Peter219

Hi All
We are planning to move to France as soon as we have sold our house in the UK and we have a whole raft of topics to research, but one topic per thread is probably best...
We are both retired, 59 and 62, and I have an NHS pension (no state pension until I am 67). We have a motorhome and are planning to live in it in France whilst looking for somewhere to buy. What are the current rules on residency? Do we become liable to French income tax after living there for more than 6 months? Is there a reciprocal arrangement for the taxation of my NHS pension...I read somewhere that that will always be taxed in the UK.
Thanks in advance
Peter

dmu

Hi, and welcome to the Forum!
Others will come along to advise on living in a motorhome and Income Tax.
Some will advise not to burn your boats in the UK, in case things don't work out here after all and you'll have somewhere to go back to.
If this is a forever more move, I'll just suggest reading the "Growing Old in France" thread in the "Read-Me: FAQs" above. Likewise read the "Healthcare" thread, if your NHS Pension doesn't entitle you to the S1 form which opens the door into the French System.
Fore-warned is fore-armed!
P.S. Have just seen your other post in the Welcome Inn. For other members, you're looking to head for the Lot-et-Garonne.

cyrian

Hello and welcome to the forum.
You become tax resident in France from day 1 if you move from the UK to France.
The residency rules are complex and not just 183 days.
I agree with dmu and keep a home in the UK and use your motorhome for long holidays in France. This way you can keep your UK residency and use your EHIC card for healthcare cover.
We have friends who live in the UK and travel across Europe in their motorhome. Sometimes they leave the motorhome in France (or wherever) and fly back to the UK.
Under your proposal, you would require to register your motorhome in France - change headlamps; speedometer and obtain a certificate of conformity - use the search button to search the forum for information.
Your Govt pension is taxed in the UK and declared in France as overseas income and tax paid - it is not taxed again because of the Double Taxation Treaty.
If your income is in the UK then you are vulnerable to exchange rate fluctuations.
Good luck

EuroTrash

As said, the rules are complex and also contradictory between the countries so you have to use a bit of common sense. If you're living in a motorhome then presumably you will still have all your possessions etc in the UK, and someone's spare room you could stay in, and family ties, so I guess that under the UK's very sticky residency rules you would not have made a sufficiently clean break to be classed as a "leaver". So at most you would be dual resident and for simplicity's sake I think everybody would agree with you calling yourself a UK resident on holiday until you actually buy or rent an actual residence in France. If you could nip back to the UK every 3 months, you wouldn't even have to worry about the dual residency thing because normally any EU citizen can be a 'visitor' in France for up to 3 months. Use your EHIC, keep the camping-car UK registered, taxed and insured - yes there is a rule that says a vehicle can't spend more than 6 months in a country where it's not registered, but who's going to bother about that.
Once you move here permanently it's a different scenario and it becomes black and white again: your tax residency will change, the DTAs will apply, there's the healthcare to sort out and depending how you resolve that, you may or may not have social charges to pay in France on your UK income.
But while you're in an in-between stage, why make things messy. Wait until you have actually moved and established your 'foyer' in France, then do a nice clean changeover.
Just my opinion of course.

dmu

Completely off-topic, but I've just noticed that our posts are an hour in advance. Did a country put their clocks forward last night, before us lot?

scrubbedexpat095

Yes the country where the BE Servers (I think) are located i.e USA

teejaydee

I think the insurer might be bothered, especially in the case of a claim. Perhaps the OP should check the small print of the policy, or contact the insurer or broker.

EuroTrash

Most insurers give up to three month's comprehensive EU cover, some give more, all depends on the insurer. When I did similar to what the OP is proposing I was insured with the Coop and they offered 3-month EU cover as an an add-on - as many trips a year as you liked, but each individual trip not to exceed 3 months. So yes obviously you need to ensure that you have a suitable policy, but it shouldn't be hard to arrange. Saga for instance gives 12 month comprehensive EU cover as standard.
The main issue for UK vehicle insurance is that you must be UK resident, which I don't see any ambiguity over if the OP does as suggested. As long as you don't break any of the policy T&Cs you will in any case have minimum legal cover EU-wide no matter how long you are in Europe for, it's just the comprehensive element that you wouldn't have if you overstayed your policy limit.

teejaydee

Many thanks for this information. Very useful.

The OP said:
"We are planning to move to France as soon as we have sold our house in the UK..."
"We have a motorhome and are planning to live in it in France..."

I took from this, he would no longer be UK resident, and he would have no fixed abode in France. This would surely cause problems unless he was able to find an insurer able to offer a suitable policy. I'm sure many people do what the OP is planning, and so maybe suitable policies exist.

EuroTrash

But presumably he will have an address in the UK for his bank, HMRC, and all the other organisations that he has dealings with, who need an address. Everybody has to officially live somewhere, even if that's not where they actually are most of the time. And in practice I think that if you look at HMRC's statutory residence test, simply selling your house in the UK and going off to France in a motorhome is unlikely to be sufficient to make you a "leaver" as far as they are concerned. If you've always lived in the UK and still have ties there it's actually quite hard to prise yourself away from UK residency, short of making a complete break. Read all about it, for 105 pages:
https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...ted_078500.pdf
- pour a glass of wine, settle down and enjoy!
(The French definition of residency would fit on the back of a fag packet - and then people say France's rules are complicated.)

Peter219

Thanks all for your helpful input. I see now that there are two phases to consider, the 'transition' phase and the 'established with house in France' phase.

I will check the motorhome insurance small print re cover, and keep UK residency , using our son's address, while we transition.

We will budget using a 'worst case' exchange rate scenario (outlook should become clearer for the medium term after the brexit vote in June.) ((might be interesting to have a straw poll of worst case guesses...I will start the betting at GBP:Eur 1:1.1.......))
I will check out the threads dmu suggests.

Eurotrash...in the 'house in france' phase, does the change of tax residency mean i then have to fill in a French tax form, but my govt. pension would still be taxed only in UK? Can I keep any ISA's that I have left in the UK? (btw, tax rules in UK have now changed so ISA's not so attractive, as basic rate tax payers can have up to 1k of interest income tax free, as I understand it).

And what are DTA's (excuse my ignorance!!)
Thanks again
Peter

cyrian

Yes you need to complete a french tax return declaring worldwide income; bank accounts and assets.
I think that I answered this in #3.
You declare income and tax paid and the dual tax arrangement means that you are not taxed again.
You cannot keep your ISAs - they are for UK residents only.
The other complication is that the French tax year is the calendar year and not the same as he UK tax year.
If you rent out a property in the UK then it is also taxed in the UK but declared on your french tax return.

EuroTrash

A DTA is a dual tax agreement.
As for ISAs I believe you can keep them if you have them but you can't buy any more, and in fact you're better off not because the interest is only tax free in the UK, it will be taxable in France. Better to put it in a tax free savings scheme in France.
Premium bond wins are also taxable in France, if you have any of those.
The French tax year is 1.1 to 31.12, and you submit your declaration in May of the following year. So if you move say mid-2016, your first tax return would be due May 2017. In practice, if you move too close to the end of the year the tax office might tell you not to bother till next year.
If your pension is of the variety that's taxable in the UK then it will be taxed in the UK and that'll be offset against French tax, you shouldn't have any more to pay. But you have to declare it because it has to be included in calculating your total household income. Investment income is taxable in France. And you may have social charges to pay (which don't actually entitle you to anything, it's basically a contribution to help pay off France's national debt), which are not classed as a tax so are not covered by the dual taxation treaties.

teejaydee

I wasn't thinking so much from the point of tax residency, or the convenience of having a UK address. My thought was with regard to the motorhome insurance. I was suggesting that Peter checks the policy small print to make sure there is no limit to the time it can be used outside the UK (Peter subsequently said he intended to do this) .

Peter219

Is the social charge based on income? assets? property value?