jllevans

Hi all,

Does anybody know a good fiduciare that can help me with a few French tax / benefits questions in English please? Ideally just an email correspondence, I think nothing too detailed/fancy so hopefully there is someone that wouldn't charge me the earth for this?

It is regarding my Mother, who is living in France. Registered auto-entrepreneur but now isn't very well so finds it very difficult to find work and also to do all the necessary work to find out what she is entitled to etc in terms of benefits, so I need to try to help her with this

Any help / thoughts would be very much appreciated, thanks

dmu

A google search gives several Expert-Comptables in La Garde for tax and business questions.
AFAIK, auto-entrepreneurs, like salaried managers, aren't entitled to unemployment benefits.
I think you should consult the Assistante Sociale at the Mairie to find out what benefits your mother may be entitled to.
She (or you) should contact the Caisse where your mother pays her côtisations (RSI?) and her Mutuelle (if any) to find out what help they can offer, and her Généraliste can prescribe carers if necessary.
Four ports of call: Assistante Sociale, Caisse d'Assurance Santé, Mutuelle, G.P., before you bother about tax questions which are the least urgent....

EuroTrash

I had to look "fiduciare" up and I still didn't find a relevant definition - I get the gist, but tax and benefits are different subjects really. As dmu says, the assistante sociale is the best person to advise on benefits and it will cost you nothing, and the tax office is the best source of free advice on tax (but if your mum is an AE and has a small income, tax shouldn't be too much of an issue).

If you could give an indication of how old your mum is, and how long she's lived in France, folks on here may be able to point you towards the relevant info. But these two factors in particular have a bearing on what a person's potential entitlements are - in particular, has she been submitting tax returns here for at least 5 years, and has she reached retirement age/is she drawing her pension?

petitefrancaise

I'm with the OP on searching out an expert comptable in this situation.

They will be able to ensure that her auto-entrepreneur (micro entreprise) paperwork is in order before that becomes an expensive pita to sort out and may well be able to sort out what she is entitled to in terms of benefits (if any). Or at least will point her in the right direction. IME an assistante sociale doesn't speak English.

dmu

You're right, they probably don't, but surely if the OP's mother is working in France as an AE, she speaks French, even though she may be poorly, and they can manage the interview together?
I can't see an Expert-Comptable advising on benefits, but that's only my opinion!
@OP It will help if you tell us, as suggested by ET, how long your mother has been living and working in France, and how old she is.

audio

I think OP means a tax fiddler but I guess you have already figured that out.

EuroTrash

I just don't get how an accountant can help with ME paperwork. To close an ME you fill in a simple form online, which if the lady declares via the online portal is on the same menu as the quarterly declaration. Then you print the same form off, sign it and send in a paper copy (unless things have changed), simply because as well as the digital process, RSI needs your actual signature on record. There are no accounts to submit, and nobody is going to check anything. ME paperwork is so simple that literally the only elements are your quarterly declarations, your invoices and your bank statements, and if you're a reseller then you record your purchases too. An accountant can't change your declarations in retrospect, nor can he change your bank statements. All he could possibly do AFAICS is cook the invoices if necessary, but that wouldn't be a lot of good if the declarations and income received still don't match.

Unless you either pluck figures out of the air for your declarations or wilfully make false declarations, it's virtually impossible to turn ME accounting into a PITA; and even if you do, the chances of anyone ever wanting to look at your paperwork are one in many thousand. I'm sure there are plenty of Brits running MEs totally unaware of many of the rules, they will carry on happily for as long as they want and eventually close the business down and nobody will ever be any the wiser.

So I still think it would be money better spent (and far less of it) to get an interpreter for an hour if necessary for an appointment with the AS to find out about benefits - provided the lady has clocked up 5 years' legal residence, because if not, I don't know that there would be much point.

dmu

I'm still confused at the use of the term "fiduciaire", which, according to OH, is more than an Expert-Comptable. It's some one who manages your finances and "patrimoine", not simply your accounts.
This can't be the case for the oP's mother, as she has little work and is living on her savings....
The OP should give the info requested above and more details on the "tax" issues. If they are too personal for a public forum, then appointments are recommnded with the Assistante Sociale at La Garde and the local Tax Office, accompanied by an interpreter if necessary.
P.S. No one will correspond by e-mail, you need face-to-face contact first.

EuroTrash

From the definitions I found it seemed to mean what in English we would call a trustee

dmu

Trust and confidence certainly come into it. I'm wondering whether it's another quirky French thing which has no real equivalence anywhere else.
Meanwhile, IMHO, unless his mother has assets to be managed, the OP doesn't need a Fiduciaire to sort out the tax/benefits issues.

Tweedpipe

I agree with this. Also DMU's comment that the OP doesn't really need a fiduciaire to sort out the tax/benefits issues.
It's a somewhat strange word, which can take on several money-related meanings. i.e. Une Societe fiduciare (an auditing company), nous gerons a titre de fiduciare (we manage as a trustee), le papier fiduciare est compose de... (banknote paper consists of...), patrimoine fiduciare (trusts patrimony) etc

jllevans

Thanks very much everyone, perhaps I use the wrong terminology. The problem is that my Mother has not been able to work since she moved to France, someone mentioned that you need to have paid tax there for 8 months before you are entitled to benefits but they weren't sure. They said I should speak to a fiduciare to get the full picture but seems this would be the wrong person. She is fluent in French but is in poor health currently and so finds it very difficult to handle a lot of paperwork, she has tried and tried to get answers re: what she needs to do but keeps being sent from office to office, department to department and nothing ever happens. So I wanted to try to help her, but I cannot speak French unfortunately. I'm not sure what the job title of such a person would be but does anyone know an English speaking expert in this sort of stuff that I could pay to assist me? Many thanks in advance!

dmu

i) You said elsewhere that she was a registered AE. Has she been contributing into the health insurance system up to now and is therefore covered at least on the healthcare front?
ii) The job titles are "Assistante Sociale" at the Mairie and possibly "Inspecteur des Impôits" if there are problems on the tax front!! As mentioned, their advice is free and you'd only need to pay for some one's time to accompany your mother at both appointments, if she can't cope alone.
The Assistante Sociale will not only advise on benefits, but can trigger off a request for home help and "ladies in waiting" who can deal with paperwork.
Hope you both find a solution soon!

EuroTrash

Playing devil's advocate, I think you should prepare for the possibility that your mother will not be entitled to many benefits in France, which may be why she's being given the brush-off. But she doesn't actually need to trek round offices, most of this can be done online via the CAF website, which I find an excellent website altogether, very user-friendly. She can find out about the various types of aide that are available, check her eligibility, do simulations to see how much she would receive, and apply for anything she feels she may be eligible for. Bienvenue sur Caf.fr | caf.fr

The issue she may come up against is "legal residence". As per EU guidelines, in order to be considered "legally resident" in France, for the first 5 years of residence (not sure where your 8 months comes in) an EU citizen must either be working, or be retired, or if inactif/early retired be able to prove they have sufficient income not to become a burden on the state. If you don't meet the criteria for legal residence then France has no obligations towards you. (The reason for this, obviously, is that no EU state can afford to support people from all over Europe who might rock up and expect that state to fund them at the expense of its taxpayers. The French social security system in particular is deep in debt as it is - mainly because unemployment has been so high for so long - even though cotisations for those of us who pay them are sky high.)

You say your mother set up an auto entreprise so technically she can say she is working, but if she has a very small income they may not consider it a viable full-time activity, which would mean she is classed as "inactif" and only entitled to stay in France as long as she doesn't become a burden on the state.

EU thinking is here, and this is basically what France has implemented:
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegDat...08_REV1_EN.pdf
"Pursuant to Article 7(1) of the Free Movement Directive, Union citizens have the right
to reside in the territory of another Member State for a period longer than three
months if:
 they are workers or self-employed persons in the host Member State; or
 they have sufficient resources for themselves and their family members not to
become a burden on the social assistance system of the host Member State during
their period of residence, and have comprehensive sickness insurance cover in the
host Member State"

and if you look at the top of page 7, you'll see discussion on what a "worker" is, but it does say "excluding only people undertaking an activity on such a small scale that it can be regarded as purely marginal and ancillary".


I appreciate you want to do all you can to help, but decisions on eligibility are made individually by CAF (in most cases) based on her personal dossier, which she has to provide - social security number, details of income, etc etc etc. All this can be submitted online, even copies of birth certificates and things like that. I can't help but feel that getting a third party involved, other than an assistante sociale whose job it is, would only confuse the issue. Benefits entitlement is a very personal thing depending on the details of your individual circumstances. There are boxes to tick but it is not purely a box ticking exercise, the agency and even the conseil général have some discretion to ensure that deserving cases who don't tick all the boxes get help, and people who tick all the boxes but are perceived as manipulating the system, don't. The decision is only made when all the facts have been provided and checked, and a third party wouldn't be able to predict the decision with 100 per cent confidence except in very clearcut cases, nor influence it one way or the other.

Sorry to throw all this at you but I suppose what I'm trying to say as tactfully as possible is, I'm afraid I see a question mark over your mother's status in France, and that is the first thing to clarify; the French authorities will make that decision for themselves, nobody else can; and if they decide she doesn't meet the criteria for legal residence then you will be wasting your time and money, banging your heads against a brick wall.

EuroTrash

Just to add - if the decision is that your mum is in an irregular situation in France, there is a different route to benefits which is explained here ameli.fr� -� L'aide médicale de l'État
I couldn't find it in English but perhaps googletranslate will give you the gist.

Basically this is a safety net for people who are living in France irregularly; really it's aimed at sans papiers. As a last resort it stops anyone from starving, but the downside is that once you claim this, you are in effect excluding yourself from ever reaching your 5 years legal residence, which a lot of newby arrivals see as the "holy grail" because once you have 5 years clocked up you have full rights, you can apply for citizenship, and your period of uncertainty and feeling you are here "on probation" is basically over.