so, where and how? That is not exactly what I said. If you have a driver’s license from a state that cannot be exchanged for a French license.
And you have the possibility to switch your license for. 1 coming from a state, which is exchangeable with France, I would highly suggest that you do that before you move. I can tell you the list of states that are exchangeable. We just pull it up here.
Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin. So if you have a license and it does not come from one of those states, you should see if you can get a license from one of those states before you
Arrive in France, because then you can exchange it for a French license. If you have a license from California or New York and it can’t be exchanged, then you have to take the driving test. There was one more question that I wanted to pull up here.
Can you cover the main things to do when we land in France? When you arrive, the first thing you want to do is find long term housing. It’s important to have an address that’s a long term lease that is renewable where you can get mail.
That would be the number one priority that you should consider when you land. The other thing you have to do relatively quickly is if you’re bringing pets, you need to register them with ICAD. You need to find a vet near you and make an appointment. It’s supposed to be done within 8 days.
If you’re a little bit late, I can’t think of any serious consequences if you do it on, like, day 11 instead of day 8, but something to keep in mind. If you’re bringing children, they need to be pre enrolled in school before you arrive.
I would probably suggest waiting until you find that long term lease before finalizing their school enrollment, which is another reason you want to do it really quickly. The reason for that is because obviously you don’t want them to have to switch
Schools or end up putting the school that ends up being pretty far from where you actually end up living. If you’re registering your business, you want to wait to do that until you have a place where you can get mail.
You can register in the French healthcare system after 90 days if you’re not working and you have a renewable visa. But again, you want to wait until you’re in a place where you can get mail. You also have to validate your visa online.
All of these things are covered in our program, Fast Track to France. So this is the admin stuff that you need to do, the documents you need to gather before you arrive. It covers filling out the visa form especially for children, for visitor, for family, et cetera.
It doesn’t cover putting together business plans and stuff like that. That’s in complete French business incubator. But, like, the visa form itself is covered in FastTrack along with a lot of the other admin things that you want to do in the lead up to arriving in France and then once you actually arrive.
If you’re shipping belongings, there’s some paperwork to do for that that you’re going to have to get from the French consulate, a Certificat de Changement de Résidence to avoid paying import taxes on your belongings. So those are some of the main things that you want to do.
You also want to start the process, like if you’re bringing children, you need to start the process for getting their residency documents pretty quickly after you validate your own visas. The reason being that if you wait too long, then the prefecture is going to
Want proof of your renewal before they’ll issue the children’s residency documents. Then you get into a problem of, like, the kids documents are out of date and you can’t get the new ones because your own renewal hasn’t been processed yet.
And then similarly with the driver’s license, you want to get that in fairly quickly after you have found a long term address, because it can take a while and you only have 1 year to do it. We have in our client orientation and also in our fast track program,
We have things like document checklists for a lot of these things. Let me pull up the list for Canada. Somebody’s asking about the Canada exchange and I don’t know off the top of my head which provinces can exchange and which can’t. Oh, this is annoying.
So there’s a new website since the last time I’ve been over here that is a simulator. So, instead of just giving you a list of what can be exchanged now, it has you put in your country and your province, and it will tell you what you can
Exchange, but it won’t give you a list. So I will give you the link in the chat there. I missed 1. I’m a PhD student and I’m not required to be on campus starting summer 2025, because I will be writing and researching and I want to do that while in Paris.
I will be on a fellowship that provides a modest living stipend of 35, 000 dollars per year. What’s the best visa for me to apply for? I would say that probably what you want to do is get in touch with a research institution.
You can have a research convention so that you can use the library and the university facilities in the field that you’re going to be doing your research in. And then there are special tax regimes that apply to researchers. So you would basically be able to apply for a talent passport researcher visa
For 1 year, but then the tax situation would be a bit different from what we normally see because there are special rules for stipends like this. Basically, it wouldn’t really be considered taxable income in France. If it’s from your home institution, it’s a research stipend.
All right, I’ve got time for 1 or 2 more questions. If anybody has anything else they’d like to ask. How do you register children for school from the U. S.? This is covered in fast track to France. I’m going to give you the link.
So, what you have to do is, depending on the age of the children, you have to either contact the town hall for children who would be in maternelle or primaire. And then if they’re middle school and high school, you have to contact the establishment directly.
So the mairie can point you in the right direction, but you have to make contact directly with the school. A lot of places are really reticent to do too much of the enrollment paperwork before you arrive in France, so you have to insist a little bit.
And again, that’s something that’s covered in our program fast track to France, which covers all of the admin to do during the moving process. All right, 1 more question. How can you show the income needed if you’re setting up a new business that will normally take some time to build it up?
1 of the things that you need to provide as part of the visa application is proof of interest in whatever service or business you’re providing. So there are a lot of different ways that you can do that it can be letters from people who are interested in
Working with you or people who are interested in buying your stuff. It’s normally helpful to have at least 1 or 2 letters from people who are in France, and those things are covered in complete French business incubator. I’m actually rerecording that video right now, I redid the PowerPoint
Yesterday because there’s some new information I want to add about that. So that’s going to be freshly updated. About 4 or 5 videos out of almost 90 that we felt we had some more information to add to. So we just updated everything.
We’re going to start promoting fast track to France again, because it’s a really comprehensive program about all the pre arrival admin that people need to do. Our clients find it really helpful. So we do. standalone program as well. But all of our clients get it in addition to client orientation and
Their calls with me one more question. Can someone already getting us Social Security get some sort of pension from France for Social Security payments made in France. Yeah. So if you paid into the French pension system, you should be able to use the
Social Security totalization agreement to get a French pension based on what you paid into the French system. So then you would end up with your U. S. Social Security based on what you paid in in the U. S. and a French pension based on whatever you paid in in France.
But you’re going to have to provide evidence of your quarters worked in the U. S. To get credit in France for those. And then obviously your French pension paid out will be just based on what you paid in in France and not based on what you paid in in the US. All right.
Thank you so much. Everybody for coming and asking a lot of great questions. If you would like to discuss your issues questions, timeline, visa plans, visa application, et cetera with me, you can go ahead and schedule a paid consultation. That’s 1 hour. I’ll give you the link again in the chat.
Service packages that guide you through the whole process. If you do have a consultation with me, and then you decide to sign up for 1 of our service packages, we apply the consultation fee as a credit to whatever package you sign up for.
I’m going to go ahead and give you the link to take a look at our client packages as well. And if you are ready to sign up, and you just have a quick question about, you know, making sure that you’re selecting the right option, but you’re ready to get started.
I’m happy to jump on a really quick 10 minute call with you. To just make sure that I think that your plan is solid and that I’m competent to help you that it’s the right fit. And that you’re signing up for the right package that’s going to meet your needs.
So if it’s just a really quick call, we can schedule that as well. And the best way to do that is to send me an email. welcometo@yourfranceformation.com, or you can request a proposal directly on the website for the package you think is the right fit and then in
The follow up email, you’ll get a link to schedule a 10 minute call with me. So, thank you so much for coming. The next Q&A is going to be on Monday, March 4th. If you are registered in the email list, you should get a reminder for that as well.
We’re going to have a couple of Q&As or webinars in the meantime. I’m waiting for dates from the U. S. consulate. They’re going to do a Q&A with Americans in France about the Olympics, passport renewals, U. S. citizen services for americans living in France, and we’re going to do that through
The Americans in France Facebook group. There’s also a couple of our partners who are financial planners and real estate agents that we’re going to introduce to you guys and do some webinars for Q and A’s on those specific topics that I’m a bit less of an expert in.
If you do want referrals to some of the people that I mentioned, please email me and I will send an email introduction. All right, thank you so much for coming. I will see you at the next Q and a. And looking forward to hopefully hearing from some of you and
Working with you shortly. Yeah. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm.
The Monthly Q&A with Allison Grant Lounes allows you to ask questions and learn about how to move to France. Q&As are free and held monthly on the first Monday of every month via zoom (and the following Monday in case of a holiday).
Register for the next Q&A here: https://www.yourfranceformation.com/qas/
Submit your questions here: https://forms.gle/szjGyttsqTAtzWri9
Some of this month’s questions include:
❓If my spouse and I are both applying for a entrepreneur/profession libérale visa to operate a business in France, do we each need to make the average 1700 euros monthly, or is that a 1700 euros combined income?
❓ If we apply for the Microenterprise visa status, can we then form a C Corp thereafter and pay ourselves a salary from that C Corp?
❓How long does it take to get the récépissé that allows you to work after requesting the ‘spouse of an EU national’ CDS?
❓If my spouse and I both have dual citizenships with the US and another EU country, what type of visa, if any, will we need to live in France for 1-2 years?
❓What is the process to obtain a visa if one is married to a French citizen?
❓If you have a Long-Stay Visa, do you get healthcare covered by the state government healthcare system?
❓With a French 12 month long stay visitor visa, am I still limited to 90 days out of 180 in the rest of the Schengen zone?
❓Can book royalties be regarded as part of one’s Profession Liberale microenterprise revenues when the business line is language services, including editing and and writing?
❓I’m a PhD student and want to do my thesis writing and researching in Paris. What’s the best visa for me to apply for?
❓How do you register children for school from the U.S.?
❓Can someone already getting US social security get some sort of pension from France for social security payments made in France?
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💜 And if you want to learn more about which French visa type is right for you and how you can make your dream of moving to France a reality, check out my book Foolproof French Visas here: http://www.yourfranceformation.com/bo…. or order the paperback on Amazon.on.
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