OneWildAndPreciousLife

Hi All,

I posted a question a while back about finding a house rental to run a bike hire business from. You gave me some great advice. We are considering other avenues to be able to get to France. If one of us registers for the Micro Entreprise route, does the business have to be set up and registered before March 2019 to be sure of getting in before Brexit or can we arrive before March and set up the business after the cut off date?

Thanks

EuroTrash

You would need to be "correctly exercising your right to free movement" at the cut off date. You would also need satisfy the criteria for legal residence in France, which for EU citizens are basically the same as the EU directive on free movement.

I don't know your situation but if someone has just rocked up in France, is not working and can't prove they have sufficient income to support themselves, then they would not meet the criteria.

Does that answer it?

EuroTrash

PS are you sure micro entrepreneur is the best structure for a bike hire business? Would the operating costs not be relatively high, how much do bikes cost to buy and insure and maintain?

EuroTrash

PPS How would the other one qualify for healthcare? If the business is to be your main income, which your question suggests is the case, what turnover are you expecting initially? Not many businesses generate sufficient turnover in the first year to entitle a non-contributing spouse to "free" state healthcare.

OneWildAndPreciousLife

Hi ET,

Thanks for your response. Could sufficient income include savings or would it have to be an ongoing income? It may be that Micro Entrepreneur isn't the best option. We are still looking into that.

OneWildAndPreciousLife

We have considered that one of us may have to have private healthcare for the first year. Do you know the threshold for turnover to entitle the spouse to health cover or where I might find that information?

EuroTrash

10% of PASS (PASS is the annual income ceiling for social security contributions). PASS 2018 = 39 732€. So 10% of PASS would be around 4k, NB that is profit not turnover. So in fact it's not high, I thought it was worse than that..

dmu

AFAIK it's a regular income that every one's asking for - as far as landlords and the authorities are concerned, savings in the bank can be spent from one day to the next.
A propos landlords, you're going to have the same issue as in your other thread - the landlord must give his/her written permission for you to run your business in his/her premises, and if it's to hire out bikes, you'll have the same problem finding a place to keep them, with a commercial lease.....

EuroTrash

As DMU says, savings isn't income. Income can be any secure regular payments that go into your account - pensions, rental income, interest from capital that you don't touch. But savings don't count because when they're gone they're gone and then what.
If you have savings you need to turn them into something that generates income.

OneWildAndPreciousLife

Thanks. That's very helpful.

OneWildAndPreciousLife

Thanks for your input dmu. Finding someone willing to rent to us seems insurmountable. It seems our only option is to find a house to buy.

EuroTrash

I think location is going to be important. Bike hire is very very popular in France now and it's being pushed hard as eco-friendly and healthy. You can hire everything from e-bikes to those four-wheel chariot jobbies (I've forgotten what they're called in English!) but the flipside is that they're all jumping on the bandwagon, more and more tourist offices for instance are offering bike hire (I know that from the number of bike hire brochures I've translated for tourist offices over the last couple of years, all advertising it as a new service). So you need to identify an area where there are not only plenty tourists but also a shortage of providers.

OneWildAndPreciousLife

Thanks ET. Great to get your perspective.

Tweedpipe

I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this in previous posts to you regarding a bike hire business.
In Paris, and some other major cities, the bike hire businesses have had a hard time, having misjudged in their business model one important factor. Maintenance costs. I recall reading that in one night alone over 350 Velib bikes were degraded in Montreuil, a suburb in the east of Paris. And one reads regularly of similar vandalism of motor vehicles and bicycles. This obviously has a knock-on effect on insurance premiums, so I would strongly suggest that anyone planning to set up a similar hire business - even small scale in a rural setting - to look very carefully at maintenance and ongoing insurance premiums.
A quick look at Trip Advisor and 'Velib Problems' gives a brief oversight to the vandalism & unserviceable bicycle problems being experienced. And according to the press, Autolib are also facing horrendous debts due to vandalism.

OneWildAndPreciousLife

Thanks for the warning Tweedpipe.