English members who have moved to France.

[Ian Burgess 1Participant @ianburgess1]

You will need as a couple a net monthly  income of €1,231 between you. You can work if you want but it has become complicated and difficult post brexit. If you come as economically inactive you are going to need private healthcare insurance until you are at state pension age then you can get an S1 form and Britain pays for your medical treatments as per a long standing agreement. It is possible to register in CPAM after three months, you need to read up on whether it would suit your needs or not.

You will need to make a tax return if you become resident, if you are or were not a big earner and do not have equity and other incomes such as a house to rent out you will pay very little or even no tax, the middle class are the targets of the French taxman, people with sub €30,000 incomes are probably a little better off here than in the UK.

If you keep a house in the UK and intend to split your time but stay in France longer than 183 days then factually you are not entitled to UK healthcare until you have spent 6 months there. This never affected me and the blanket refusal by the UK population to tolerate any form of identity card makes it all but impossible for the NHS to find a way to refuse treatment.

Everything starts with a visa now and residency permits come later.

You can find associations and even government funded courses to learn the language if you are at school level or even just at ordering food, asking directions level.

In the countryside there are two distinctly seperate economies, one concerns tax and invoices, the other is by the folding stuff and it is not a shameful economy to the people of the countryside who are by and large ignored by Paris.

Edited By Ian Burgess 1 on 19/07/2021 10:09:14

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Just an observation from family and friend experiences of living abroad, there are three main ways of coming unstuck:

1. 'Culture Shock'. This about coping with differences. Even where English is spoken a multitude of small things will be at odds with home, and having to relearn a multitude of details is too much for some. Here kids are taught spiders are harmless; they aren't so in Australia! Tricky to predict: some people are naturally adventurous whilst others freak out. It can rip families apart. A friend of my mum's was upset when the neighbours all laughed at her for hanging washing out in the back garden. Good idea in Ireland, not smart in California. Too many, I think, choose to live in enclaves. This is a good way of attracting the ire of local racists.
2. 'Ignorance is Bliss'. Pays to research carefully. This is true of moving inside the UK too. Auntie came a cropper by moving to a Cornish chalet village mainly occupied in summer by holiday makers when Cornwall is buzzing. In winter, the place died completely – very isolated, the sort of village where the bus runs every alternate Thursday, no shops, and the nearest hospital is 2 hours away. Not good for a pair of gregarious pensioners in delicate health! Abroad, the law can't be assumed to be 'British'. A relative bought a house in Spain, where it turned out after purchase that one room was owned by someone else, causing endless expensive complications.
3. Money! Seems possible to live anywhere in comfort provided one has sufficient dosh. Money for good advice, good lawyers, bribes (yes!), security, importing goods, and medical care etc etc. Living on the edge is miserable anywhere and much worse abroad. A friend lives in Thailand where he often meets Distressed British Subjects. Typically single men who retired to Thailand with redundancy money plus a basic UK state pension for sex, booze, cheap-living or warm winters, who now don't have enough cash to deal with failing health and inflation. Residency in Thailand depends on being able to prove one has a certain amount of money, and short-term loans (at high-rates of interest) are available to temporarily beef up bank statements. Trouble is the Thai government increased the number of consecutive statements needed to prove solvency, making the loan trick unaffordable for many. Has to be said, that the British Embassy is remarkably unsympathetic to these chaps, and anyone else considered to have dropped themselves in the poo. Entirely different story living in Thailand on a solid income. Thailand is just an example: most countries are difficult if you don't have enough money. If the motive for living abroad is to save cash, be very careful to maintain a healthy reserve.

On balance though, I know more people who made a success of living abroad than failed, despite a few horror stories. But beware, making a go of it requires grit and failure is traumatic.

Dave

[Ian Burgess 1Participant @ianburgess1]

Posted by Tony Jackson on 18/07/2021 09:06:05:

Hi Bill,

A few notes from one who did it a few months *before* Brexit…

First, don't count on being able to 'homologate' your car in France. It is incredibly bureaucratic, and without a French numberplate you will have a lot of trouble finding insurance. I persuaded my Bank, Crédit Agricole, to insure my car – for several times its value per annum. I gave up on getting my RHD Mercedes homologated, partly because the local Merc. dealers, who I needed t porovide me with a 'certificate of conformity' were so solidly poisonous. Told bare-faced lies about headlights, disgustingly sexist behaviour in their office. So I bought a Citroën DS Break in Holland, where I have some friends. I relied on a very respectable Dutch contact to check it over… The homologation process took months, but I think I've cracked it, except I'm now waiting for my local coachworks to repair some rust on it – without which I can't get a 'Carte Grise' and start using it on the road again.

I had no problem with this and it took one week from start to finish to register four vehicles, about 45 minutes spent at the local council offices. Last December I registered my car, my wifes car and my two motorcycles, immatriculation is straightforward. 1st port of call depot des impots (local tax office) for a quitus fiscal (what you paid for the vehicle and when to clear you of VAT charges). You take a receipt or bill of sale, the V5, some identification and they give you a piece of A4 to say your vehicle is not liable for tax charges.

2nd port of call the test station for a controle technique if the vehicle is over three years old, a British MOT is meaningless for the purposes of registration. Price about €70 but it lasts two years. The headlights is one factor that leads to a lot of FUD on internet forums. There are so many permutations of car headlamp, flat beam, steerable and so on, most will pass without any act of kindness or jiggery pokery by the tester.

Prismatic beam deflectors are listed in the testers manual as admissable though some testers will not have ever read the section that relates to this. I expected to have to shell out €400 for lights off ewotsit or elsewhere but the tester just lowered the beams using the heavy loads thumbwheel on the dashboard and the upper part of the beam was below the line on the "reglophare" machine that is used at all testing stations. I do not like driving at night, never have so blinding other drivers is not an issue, that and the chances of hitting a wild pig keep any nightime driving to slow speeds too.

Rear lights almost caught me out, about two weeks before test was booked on one vehicle I noticed that there was a single high intensity light and a single reversing light. €78 delivered for the pair off an Austrian breakers on ewotsit. I had to swap the wiring sides over which was easy enough.

3rd, this next bit is the tricky part, that goes through the local prefecture. The application is supposed to go through the ANTS portal, unless you have a social security number you cannot register yourself on ANTS. You can however get a friend or neighbour or even a friendly bar owner to start the process for you.

You will pay a one off departmental tax based on how polluting your vehicle is, if its 120g levels you only pay around €230. If you own a smoking guzzler you will be hammered!

You need a COC or old TA certificate to show European conformity, some vehicles come with one in the docs, some you have to request and are free and some are priced at outright rip-off levels, depends on the manufacturer.

Some garages and even bars will do the whole process for you but expect to pay about €200 per vehicle plus the tax charge.

You can insure at the outset and agree with the agent that the cover document and the insurers database will be changed to reflect the new registration. Most insurers are helpful in this matter.

Occasionally I see internet forum posts from Britons living in France that say why would you want to drive a right hand drive car. My answer is that I already have a decent car and I do not have the zesty urge of my youth to drive hard and overtake any and all vehicles in front of me. I live in the countryside and life is slow, there are always opportunities to overtake tractors as they are moving slowly, everything else is moving fast enough as far as I am concerned.

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