Tweedpipe

In answer to your last question, my understanding is that 5 consecutive years residency here is a prerequisite for applying for citizenship, so it's naturally assumed that tax declarations have been made annualy and taxes paid if applicable, i.e. if one is above the taxable threshold. An exception would be that if one has completed 2 years of higher education in France, that 5 year period can be reduced to 2 years.
One also has to complete a written and oral French test.
DelBoy Trotter French would not qualify, although it would certainly 'knock the examiner bandy, as would Bonnet de douche when asked for the time!
And in the same vein, never forget, bonjour is French for 'goodbye'.

EuroTrash

Great clip, Tweedie

This makes no sense to me. There is no special tax calculation for the CdS. The prefecture doesn't calculate tax, the tax office does. Residents must by law declare their income each year and when the tax office has processed the form it issues an avis d'imposition. So when a person applies for a CDS, the prefecture will obviously want to check that that person has an avis for each year that they claim to have been resident, because this helps to prove firstly they really have been legally resident, and secondly it also provides proof of their income and its source.

This makes even less sense to me. Don't confuse citizenship with residency. The process for applying for citizenship is far longer are more rigorous than the process for obtaining a titre de séjour.

You're very mysterious about your status in France but from your other posts it seems that you are an economically active person, and I assume you're not a frontalier or you would probably have mentioned it. For resident workers applying for a TdS, having a solid history of social contributions is at least as important as tax history. Social contributions are proved by 5 years of French payslips if you're an employee, or 5 years records of contributions to URSSAF as an independent worker. If you don't have either of these, and you don't have a workers S1 either, claiming that you've been living and working in France for 5 years would be unwise.

If you genuinely have been resident in France it's sometimes possible to straighten your tax affairs out in retrospect without much penalty, but France comes down hard on undeclared working/working on the black.

dmu

The OP has been coy about his employment status. From Chalet Management and various (IT?) Contracts, it sounds as though he should be an Auto-Entrepreneur, at least for one of the professions, in which case he should have records of côtisation payments to the URSSAF, and Avis d'Imposition on his personal Income Tax from the Fisc. But he mentioned earlier on that he hasn't got assurance-maladie - does this mean that he's been working under the radar as far as the URSSAF is concerned?

Tweedpipe

@Bicks,
If as you say, you've had a variety of different UK and French contracts over the years whilst remaining here in France, if they've been 'pucker' contracts and social contributiuons + annual tax declarations have been made, you should have no trouble applying for a CdS (I suggest you forget citizenship until you've procured the CdS).
Even having been unemployed here (which from previous posts it appears you have) if your record with the Pole Emploi is also 'pucker' you should have no problem in getting a CdS.
I note that a great deal of invaluable information has been given to you from 2012 onwards. I hope I'm wrong, but if you've been taking a 'He who dares' approach to French admin over the last few years as many appear to do, the consequences can be severe indeed.

EuroTrash

Inactifs are required to have assurance maladie.
If you're working in France you/your employer must pay full social security cotisations on all your earned income. That includes not only cotisations for assurance maladie but also pensions contributions, professional training contributions, chômage contributions in the case of employees, etc etc. As no doubt you yourself paid when you were in business.
The only exception I can think of is if you're working in France as an EU posted worker - but you still need to be declared and your employer still has to comply fully with the Code du Travail, you still need a French contract of employment and French wage slips even though you don't pay cotisations in France, and posted workers do not accrue any residence rights in France because by definition they are resident in their home state.
I'm not aware of any circumstances that allow an EU citizen to come to France, either as a resident or as a non resident, and engage in a professional activity without properly informing the authorities of their presence in France, their status and details of their activity, so that the appropriate checks can be made and charges collected; but from what the OP has said, it sounds rather as if he might have done just that, rocked up and worked in France unknown to URSSAF and unknown to the tax office, ie "under the radar" or "on the black". It's hard to think of another explanation of as to how he can have ended up without a papertrail. And that will probably be the prefecture's knee jerk reaction as well, they know that if a person can't provide the normal proof that they are en règle, then 99 times out of 100 it's because they're not.
If someone fails to meet their "devoirs"/obligations/responsibilities towards France then France has no obligations towards them in return, and trying claim any "rights" in France is liable to backfire because it will alert the authorities to their situation. French red tape is actually pretty watertight because the various registrations - your address, your tax number and status, your social security number and status, your siret number if you have one - are all cross indexed so that if one of the pieces of the jigsaw is missing, or contradicts a different piece of the jigsaw, clearly something needs investigation.

If a person has been in an irregular situation, and wants to try and apply for residency rights, I think the best plan would be to draw a line under what's gone and pretend it never happened, and try to regularise the situation asap, with a view to applying in due course for a provisional carte de sejour as a Brit who became established in France more than 3 months but less than 5 years before the cut off date. Although if Brexit does happen on 31 October that person potentially has less than 2 days from today to get it all sorted.