I would like to wish you all
A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR
I am looking forward to the year to come, 2016.

“I Will Survive,” first recorded by American singer Gloria Gaynor in October 1978, describes the narrator’s discovery of her own personal strength following a bad breakup – but may also sum up what too many people have on their mind in the face of terrorism, whether they live in Paris, elsewhere in France or anywhere else in the world. Right it now feels like terrorist acts are possible all over the world. The feeling that we are all in survival mode, rather than happily living our own lives, does exist for many of us. But no one can function well this way in the long term, so we go back to life as usual, and push away the threat. It is one thing to militantly go out and be entertained when the mood is blue and fear is prevalent. It is another thing to do so without having to overcome fear anymore. This is the challenge France has faced since Friday November 13th, and we all hope that the country will continue to handle the situation well in these difficult times.

IS TERRORISM WAR?
The question of whether terrorism, and the struggle against terrorism, constitutes war is complex and the answer necessarily diverse. I do not have the expertise to give a definitive answer to this question, but it is one that we all must confront – most of us against our will – after a large-scale terrorist attack such as the one in Paris that killed 130 people.

One might be tempted to draw a comparison, for example, with what happened on 9/11 in the USA. Many experts have detailed where such a comparison is pertinent and where it is totally invalid. The idea that arming the French population would be a solution is pure insanity: this has never been a French tradition. Hunting weapons are the only firearms commonly owned by French people, and the number of gun owners is decreasing as more and more people move to cities.

There is an aspect of the November 13th tragedy and the way it has been handled that has not really been discussed, but that I believe should be addressed. With very few, short-lived exceptions, the USA never faced terrorism on its soil until 9/11, which was very traumatic and rightfully so. No similar terrorist attack, except at a much lower scale, has happened there before or after. By contrast, France and other European countries have had to deal with serious terrorist attacks over a period of years, or even decades. Keep in mind that WWI started because of a terrorist attack by an anarchist in the Balkans. In recent years, France experienced severe terrorism between 1955 and 1965, with several attempts to kill President Charles de Gaulle over the independence war of Algeria, especially because of the virulent reaction of Europeans living there. In the 1970s the French anarchist group Action Directe launched several attacks, twice killing prominent French leaders, while Germany and Italy had to deal with much larger anarchist groups. Shortly after that came terrorist attacks launched by Palestinians, and later by radical Muslims. The most recent major attacks, until last month, were bombings in the RER B at the Port Royal and Saint Michel stations in 1995 and 1996, part of a wave of terrorist attacks that started with the bombing of the FNAC store on the Rue de Rennes near the Montparnasse train station in 1986. Thus it had been nearly 20 years since the last French experience with a full-blown terrorist campaign, and the November attacks clearly took the population by surprise.

When 9/11 occurred, the closest thing Americans had to compare it to was Pearl Harbor, which was clearly an act of war against the American Navy. France has had a completely different experience of terrorism, and we can already see that the political and security measures taken in response to the latest attacks are very different. We all need to fight terrorism, and yes, it requires the use of the police, the army and the intelligence services. One thing is certain: in France we see terrorism and war fought on a battlefield as two totally different things, which must be addressed quite differently.

ADVERTISING AND BILLBOARDS
Until very recently, authorities at all levels in France have been passive regarding billboards, leaving cities and the advertisement industry to work together – one offering space for the billboads and the other managing them and syndicating their content. Nobody would have thought that billboard advertising could be seen as pollution.

More and more cities, however, are now banning billboards, either in the city center or within the entire city limits, as in Bordeaux and Grenoble. And a law was passed this past summer proscribing billboards at the entrance of cities of fewer than 10,000 inhabitants.

It is clear that this is the start of a trend that will soon affect all major French cities. It is also part of a much larger trend in which advertising in all its forms is something the public does not like and wants to be protected from. A recent poll showed 32% of respondents objecting to having ads put in mailboxes, for example. Advertising professionals must increasingly take this type of rejection into consideration.

A related trend concerns the way many people now watch TV through cables managed by Internet providers. On the Internet itself, people increasingly use software to block ads: 27% of French Internet users have installed such software. That percentage is one of the highest in the world, indicating that the French advertising industry needs to address this issue sooner rather than later if it wants to stay on the same page  or webpage – as the public. It has reached the point that some sites paid for by advertising are looking into giving up this financing and charging users instead, promising in return not to inflict any ads on them.

They could look to Mediapart as an example. This French online investigative and opinion journal has never carried advertising, relying on subscriptions. Created in 2008 by Edwy Plenel, the former editor-in-chief of Le Monde, and three other former print journalists, Mediapart is published in English, French and Spanish. It has become a major player in the news media, coming up with scoops in a way the competition cannot match. It reached break-even point in 2010, and in 2011 made its first profit: 500,000 from around 60,000 subscribers. Mediapart played a key role in revealing and investigating two major French political scandals: the Bettencourt affair in 2010 and the Cahuzac case in 2012.

A related development is the growth of digital marketing, using social media and other outlets to carry on a sort of dialogue with individual consumers. This raises a lot of issues. The amount of data that corporations gather on individuals scares both the individuals themselves and the authorities, notably the Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (National Commission on Informatics and Liberties, CNIL), the independent French administrative regulatory body whose mission is to ensure that data privacy law is applied to the collection, storage and use of personal data. Established by the law on Information Technology, Data Files and Civil Liberty of January 6th 1978, it is the national data protection authority.

The trend, in France as elsewhere, is to trust customer reviews more than anything, which creates a great temptation to tamper with the system by, for example, paying people to write fake flattering reviews. Companies are learning  some of them the hard way  that it is better to open a dialogue with customers and address their criticisms than to swamp review sites with favorable opinons. Nowadays a surfeit of excellent reviews just makes people suspicious about their authenticity.

Probably the most powerful response of the advertising industry to new media trends is the sharing of links between major players. For example, when you make an inquiry on Amazon, you will soon see ads about similar products on your Facebook wall, not to mention the products Amazon proposes to you when reaching the payment page based on data analysis of previous purchases.

In France, the CNIL monitors the use and sharing of private information, and individuals have the right to verify the accuracy of the information. In addition, some types of information are illegal to collect and use, even for research. But I am not sure the CNIL will maintain this tight position, considering the wave that is coming over the Internet.

For more on this issue (in French), see http://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2015/10/27/un-nouveau-contrat-social-autour-de-la-publicite_4797780_3234.html#b2qRpqlpeBr357Iu.99

CONTROLS AT FRANCE’S BORDERS IN DECEMBER
France is hosting the world climate change conference, COP21, from November 30th to December 11th. Since November 20th, 600 border control stations have been set up for a month to keep track of who enters France. It is expected that a lot of people will want to take advantage of this event to demonstrate, creating chaos, violence, traffic jams and so on in and around the conference site at Le Bourget. There is also serious concern about the potential for more terrorist attacks from a variety of groups.

I have often mentioned that for travel within the Schengen area no one is checked at the French borders, but there are police squads in trains, at rest places on highways and in airports, who ask to check ID. My experience is that until recently those controls were mostly done near the Spanish and Italian borders, where a lot of undocumented aliens enter France, and at the Belgium border to look for drug smugglers coming from the Netherlands.

Now, however, undocumented aliens living in France should avoid traveling for the rest of this year, other than taking commuter trains to go to work and even there the scrutiny is increased. The chances of getting caught are currently quite high. If you are an undocumented alien working for a family and are expected to accompany your employers on their Christmas vacation even when traveling in the same car think again, and inform your employers. They also run a serious risk as employers of an undocumented alien.

The recent events have seen an unprecedented number of police and army forces being deployed, first in the Paris region and then all over France. The message that was sent before these events was already enough to alert people to this; now surveillance measures are much more invasive. Spread the news.

For more on this issue (in French), see http://www.lemonde.fr/cop21/article/2015/11/11/cop21-beauvau-affiche-son-dispositif-anti-manifestations_4807020_4527432.html#P3882FxqT5yJ9yZQ.99

NEW FRENCH LAW LIMITS WHICH DOCUMENTS TENANTS GIVE TO LANDLORDS 
When I talk about living in Paris as a tenant, I often start by reminding readers that it still takes about three years to expel a non-paying tenant, which is totally excessive for a private landlord who has a couple of properties rented and relies on this income to pay his or her bills. I believe the system will never work properly until this issue is truly addressed. Not all landlords are so wealthy that they can go several years without rent and not have a cash flow problem.

While I totally agree that most of the landlords’ demands are outrageous and unacceptable, and it should be possible to limit these demands, it is also true that the natural desire to limit and even decrease the size and the nature of the risk a landlord takes when signing a lease should not be overlooked.

The recently Décret n°2015-1437, passed on November 5th sets forth the documents that a landlord can legally require you to provide:

ID AND ADDRESS
Identification can be a passport, carte nationale d’identité, driver’s license or titre de séjour. Proof of current address may also be demanded; this can be the last three rent receipts (quittances de loyer), the last local tax statement (taxe foncière or taxe d’habitation) , or an affidavit of lodging.

PROOF OF SOLVENCY
Depending on the situation, this can be a work contract, a business registration such as the K-bis document, INSEE registration for self-employed professionals or a student card for students, along with the latest income tax statement (avis d’imposition sur les revenus). In some situations the landlord may also demand other documents, such as the last three pay slips, last two year-end accounting reports, title of real estate rented or CAF statements showing the amount of money received.

Note that it is now forbidden to demand that prospective tenants provide a RIB in order to set up an automatic rent payment, or a livret de famille attesting to such events as a couple’s marriage and birth of children.

As usual, French law also defines the penalties for those not complying with the law, in this case up to 3,000 € for an individual and 15,000 € for a corporation.

In short, the government is sending a strong message, yet it comes at a time when there are so many candidates for every available Parisian apartment that no one will report non-compliance for fear of being blacklisted or having one’s file being put at the bottom of the pile.

For more on this issue (in French), see http://www.lemonde.fr/immobilier/article/2015/11/12/location-la-loi-limite-les-documents-exigibles-par-le-proprietaire_4808289_1306281.html#TLxlhY191IFKMsIR.99

FRENCH BANK CHECKS ON THEIR WAY OUT

The French government wants to speed up the phasing out of bank checks and increases even more the use of debit cards. In 2016, the validity of a French bank check will decrease from one year to six months. The use of checks declines every year by 5%; in 2014 checks were used for about 13% of all transactions, one of the highest ratios in Europe. The authorities want debit cards to be accepted for any amount, regardless of how small it may be, which is reasonable only if bank fees per transaction go down. The goal is bank commissions of 0.2% to 0.3%. France has quite high commissions, between 0.5% and 0.8%, so there is room for improvement.

Using a check allows immediate payment without mechanical means, which is why so many professionals outside the medical professions push for this method of payment. An alternative is to enable more people to use automatic payments (prélévements), with the beneficiary of the payment initiating the transfer, making this method as safe as a check. Very few companies — mainly utility companies and Internet/phone providers — are currenty allowed to set up such payments. In the public sector, making all payments should be possible in this way, including those made to hospitals, school cafeterias and day-care centers. Small businesses, however, will never have access to this method because of the logistics of getting clearance from all banks operating in France. So small businesses like mine will continue to rely on checks for the type of payment that occurs at the end of an appointment with the doctor, plumber, lawyer, etc. France still has a lot of these one-person businesses, and finding an alternative to paying by check is going to be complicated.

I expect the banks to resist this change, but at the same time, the Internet allows more modern means of payment, such as PayPal. Eventually French banks may prefer to lower their commissions rather lose the transactions altogether.

For more on this issue (in French), see http://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2015/10/16/bercy-precipite-la-mort-du-cheque_4790960_3234.html#HoiCHTFpFcR1XqJ1.99

I NOW HAVE A PAYPAL ACCOUNT qa@jeantaquet.com
I would like to remind my readers and clients that I have a PayPal account. My business is too small to accept credit cards or handle prélévements. But I already have some clients pay my fees through PayPal at the end of the meeting. I see this becoming the best substitute for paying by check, especially foreign checks.

OFFICE CLOSED FOR CHRISTMAS
The office will close for two weeks for Christmas, starting on Friday December 18th, and reopen on Monday January 4th. As always, I will be reachable by email for emergencies and important matters. The service I offer of receiving mail for clients will continue while the office is closed.

I would like to remind everyone that there is no January issue.

Best regards,

QUESTION

BUYING REAL ESTATE IN FRANCE WITH A RELATIVE

I am American and now have French nationality as well thanks to my husband. Several years ago, we were able to buy the Parisian apartment we were renting. Now my upstairs neighbor wants to sell his apartment. My mother would like to visit us more often and have her own place but she cannot pay the purchase price and maintenance, and would like to buy it with me as well as rent it out when she is not there. I am not interested in managing a short-term rental usage of this apartment right above my head! It is a small three-room apartment. What would be the right solution for all of us?

As I sit in my office on a Saturday evening, sending out this issue on the very day of Halloween and deciding on its title, I can only think of all the people celebrating tonight in disguise or costumes. “Master of Disguise” is a tune on Just Testing, the tenth studio album by the British rock band Wishbone Ash, released in 1980. I have been a fan of this lesser known British band since I was 19; it has often been seen as a precursor of metal rock  opening the way to Black Sabbath, for example.

Here are the lyrics:

I’m a master of disguise,
Mystery in your eyes,
Travelling the backroads of your country.
Well, you think you’ve got my number
And then again, you wonder
Will you ever get to find the real me.

Things are not always
As they first may seem
It’s like living in a dream.

So you’d like me to reveal
All that I know and feel
At the risk of causing panic and destruction.
Well, there’s a method to this madness.
I don’t mean to cause you sadness
My course is strictly governed by instruction.

Things are not always
As they first may seem
It’s like living in a dream.

I’m a master of disguise
Not about to compromise
My position in this scheme of worldly values.
Ah, they’re calling out my name.
I’ve promised to remain
Ever faithful to the memory of what is true.

Things are not always
As they first may seem
It’s like living in a dream.

Oh, I’m living in a dream,
I’m high, I’m high.
In the cold, cold night, I’m high.

www.lyricsfreak.com/w/wishbone+ash/master+of+disguise_20147191.html

Living as an expatriate, one can develop a cautious attitude, a fear that yet another bad thing will happen soon. It can reach the point on occasion where it feels like there is some kind of demonic figure plotting a series of adverse experiences, ruining one’s life.

One reason I chose this song is the poetic way the lyrics describe the rather unreal figure of the master of disguise. The unpleasant events that many expats experience can be explained one by one in a reasonable and rational way. When someone lives in his or her own country, such events are often explained with Murphy’s Law, the idea that if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. For an expat, however, it often feels very personal, causing anger that he/she wants to direct towards someone  if only a shadowy”master of disguise” or chief conspirator, among many other possible epithets. Most of the topics addressed in this issue deal with this fear or impression of duplicity.

CAP ON RESIDENTIAL RENT CHARGED IN PARIS
I have been hearing a lot of criticism of the latest legislation establishing rent control in some major French cities. But I would remind my readers that several American cities have strict rent control, which has existed for decades in some cases.

As Wikipedia explains (as of October 20, 2015): -Between 1919 and 1924, a number of cities and states adopted rent and eviction control laws. Modern rent controls were first adopted in response to WWII-era shortages, or following Richard Nixon’s 1971 wage and price controls. They remain in effect or have been reintroduced in some cities with large tenant populations, such as New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Oakland, California. Many smaller communities also have rent control, notably the California cities of Santa Monica, Berkeley and West Hollywood, along with many small towns in New Jersey. In recent years, rent control in some cities, such as Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been ended.-

I feel that I needed to start with this because I have often heard French people complaining that rent control is a liberal measure, a stupid regulation, out of touch with the reality of the real estate market and something that would never exist in the USA.

I would also remind my readers that the only time previously that France had a similar regulation was in 1948, when the country was just coming out of the war and there was not much lodging available. So whether this kind of policy is a good thing or not, let’s be clear about the record: parts of the USA have had rent control legislation longer than France has and that affect a much larger portion of the population.

As is often the case, the attempt to make sure that legislation is fair results in French law being difficult to understand and even harder to implement. But, to keep it short and simple, here is what the law amounts to: a landlord cannot charge more than 20% above what the government considers to be the normal market price, although I will not attempt to explain how this amount is calculated nor who is supposed to do the calculation.

That being said, one rule of thumb is especially true regarding Paris: the smaller the apartment, the higher the rent in terms of euros per square meter. One reason for this is supply and demand: The trend is for families to move to the suburbs when they have children  sometimes even with the birth of the first one. Thus, in the market for family-size apartments with four or five bedrooms  which are large apartments by Paris standards  there is less imbalance between supply and demand. In contrast, maid’s rooms, studios and one-bedroom apartments are in high demand because there are always a lot more candidates wanting to rent than there are apartments of that size available.

• There were a couple of other changes in favor of tenants in the law:
• The notice period to leave the rental place is now one month for all leases, even those signed before the law began to be enforced.

The security deposit must now be reimbursed within one month. This is to help the mobility of the tenant when it is time to move.

The upshot is that the market is such that it is now even more difficult to rent in the affected cities, especially Paris, where landlords and agencies are demanding guarantees that most people cannot meet. A tenant’s take-home pay is expected to be, ideally, four times the amount of rent plus charges. But it is very difficult to find a decent 30-square-meter apartment for less than 1,000 euros a month, which means a net salary of 4,000 euros a month. But the average French monthly salary is 2,128 euros.

For further details (in French), see http://www.lemonde.fr/argent/article/2015/09/21/les-droits-des-locataires-renforces-au-compte-gouttes_4765423_1657007.html

AUTO-ENTREPRENEUR – THE FRENCH ADMINISTRATION IS FIGHTING BACK
There are still several issues with this fiscal status. Most people perceive it as a legal status for people working as independent contractors, but in fact the legal statuses for such contractors are:
Merchant = commerçant
Craftsperson = artisan
Professional = profession libérale

I would like to focus on just one issue, which results from a very typical French approach. It starts with the state checking for compliance with the law and assumes that the authorities need to check on people, that they cannot be assumed to take care of themselves. One needs to follow this logic to understand what is at stake here.

Everybody now agrees that the auto-entrepreneur status does not at all do what it was intended to do; for years, various governments have wanted to change it so it better reflects reality.

The initial auto-entrepreneur concept stemmed from Nicolas Sarkozy’s promise during the 2007 presidential campaign that people would be able to “work more to make more money”. The idea was that employees should have the right to work legally on the side on their own behalf as self-employed people.

But people registering for auto-entrepreneur status have never been asked whether they are employed, so from the beginning a lot of unemployed people signed on to the program, hoping to get some small jobs this way. Unfortunately, even today French society is somewhat negative about independent workers, so few people are ever taught business skills, unlike in the USA and some other countries.

URSSAF is now convinced, and rightfully so, that a large number of people registered as auto-entrepreneur should in reality be employees of their clients, even though there may be more than one employer. What defines employee status under French law is the subordination of the employee to the employer (le lien de subordination du salarié envers l’employeur).

In a first case of its type (but I doubt it will be the last one), the Brittany branch of URSSAF is openly stating that it is auditing all auto-entrepreneur to determine whether in fact they should be employees. What the office is discovering is that city halls are among those abusing the system  even the local French administration is cheating on this issue.

If you run a legitimate business and you choose this fiscal status, rather than a more traditional one, for all the benefits it offers, then you should know it is quite probable that you will be audited. Therefore, you must keep your records totally clean. Even though there is no obligation to keep detailed accounting, there is a legal obligation to document your sales with a receipt or an invoice, as well as your professional spending, in case you go above the limit. You should also keep any contracts (which is obvious) or exchange of emails showing the terms of the business agreement. This is the most important, since it is what the inspectors are after.

Now, interestingly enough, this audit campaign has created such an uproar and has so disorganized activities held in schools (which is what most towns were hiring auto-entrepreneur for) that the government may decide to stop the auditing and let the corrupted system continue, as it helps local governments function despite insufficient funding of extra-curricular activities. I will keep you posted.

For more on this issue (in French), see http://business.lesechos.fr/entrepreneurs/auto-entrepreneur/auto-entrepreneurs-betes-noires-de-l-urssaf-202723.php?UO3TPuVDQdbbJuE1.99#xtor=CS1-60

THE REFUGEE CRISIS AND ITS CONSEQUENCES IN FRANCE
Since my work includes helping foreigners who lack immigration status in France to obtain the right to be here legally, I meet people who have been refused asylum but have stayed in France, and some who are still undergoing refugee proceedings. Consequently many people have asked me recently about my position on the current crisis and its consequences for France.

My first comment is that, just in the last century or so, France has had many waves of immigration and absorbed them all, sooner rather than later; with each new wave previous immigrants were seen as integrated in French society:

• 1. The first wave in modern times came from Poland and started in the late 19th century. By the time it ended in 1931, some 500,000 people had immigrated to France.
• 2. The second one came during the winter of 1938-39, when in just a few weeks about 500,000 Spanish people came to France at the end of the Spanish Civil War.
• 3. The third wave occurred right after WWII; between 1945 and 1970, 1.8 million Italians came to France. It was the third wave of Italian immigration and the biggest by far.
• 4. The fourth one lasted about fifteen years, from 1958 to 1975, when 730,000 Portuguese came to France.

5. The fifth wave was from Algeria. Since 1830, when France colonized much of North Africa, the Algerian population had been French and there had always been some emigration to metropolitan France; in fact, the Great Mosque in Paris was built in 1926 for the Algerian community. But a massive wave started when Algerian independence was declared in 1962. By the time it ended in 1982, the Algerian population of France had grown from 350,000 to 800,000.

I could continue with more recent ones, but today’s world is such that immigration to France now has several origins and tends to be more ongoing.

The arrival of 24,000 Syrians in France may be a wave, but only a small one compared to what I have just described. Those who say the French economy is bad and cannot handle that many should recall the half-million Spanish people arriving during the French Great Depression.

I do not underestimate the difficulties generated by this latest wave, nor its immediate consequences for both the people who already live in France and the newcomers themselves. For one thing, some offices at the Paris Prefecture already have a backlog, and the part of the prefecture dealing with foreigners could be quite clogged in two years or even sooner. The current ratio of success for those seeking refugee status is about 20% initially and 38% after appeal to the Cour nationale du droit d’asile. While the French government has stated that people will be much better treated in the current crisis, I strongly doubt they will all obtain legal status in France. I am pretty sure that less than half will be successful  but this would nevertheless be a significant improvement. That is why I expect a serious surge in the prefecture’s workload once these people complete the refugee procedure and start to comply with the regularization guidelines.

In short, I do not see major problems caused by integrating the latest groups over a reasonable period, about five years, though there will be complications for a lot of people along the way.

I NOW HAVE A PAYPAL ACCOUNT
I have finally gotten into the swing of things, and I now have a functioning paypal account. As it is becoming increasingly difficult to wire money both from American and French banks through their websites when you are out of the country, PayPal will be a reasonable alternative.

My ID with them is my email address: qa@jeantaquet.com

Best regards,

QUESTION

IS A COPY OF MY ID CARD ENOUGH TO COMPLY WITH THE LAW?

I am an American living in Paris and was robbed recently of my wallet containing my carte vitale, Visa debit card and carte de résident. After going through a long and painful process of replacing everything, mainly with the prefecture, I would like to know if I can simply carry around a photocopy of my carte de résident and leave the real card safe at home. It was very difficult to get it replaced.

QUESTION

FRENCH LAW DOES NOT EASILY ACCEPT NAME CHANGES

I am American and I have been living in France for six years. Last week I submitted my request for a wedding ceremony at our local city hall. The first time I came to France I was 20. Hoping that I would be moving here, I thought about changing my first name to one that sounded good pronounced in French because I didn’t like how my birth name was pronounced with a French accent and changing it would make it easier living in France. When back in California, while renewing my CA driver’s license, I decided to change my first name to the name I had in mind. After that, all my legal documents were made using my new French first name, including my US passport, my Social Security card, my university diplomas, etc.

Needless to say the French local city hall was not happy with the discrepancy between the first name on my birth certificate and the one on my passport. They told me that the file was incomplete. They wanted me to bring them a document from the American Embassy in Paris. So I had a sworn statement notarized declaring that these two names represent the same person.

That document was enough for the local city hall to accept that the two names refer to the same person, but little did I know that they would say they would only marry me under the name on my birth certificate and not my legal name that I have been using in the USA and in France for over 25 years.

To avoid having to go to the US for a formal court-ordered name change only to rectify my birth certificate, we were hoping there was some law that would give priority to the name that is on all my legal documents (including US passport) and that the local city hall would have to let me get married in what has been considered my legal name for years.

It seemed like they were just being stubborn without a real LAW behind their conviction that I would have to use the birth name. I will be going to ask the prefecture in person this week to ask about what to do regarding the renewal of my immigration ID card if my livret de famille does not bear the same name as my carte de séjour.

Have you ever heard of a situation like this one? I am a Paris resident so even getting my name changed in CA might not be possible since CA law requires you to be a CA resident to do a name change there but I do not think I can get a name change in Paris.

Stephen Stills wrote the song “Find the Cost of Freedom ” , which is the last song of the live album 4 way Street by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young released on April 7, 1971.

My son Eric as a pre-teen played this album for about a year after hearing it once when I was playing it. More than 40 years after its release, the album still has a significant impact on people, and managed to outlive the hippie movement, of which this band and its individual artists were perceived as spokesmen.

The question of how much people are willing to give up to be free – which in this context means unattached to possessions and outside of a system – is a very interesting one, which was critical at the time and still resonates today. Today, for over a decade, the question has also shifted to how much people are willing to give up to be worry-free, which is another form of feeling free.

I find it very interesting that the pursuit of freedom in terms of being detached from society and the desire to be worry-free, which makes people even more entrenched in society, are by nature very often completely incompatible goals.

I have no intention of pursuing this analysis, as it is not my area of expertise, but I find interesting that in recent months there has been legislation in France (originating at the EU level) that increased the right to choose, i.e., the freedom to decide, about more than one topic. The choice of which laws apply to one’s estate, the freedom to travel in and around Paris in public transport and the freedom to marry are some of the examples I chose as topics for this month’s issue.

At the same time, laws lowering the maximum one can pay in cash, and maintaining the monopoly of notaireson several critical aspects of people’s lives such as buying real estate, signing a prenuptial agreement or handling one’s estate, are ways of limiting people’s freedom and the promise of ever gaining or maintaining a worry-free state.

These are tiny illustrations, coming when both France and the USA are pretty much in a presidential electoral campaign, with an ongoing debate on how much right of surveillance the state should have to protect its people.

It is all about finding the cost of freedom.

MORE DETAILS ON NEW REGULATIONS FOR INTERNATIONAL ESTATES
In the September 2015 issue, I mentioned that as of August 17th 2015, the handling of estates would now be governed, by default, by the laws of the country of residence of the testator, including real estate owned in other countries.

Another aspect of this new regulation is just about as striking, from my point of view, as many of my readers have said in the past that this issue is even more important to them. The fact that one chooses, by writing a will, which law should apply to one’s estate – the law of nationality or that of residence – is indeed a major change. I believe it will be an especially radical change for French notaires, who will have to deal with estates located abroad if a French citizen living in the USA makes this choice. One last comment: it is often assumed that Britons and Americans always resent the Napoleonic rule that children cannot be disinherited and come first as legatees, but many of my clients, including Americans, are fine with this, especially when they realize the surviving spouse can easily get a life interest in the entire estate.

I will continue this topic in future issues, as some illustration is needed to show the consequences of those two changes.

THE RIGOROUS JOB DESCRIPTION OF THE NOTAIRE
The position of notaire is an odd French institution, which grants a lot of security in, among other things, real estate transactions. The notaire in France has three roles:

Here are some notable examples of the types of leave of absence granted in France:

Official supervisor. This is linked to the special status of real estate in France. Sales must be handled by a person representing France. The duty of the notaire is to guarantee that the sale is in the best interest of all the parties involved, including the state. The buyer should receive all necessary documents, including a guaranteed title, and acquire a property free of financial liability (libéré de toute hypothèque).

Tax collector. The so-called frais de notaire are for the most part taxes that the notaire collects and pays on behalf of the buyer.

• Private adviser. As a professional, the notaire establishes a personal relationship with his client and can be a normal legal adviser, either paid by a standard fee or according to a fee schedule. This, however, is the least important of the notaire’s roles.

A decision of the French Supreme Court (Cour de Cassation) on February 4th illustrates the extent of the first role: securing the buyer’s rights to a perfect title.

In the case in question, renovations had been done in an apartment, and the notairechecked that all necessary authorizations had been requested and obtained. But a document from the management company or syndic raised questions as to whether the work completely complied with the authorizations. The court decided that the duty of the notaireis to leave no stone unturned, and to guarantee, as much as possible, a perfect title. In this case, the work had affected a common area, damaging it.

More recently, I witnessed another illustration of the extent of this role of the notaire. An American bought a Parisian apartment where the gardienne, a type of concierge for the building, is suing the condominium association over a labor regulation and is seeking a sizable amount of money. The notairecalculated how much it would cost the new owner should the court rule in favor of the gardienne.

The parties agreed at the time of the signing of the initial pre-sale contract (promesse de vente) that the chances of the woman winning the case were very slim. Nevertheless, the notaire’s duty was to inform the buyer of this financial risk before any engagement was made, and obtain the buyer’s approval of this situation that did not affect the decision to buy.

In such situations, I find, French notaires are very reassuring when they do their job at its best. They must dig up whatever information they can regarding any potential liability linked to the property.

http://sosconso.blog.lemonde.fr/2015/05/19/quand-le-notaire-permet-la-vente-dune-terrasse-illegale/ La Cour de cassation, qui statue le 4 février, 2015.

PUBLIC TRANSPORT NOW COSTS THE SAME EVERYWHERE IN THE ILE DE FRANCE REGION
I would like to review a few aspects of the history of public transport in the greater Paris metropolitan area to explain why the change that took effect on September 1st 2015 was so radical in the way it affected pricing and the way the public transport is used.

The transport system introduced the Carte Orange (orange card) in 1975 to simplify usage, mainly of suburban trains. The price of the weekly, monthly or yearly pass depended on how many of the five zones existent at that time were traveled through, (from 1991 to 2007, there were 8 zones.) The Paris Métro system is almost completely within zones 1 and 2, which correspond to how far one can go with a normal metro ticket.

Keep in mind that French employees receive a reimbursement from the employer for half the cost of this pass, since it is considered to be the cost of going to work. Many employers pay the full cost of the pass and deduct half of it on the pay slip.

The card stayed pretty much the same until the Navigo pass was introduced in 2005. The new pass was read electronically instead of requiring a ticket to be inserted in a turnstyle.

The prices of both Navigo passes and individual tickets increased regularly, but the logic of the pricing system was not changed until this year. There has been political debate on the issue for a long time. Conservatives want the amount paid by the user to be as close as possible to the actual cost – within limits, since that also increases employers- costs. The left wants to maintain the system or improve it to help users. The idea of uniform pricing had come up regularly. An initial step was taken in September 2012, when holders of monthly and yearly passes got the right to travel to any zone in the system on weekends and during school vacations.

Many reasons have been put forward for the latest modification. In my opinion, making public transport more attractive is one way to fight car traffic in a very densely populated region (the 12 million people of the Ile de France make up 18.2% of the French population). It is also a popular change, as those who travel the farthest are paying less for their commute.

It is now mostly zone 1 and 2 travelers who pay more. The uniform price is currently 70 euros a month for the annual pass.

In my view the true issue is that the infrastructure is badly aging and the volume of people traveling makes it extremely difficult to carry out major repairs and maintenance. It is only recently that I have seen sections of the metro lines inside Paris closed for weeks for repairs. I am astounded by the frequency of failures in the system -problems with individual metro cars, signaling and so on – compared to what I remember from my youth. While in the bigger picture such incidents are small  one loses time, but there are hardly ever any significant accidents  they can make it very difficult to get to work on time if one uses, for example, the RER. And it is expected that the 2016 budget will be reduced by 485 million euros.

I know that this position is not popular but I would have preferred an increase in the budget so more repairs and renovation could be done. For now, though, I admit that I do enjoy the new set-up.

www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2015/09/01/ile-de-france-les-gagnants-et-les-perdants-du-passe-navigo-a-tarif-unique_4741939_4355770.html#igzZb0hS01JUw3O4.99

EVEN MORE RESTRICTIONS ON CASH PAYMENTS IN FRANCE
Paying in cash, depositing cash or even cashing a check is between suspicious and illegal in France. This is quite a contrast with the USA, where retail business relies a lot more on cash transactions. In addition, the acquisition of debt is discouraged. It was a political decision in France to push the use of debit cards; France has hardly any credit card companies as defined in the USA. Debit cards in France are issued by banks, and are linked to a bank account. Non-bank lenders such as COFINOGA and CETELEM do issue cards that allow access to a line of credit, but even there the latest regulations limit how much a client can charge on these cards, as well as the amount a client can borrow money when taking out a loan.

Thus it is now a lot more difficult to multiply the use of credit cards and to take out loans. Furthermore, most payments must be made into a bank account: that is the only way to receive one’s salary, subsidies from the Caisse d’Allocations Familiales, health care reimbursements, tax reimbursements and so on. Increasingly, payments out must also be wired directly from a bank account, including notably almost all utilities (electricity, gas, Internet, phone).

The latest development is that since September 1st it has been illegal to pay cash for purchases exceeding 1,000 euros; the previous limit was 3,000 euros. This includes transactions between professionals. For non-residents, notably tourists, the limit went down from 15,000 euros to 10,000 euros. Thus the new regulation promotes paying by check or debit card. Already, half of all transactions in France were with debit cards (49.5%, to be precise). Today the average amount of cash transactions is 24.30 euros, which illustrates how widespread the other means of payments are.

Starting on January 1st 2016, one must show ID to change more than 1,000 euros to a foreign currency. Also from that day, French banks will have to report to Tracfin (the French finance and budget ministries anti-money laundering unit) any account with cash deposits or withdrawals exceeding 10,000 euros. This should trigger an investigation of the client by Tracfin inspectors and most likely after that the tax inspector.

One last thing: foreigners, especially Americans, tend to be surprised at how common paying with a check is in France, including in grocery stores, restaurants and shops, even though the merchants are often lukewarm about accepting them since there is no assurance that they will not bounce. This form of payment is a lot more common in France than in the USA.

www.lemonde.fr/argent/article/2015/08/31/paiement-en-liquide-les-regles-changent_4741375_1657007.html#z2Mb1djUsRHrvjLH.99

FAKE MARRIAGE AND BEING MARRIED UNDER FALSE PRETENSES
I have always been interested in the dynamic of couples where the spouses are of different nationalities. Sometimes there is an age difference, often exceeding twenty years  in some cases it is an aging husband, in others the wife is older. One spouse may have significant means and the other be a penniless refugee without any legal immigration status. We could list other examples as well, although I know that such things do not just happen with international couples but can characterize couples who live in the same country or even the same city.

What interests me particularly is the sincerity of the love an undocumented alien has for a national when they get married.

The definition of a fake marriage (in French, a mariage blanc) is that both spouses knowingly get married for the sole purpose of obtaining immigration status for one of them, often with a financial payment to the national spouse. This is criminal in France and the USA.

About five years ago, some far right French politicians wanted to criminalize what they call grey marriage(mariage gris) in which one spouse was getting married for the sole purpose of obtaining immigration status while the other was sincerely in love and absolutely certain that this love was shared by the other. This attempt was short lived, as it appeared virtually impossible to prove criminal intent at the time of the wedding in most instances.

My observation, after working so many years with undocumented aliens, is that for many of them, obtaining legal status appears for years to be an unattainable goal. So when someone is kind and attentive to their situation and shows love and care for them, they are often totally overwhelmed with gratitude and have an outburst of love. From that, it does not take much to turn this into a love affair and then a stable romantic relationship, which in turn leads them to get married.

After a few months or a few years, when the couple has settled down and the immigration issue is fully solved, the foreign spouse may start to see the marriage and the other spouse very differently. Or other issues can come up, such as an age difference, difficulty in having children, and so on. As with all couples, when caught in such a dynamic of disillusion, the relationship may end in divorce.

The question I have always wrestled with is where to draw the line between foreigners who genuinely fall in love, even if influenced by the effects of a long quest for legal status, and those who all along are fooling the other person (and sometimes themselves) into showing love and getting married?

I assume that very few of them plan the entire thing and act as predators catching their prey. The article I give the link to clearly describes that. From my position as an outsider, the ones I have met and helped seemed to have genuine feelings for each other (although keep in mind what I describe above).

French law states that if the foreigner obtains immigration status exclusively through marriage and the couple does not stay together at least three years, this foreigner automatically loses the right to stay in France. As the article notes, this law takes care of at least the most blatant cases.

It leaves unanswered this question: what is the chemistry of love made of? This question has existed since the origin of humankind!

http://leplus.nouvelobs.com/contribution/1398345-j-ai-ete-victime-d-un-mariage-gris-il-voulait-juste-des-papiers-moi-je-l-aime-encore.html

Best regards,

QUESTION

CARTE DE RESIDENT HOLDER MARRIES A NON-FRENCH RESIDENT

I am an American expat in France who has been living and working in Paris for over fourteen years and I hold a carte de résident de long durée. I have also been a fan of your newsletter for many years and read it religiously although I have never had cause to contact you until now. My situation is complex. Last month I married a Czech woman who is a legal resident of Austria. We divide our time between Vienna and Paris and I maintain my legal residence in France. We are also expecting a baby girl later this year. The baby will be born in Austria and for the first year or so she will live there, although we do plan to move back to Paris in 2017. I will maintain my resident status in France as well as my apartment in Paris, which I own. My question is: Who in the French administration am I obliged to inform about my marriage and the birth of my child? Being a long-term resident here I know that there must be someone I have to inform of my changed status, but I have no idea who that would be.

QUESTION

WORKING IN FRANCE AS AN ENGLISH TEACHER

I am an American living in the USA and I would like to teach English at a French university. I currently teach English at the university level for foreign students who study business. I have been told that it is close to impossible to do this, but can you please help me?

Feels Like Home is the second album by jazz-pop singer-songwriter Norah Jones, released in 2004. I have written many times about feeling at home in a foreign country, as well as going back to the country of citizenship where one grew up decades before, and not feeling at home anymore.

This issue mostly deals with changes in the law due to a European Union court decision regarding what is linked or not linked to “home”; or what is in legal jargon is referred to as the primary residence. This ruling also affects what is a French fiscal resident.

I stayed home in Paris the entire month of August, while everybody else went away. It is always an interesting experience being in such a busy city suddenly slowing down, invaded by tourists. On occasion I felt like a tourist myself.

The changes mentioned in this issue, especially those regarding the domicile, may at first seem minor. But their consequences are long reaching, affecting areas one would never thought of.

French real estate ruled by American estate law means that there is no need to create sophisticated corporate schemes to keep French properties under American estate law. Some people might see their business affected by that. In any case, this simplification is excellent news for people who want to buy real estate in the EU for leisure purposes. For once there is actual good news for them!

INTERNATIONAL ESTATES HANDLED DIFFERENTLY AS OF AUGUST 17th 2015
This seemingly minor change has consequences, that are enormous for non-French residents who own real estate in France. I need to explain the old rule in order to underline how radical this change is.

Before the change, all liquid assets in an estate were governed by the laws of the country of the decedent’s residence and all real estate by those of the country of the property’s location. This meant all US citizens owning a leisure residence in France had to bear in mind, when considering this property in their estate planning, that in France one cannot disinherit one’s children or spouse. The only way the French property could be governed by US estate law was to create a corporation, either French or foreign, and deed the property to it; the shares in this corporation were part of the liquid assets, and that was the only way to circumvent French law. The same went for American citizens who lived permanently in France and owned real estate in the USA: American estate law applied to such properties.

Now, as a result of a change in EU law, the entire estate is governed by the law in which the decedent legally resided at the time of death.

I want to illustrate this notion of legal residence to make sure it is clear. A foreigner dying of a heart attack inside the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport is not a French resident at the time of death. Nor is a foreigner who happens to die anywhere else in France while on vacation or business.

I will be very interested, though, to see if the rule regarding residency for the purpose of estate law is modified as a result of this EU regulation. For example what is the residency of a retired American citizen who does not hold any type of French immigration status but who spends exactly six months in France in two stays of three months each, and who has owned at least one piece of real estate in France for several consecutive years?

One reason the French administration may be tempted to define French residence broadly is the existence of liquid assets in the USA that will now fall under French law. One can easily see the need to seek the help of an expert in such matters, since France is reluctantly implementing an EU regulation. The question of how to define a primary residence will ultimately be settled at the international level, though it could be a very long time before a definitive ruling is made.

EU regulation 650/2012 of the European Parliament and European Council of July 4th 2012, effective as of August 17th 2015

MATERNITY LEAVE AND OTHER OFFICIAL TYPES OF LEAVE OF ABSENCE
French labor laws are often seen as incongruous by many. But foreigners who have been employed in France long enough see the benefits, not just the downsides. This is not to say that no American employer would ever grant similar benefits. The key difference here is that France makes the law and it is up to the employee to take advantage of it or not. American employers offer such perks as a way to please employees and consider the extra cost worth it to attract good workers. This attitude used to be quite common in the USA, both for blue-collar and white-collar workers. Today, the employer-employee relationship in the USA has considerably changed, with the salary and benefits too often seen as just part of production costs. There the difference has become even more striking. The legal nature of paid leave here is that it is not counted as vacation, but the employer does pay the employee for these days, even though no work was done. Maternity leave, which lasts at least sixteen weeks – six before the delivery and ten after – differs in this respect since the national health insurance pays instead of the employer.

Here are some notable examples of the types of leave of absence granted in France:

• – Four days for your wedding, whether it is the first one or a subsequent one,
• – Four days for registering your civil union (pacte civil de solidarité), which shows that the PACS is now treated almost like marriage,
• – Three days for the birth or adoption of your child,
• – Two days for the death of your child, your spouse or your civil partner,
• – One day for your child’s wedding,
• – One day for the death of one of your parents, siblings or parents-in-law.

It is interesting to see that more days are given for a wedding than a funeral.

As noted earlier, maternity leave lasts about four months, much longer than other types of leave of absence. Several parts of the French administrations get involved once a woman finds out she is pregnant. The doctor issues a document for the Caisse d’Allocations Familiales attesting to the pregnancy. Today the remit of the CAF is far broader than family well-being and it has become the main provider of French subsidies. The mother-to-be will receive some state money starting in the third month of pregnancy and continuing until the third month of the child’s life, as long as she goes to the doctor regularly and gets the relevant forms properly filled out. This is a very good way to make sure that prenatal care is well done.

Sometimes the doctor will put the mother on sick leave the last months of the pregnancy. French regulations require the woman to stop working six weeks before the delivery date and remain off work until the child is about three months old.

The mother can choose to stay home up to three years while receiving a supplemental subsidy from the CAF, and the employer must give her job back to her whenever she wants to go back to work, even she takes the entire three years.

This arrangement is part of a bigger picture including public infant daycare and access to preschool starting when the child is three.

Another benefit is that the father, like the mother, can take paternal leave of absence for up to three years. It is not very widely used, but the mentality is changing.

THE DEFINITIVE EXEMPTION OF NON-FRENCH INCOME FROM CSG AND CRDS
CSG and CRDS are taxes imposed on all income earned in France. For earned income they are collected as part of the social charges, either mentioned on the employee pay slip or included in the social charges for self-employed people. For all other types of income, notably investment portfolio income, the tax office sends a CSG-CRDS bill after all income is declared and the amount of taxes has been calculated.

The tax office has not taken into consideration the situation of foreign unearned income and has issued tax bills related to CSG-CRDS on such income. It was always possible to contest the bill and eventually have it declared void. But many people did not know this and assumed that they had to pay it.

The European Court of Justice ruled on February 26th 2015 that in so acting, the French tax office was illegally collecting money that was not owed and was defrauding people. The French government should reimburse these taxes, and one would hope that the software used to calculate them will be modified so it can take into consideration the origin of unearned income.

A NEW CARTE DE SÉJOUR HAS BEEN CREATED
Normally I wait until pending legislation has been passed and we have a track record at the prefecture before saying anything about new procedures. But it is quite possible that the prefecture will implement this law right away, in which case people could be taken by surprise. Therefore I prefer to talk about it even though the legislative process is not yet finished.

The Interior Minister has said that, for many foreigners living in France renewing the same «  carte de séjour » every year is a waste of time for both the applicant and the prefecture. The message we are getting is that the new type of card should be available much sooner than the carte de résident, which is available after five years of presence in France and is valid for ten years. This new card should be a lot easier to get and would last two to four years  so, close to the three-year card that already exists for the expat salarié en mission and for compétences et talents, for example.

My concern is that the prefecture systematically tends to harden the requirements and apply the strictest possible interpretation of the provisions in a given law. Therefore I see it as highly possible that for these new cards the prefecture will apply requirements close to those for the carte de résident, arguing that the law requires a stable lifestyle and adoption of French values.

These are exactly the provisions voted by the Assemblée nationale on July 21st:
“assiduité et du sérieux de sa participation aux formations prescrites par l’Etat dans le cadre du contrat d’intégration”
Being serious and eager to attend the courses demanded by the administration as part of the integration contract signed when first arrived
ne pas avoir “manifesté de rejet des valeurs essentielles de la société française et de la République.”
Not having shown any rejection of essential French values and the ones inherent the French republic

Other provisions seem a lot more straightforward and should be easily implemented as they require hardly any interpretation:

The spouse as well as the child of a French citizen would get the carte de résident after three years living in France (donne de plein droit au bout de trois ans pour les parents d’enfants français ou les conjoints de Français).

A new status called passeport talent, lasting four years, would replace the current cartes de séjour artistique, scientifique and compétences et talents ( passeport-talents , de quatre ans, qui remplacera la multitude de titres existants pour les étrangers qualifiés ou ayant une compétence particulière (artistes, scientifiques, sportifs).

This is far from a fait accompli. The legislative process is not over. The Sénat still needs to vote on it, and a conservative majority controls it. Therefore a lot could happen, and the result once the legislative process is over could be very different from what is described above.

There may also be a change in the political refugee procedure in an attempt to have it completed within a year and a half. This good intention might not be good news to the political refugee seekers as it is a lot easier to deny a request than to approve it. We will watch carefully to see what happens with the OFPRA procedure.

More information (in French) is available at  www.lemonde.fr/immigration-et-diversite/article/2015/07/22/l-assemblee-adopte-le-titre-de-sejour-pluriannuel-pour-les-etrangers_4693094_1654200.html

TAX OWED ON 2014 INCOME IS DUE SEPTEMBER 15th
The income tax payment schedule in France has three notable dates each year: February 15th, May 15th and September 15th. The system is set up so that on each of these dates, people pay part of the total tax due, usually in three approximately equal instalments. The first two payments are each equal to one-third of the taxes owed the previous year, since the tax collection agency, the Trésor Public, does not know the amount for the current payment year until it is notified by the Centre des Impôts, which receives the income declaration of the previous calendar year in the spring. There is a special office in the Parisian suburb of Créteil for residents of Paris. It used to be that these two divisions of the French fiscal administration had different locations. Today they all share the same buildings, but they still function as separate entities.

THE LINK BETWEEN THE FRENCH INCOME DECLARATION, THE TAXE D’HABITATION AND RENTAL INCOME TAXATION
The income tax declaration requires information about your primary residence; you must state whether you are the owner, a tenant or a guest. There is also a section to be filled out if you moved during the previous or current year. The fact that half of the front page is dedicated to the address shows how important this matter is to the tax office. Among other things, it enables tax officials to levy an appropriate taxe d’habitation(local tax) as well as what is called the -French TV tax- la redevance audiovisuelle in the autumn. A consequence very often neglected by renters is that filing an income declaration in France triggers the issuance of the taxe d’habitation and also the taxation of the rental income the landlord receives. There are so many dubious unwritten leases, sub-leases, cash rental arrangements and so on in Paris and probably other major French cities that many renters get into serious trouble with their landlord over having declared their income. This aspect of things is always overlooked unless a professional identifies the problem. It should not prevent people from doing the right thing, but it helps them get ready for the attack, which too often occurs after the landlord receives a summons to pay taxes on undeclared rental income, along with the associated fines and other penalties. One way of knowing where you stand is whether you paid the taxe d’habitationbefore you declared income for the first time. If you did, then there is no danger. If you did not and you have lived in your current place for a couple of years or more, this is a sign that your landlord is paying this tax and hopes the tax office will ignore that he has a tenant there.

Best regards,

QUESTION

DISCLOSING CONFIDENTIAL FINANCIAL INFORMATION TO A FRENCH BANK

I am French and I have been living in the USA for decades. Recently I was asked by my French savings and loan, the Caisse d’Epargne, for a pay stub and even a copy of my US tax report! I am not borrowing money from the Caisse d’Epargne and I have no intention of giving them what I consider very confidential information. Do you have any advice for me?

QUESTION

DRIVING IN FRANCE WITHOUT A VALID LICENSE

I now live on the Riviera after being in Paris for several years. I have always kept my Michigan driver’s license up to date and I thought that it was valid in France. Recently I was stopped by the police and they told me that I was driving without a license and this was a big deal in France. I panicked and expected a huge fine, to be taken to the police station a complete horror story. The policeman let me go, stating that this was a warning and I needed to shape up fast. I will try to go to Michigan in December to renew my license.

I would like to wish all of you a great summer and a very nice vacation.

“Hit Me with Your Best Shot” is a song written by Canadian singer/songwriter Eddie Schwartz, and recorded by American singer Pat Benatar in 1980 on her second album Crimes of Passion. In view of the recent tragedies, I look at the message and lyrics of this song and I see many violent images. Poetic images are used all the time and they often give a better explanation, a better illustration of a situation than words do. This song is all about a woman in love and there is not an ounce of real brutality in it. All the same, the title and the lyrics use a language that, if taken out of context, would be seen as rather savage.

HATRED – VIOLENCE & INTOLENCE
During my twelve-day vacation in the USA, I visited a longtime friend in Waterbury CT. She invited my wife and me to the 28th Annual Lobsterfest of the Sandy Hook Volunteer Fire & Rescue in Connecticut. While we were there, she introduced us to many former students of Sandy Hook Elementary School, where she had been a student herself. At the end of the dinner, I asked where the school was in which the December 2012 shooting had taken place, and she answered: “Right behind you ” they tore it down to rebuild a new one!

Too often people are blas about this kind of news until they are personally affected in some way. Being a French person living in France, I stay away from the debate regarding mass shootings, which happen all too often in the USA. But because of the personal connection, the Sandy Hook one hit me hard twice. Learning that I was having a great time a few yards away from that school cast a pall on the rest of my evening, to say the least.

On June 17th in Charleston, a white man attacked an African-American church, killing nine people. The incident brought back memories of the Civil Rights movement, of African-American churches burning and people being killed. This is another tragedy, an expression of pure hate.

When my family visited Charleston in 2006, the four of us spent several hours at the Confederate Museum. It is a small space but there was so much I wanted to learn, to understand, as the story is almost always told from the other side. Clearly, this period is still alive for part of the population.

Are all expressions of hatred the same? Absolutely not! At the same time, such intolerance, hatred, discrimination and racism is unacceptable. At roughly the same time as the Charleston shooting, an elementary school on the French island of Corsica was forced to cancel the year-end school party because the teachers received death threats after deciding to have the children sing John Lennon’s song “Imagine” in five languages, including Arabic.

RETENUE  LA SOURCE  INCOME TAX WITHHELD BY THE EMPLOYER
France is one of the last Western countries where income tax is paid by the individual directly and not withheld by the employer. There are many cultural and historical reasons why the French people are reluctant to change this set-up, but all of them combined are not enough to explain why it has not yet been done.

There is only one technical reason that withholding tax would be very difficult to set up. It is called thequotient familial. I believe France is the only country that taxes the family as a group rather than individuals. This means the amount of tax you owe changes if:

• – You get married,
• – You get divorced,
• – You have a child,
• – The child leaves the home,
• – A family member dies, and/or
• – A family member becomes disabled.

These events occur frequently enough in the course of a lifetime that if France had withholding taxes, such happenings could significantly change the amount withheld. A withholding system works well only if there is just a small discrepancy at the end of the year. This is why the French system prefers to have taxes paid in three installments. The first two, in February and in May, are calculated on the amount owed the year before, and the last one on the amount of taxes owed for the year.

Now, however, the government is determined to have a new withholding system go into effect on January 1st 2018. Neither employers nor employees are very happy with this. Employers do not want an extra task to complicate the French pay slip even more. Employees do not want the change, as it will mean the employer will know much more about their private lives. Employees will be required to inform employers right away of any of the abovementioned changes in their life. The employers will then be obligated to inform the tax office to calculate the new amount owed. Considering the level of distrust that French employees have toward their employers, this could create major difficulties.

It is going to be interesting to see if this measure actually goes through. Most likely it will, but I can see a lot of problems arising from it, and there will be a lot of unhappy people in France before everything settles down.

OFFICE STAYS OPEN DURING THE SUMMER!
I have not scheduled trips this summer, but expect some absences between Friday July 17th and Monday August 17th. I will take a few extended week-end trips.

I would like to remind everyone that there is no August issue.

Best regards,

QUESTION

THE FRENCH WEALTH TAX

I am a recent subscriber to your newsletter, which I find very interesting, informative, and frequently helpful. My wife and I own property in Paris, where we live about six months per year  three months in the spring and three months in the autumn. We are mindful of, and studiously comply with, the 90-day tourist visa waiver program limits. Our question concerns the French wealth tax. Could you explain 1) generally, how it works, 2) who is subject to it, when, and to what extent, and 3) whether staying in France more than six months per year increases the risk of exposure to the tax. Thanks for any information you can provide on a subject that everyone seems to have a different, and conflicting, opinion about.

QUESTION

ABOUT THE FRENCH SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER

I would like to make a comment about your explanation of the French social security number in the April 2015 issue.

I received mine long before my wife got hers. The delay was caused, according to what I was told, by the failure of the local town hall in the town where she was born in the USA to provide the sequential line number in the registry book. INSEE sent the letter requesting this vital number and nothing happened until they heard back. To fix the situation I sent two registered letters, one to CPAM asking them to try again and another to the town hall in the USA imploring them to respond to the request when they got it. This Wikipedia article explains that the last three digits correspond to the applicant’s birth order in a given place:

fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Num%C3%A9ro_de_s%C3%A9curit%C3%A9_sociale_en_France

QUESTION

LOSING FRENCH RESIDENCY WHILE BEING MARRIED TO A FRENCH

I’m leaving France to move to Australia in six weeks, but my one-year family carte de séjour is still valid until October. I might want to return to France in a year or two. Do I need to do anything regarding my carte de séjour to make it easier for when I return? Or do I just let it expire? I’m Australian and I am married to a Frenchman.

fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Num%C3%A9ro_de_s%C3%A9curit%C3%A9_sociale_en_France

QUESTION

COMING TO FRANCE AS AN UNMARRIED COUPLE

I am Polish but currently I am living in Australia. In July/August I am planning to move to Paris where I would have a contract job and I will be staying there for a few years. I am thinking of moving to France with my Thai girlfriend but we do not have any official documents for our relationship, as it is fairly new.

I know that I do not need a visa since Poland is a full member of EU now, but I would like to know about her rights. Is there any chance that she could get a long-stay visa in France with the option to work and that this visa could be granted because she is in a relationship with me?

Do I need to legalize this relationship somehow? Our friendship is not long enough to think about marriage but I would think about it if there were no other way.

In French, “Il est battu par les flots, mais ne sombre pas”.
In English, “tossed by the waves but does not sink”.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluctuat_nec_mergitur
-This phrase is the motto of the city of Paris, France. This motto is present in the city coat of arms that depicts a ship floating on a rough sea. Both motto and city arms have their origins in the river Seine boatman’s corporation; this powerful Hanse ruled the city’s trade and commerce as early as the Roman era.

-Although this corporation through the centuries became an entity resembling more a municipal government than a trade organization, they maintained their original arms and motto, and it is for this that the Mairie de Paris bears them still today. It was made official on November 24th, 1853, by the Baron Haussmann.

After a title in French now I have chosen one in Latin! I must be an antique!

I would like to wish all of you a great summer and a very nice vacation.

In the meantime, however, it is not summertime for everybody and teachers are going on strike once again. A law regarding the middle school curriculum and organization was passed recently and most people feel that it buries the practice of the so-called elite languages, such as Latin, Ancient Greek, and German, to mention the most popular.

Choosing this column title as well as the one for the section below, I just wanted to illustrate how much France is a Latin country. Everybody thinks of the culture and its related machismo or romantic aura. So many buildings in France, including, of course, in Paris, bear Latin writing, which indicates how much the French language and culture have their roots in the Latin language and culture. Up to about a century ago, a motto or a coat of arms had to be in Latin and it was assumed that everybody would understand it. Even people of my generation would choose their motto in Latin.

On the other hand, I find that this motto relates perfectly to foreigners living in France, constantly being tossed in all directions, finding the journey way too bumpy for their taste. Years later, living here becomes a smoother ride, maybe like riding on the Bateaux Mouches up and down the Seine River, a very popular way to visit the city.

–TU QUOQUE MI FILI?  CAESAR TO HIS KILLER, BRUTUS: “YOU TOO, MY SON?”
Better known in English as “Et-tu, Brute?”, these were supposedly the last words of the Roman leader Julius Caesar when seeing his friend and protégé Marcus Junius Brutus among his assassins. The line is widely used in Western culture to indicate unexpected betrayal by an ally or friend.

I almost never comment on political events, but what is happening in the French political party called the Front National goes far beyond just politics. Mr. Jean-Marie Le Pen created the party of the far right over 40 years ago, on October 5th 1972. The number of his followers sharply rose about ten years later. He was the challenger in the 2002 presidential election and lost to Jacques Chirac. In short, he made the FN one of the major political parties in France. On January 16th 2011, he stepped down and had his daughter elected as its new leader. Slowly but surely she is trying to soften the image of the party, making it look like it fits into French democracy.

This has led to disagreement between father and daughter that is now totally in the open, and he has now been suspended from the party for making unacceptable statements in the French media. The final twist I find interesting is that his granddaughter, Ms. Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, was elected to the French parliament on June 17th 2012 at age 22, making her the youngest person elected to this position in modern times. She shares many of her grandfather’s viewpoints, but because of her age, among other things, she does not state them the same way, making them appear more acceptable.

Both in the USA and in France, there have been families involved at the highest level of politics for several generations. Kings and queens ruled Europe for centuries. In those days, the positions of power were hereditary. Therefore, regardless of their credentials, the very fact that today the child gets the elected position that the parent had for decades gives the impression that democracy is not well served, as it looks like a hereditary system.

The fact that a political party evolves with new leadership is very common. The fact that the leadership stays in the same family, with just a change of generation, is far less common, and some question the democratic nature of the FN party. The message of the party for a long time was anti-democratic, racist and anti-Semitic. Polls indicate it is now one of the top political parties in France. The FN family feud is quite scary because of the direct consequences it could have on French politics and on the future of France.

One last comment: many commentators in the French media used this Latin quote as if the entire public would understand it. I doubt that many in the younger generations know it.

4 WEEKS OUT OF 5 HAD A NATIONAL HOLIDAY BETWEEN APRIL 27th AND MAY 29th
” Les ponts du mois de mai “
It feels like this topic comes up every year but nothing changes much. This year four national holidays all fell within one month. They were:

May 1st, which is Labor Day in most of the world

May 8th, which is Victory in Europe Day, celebrating the end of WWII

May 14th, the feast of the Ascension, the Thursday falling 40 days after Easter, marking Jesus’s ascending into Heaven

May 25th, the Monday after Pentecost Sunday, marking the coming of the Holy Spirit to Jesus’s disciples

There are many ways to define whether a nation is Christian. Measuring church attendance is clearly one of them, and France has a very low rating there. On the other hand, celebrating Christian events so that people can freely attend church services clearly indicates that, at one point, the country was deeply Christian in France, Roman Catholic.

To illustrate my point, these are the French national holidays for 2015.

• – New Year’s Day, January 1st
• – Easter Monday, April 6th
• – Easter Monday, April 6th
• – Labor Day, May 1st
• – V-E Day, May 8th
• – Feast of the Ascension, May 14th
• – Pentecost Monday, May 25th
• – Bastille Day, July 14th
• – Feast of the Assumption, August 15th
• – All Saints Day, November 1st
• – Armistice/Veterans’ Day, November 11th
• – Christmas Day, December 25th

Out of a total of eleven holidays, six are Christian celebrations. France is known as a country with a very strong Christian tradition. Are these holidays pertinent in the 21st century? It is not for me to say.

OFFICE TO CLOSE FOR A NON-SUMMER VACATION AND STAY OPEN DURING MOST OF THE SUMMER!
My office will be closed from the evening of Wednesday June 3rd until 9AM on Wednesday June 17th. As always, I will be reachable by email for emergencies and important matters. The service I offer of receiving mail for clients will continue while the office is closed. I have not scheduled trips this summer, but expect some absences between Friday July 17th and Monday August 17th. I will let individual clients know how to receive or retrieve their mail during this period.

Best regards,

QUESTION

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN JEUNE TRAVAILLEUR AND CARTE DE SÉJOUR SALARIÉ

I am an American, totally fluent in French and in Spanish, and I am coming up to my first renewal for my titre de séjour as a jeune professionnel. My current employer has asked for my immigration ID properly through la DIRECCTE. The first year, I was on a jeune professionnel visa. Now as I am approaching renewal I have received a great job offer  similar responsibilities but higher pay, more interesting professionally  and while it does not say anywhere that I cannot renew with a new employer it seems that it would be greatly complicated to do so.
My question is, do you know if I could renew my carte de séjour with my current employer, and then quit once it’s been approved to move to the other company? My only concern is about the new employer needing to potentially re-ask la DIRECCTE to hire me all over again, which I would like to avoid if possible because of time constraints.

QUESTION

DIPLOMATIC STATUS IS NOT IMMIGRATION STATUS AS SUCH

I am Nigerian and would like your advice. I came to France several years ago to take the job of a nanny working for a Nigerian diplomat in his home. Now the embassy is offering me a job as a clerk. The embassy applied for me to obtain this right to work, and the French administration sent a negative answer and kept my carte spéciale. I would like to know if there is any legal way to secure my job with the right paperwork without having to return to Nigeria and apply from there. The job is urgent and they will offer it to someone else instead.

Through the Looking-Glass is a novel written by Lewis Carroll in 1871. It is the sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.The book starts with Alice sliding behind the mirror on top of the mantle and seeing what is happening around her from a completely different angle.

Both of Lewis Carroll’s books take place in a fantasyland. Settling in a foreign country very often gives the impression of landing in a place where the rule of a crazy, vicious queen creates complete chaos.

In 1980, I spent a week at the University of Notre Dame, on my first trip to the USA. I attended an English literature class, where I studied these two books. This trip was also where I first experienced culture shock as a young French adult. Most of the topics addressed in this issue deal with the impression that the French administration is either condescending or erratic and confusing.

IN FRANCE, FOREIGNERS EARN THEIR RIGHTS THE HARD WAY
A reader writes, quoting the April 2015 issue: -No one is born French; one learns to be French by sharing the values that France stands for.-
“He is not referring to the ability to hold a French passport, but his vision of what the ideal French nation should look like. Understanding what he means would help foreigners feel much better about handling the required paperwork!”
She continues:
-This reminds me of my naturalization at the French Consulate of San Francisco with my French husband in 1997. My husband made an offhand comment about French citizenship being my right, and was promptly reproved by the consular official: “Ah, non, Monsieur! être français n’est pas un droit, c’est un privilège!

-I have always felt privileged to be a French citizen and the paperwork was all worth it. Got a nice welcome letter from M. Chirac as well, welcoming me to the French nation. 

MY ANSWER
Indeed, the French administration makes sure you feel that you are granted French citizenship – or any other immigration status as a foreigner, for that matter – because they have decided to do so and not because you have a right to obtain it, even though you know you fully comply with the requirements. In those days, the naturalization process was pretty automatic, but this never deterred the administration from making you feel like you got it by the seat of your pants.

Today the issue is really different. The current prime minister was born not French but Spanish, and was naturalized when he was 20. Therefore his vision derives from that, and just being born French is not enough. In his mind what makes you French is the fact you know and respect the legacy of centuries of French history. He expects French people to respect and therefore endorse what France stands for. Thus he goes far beyond what was commonly said before. Of course, he has to, because the far right is attacking him for not being French enough.

I will be interested to see how far he goes in politics, since for the first time that I can remember, a member of the French government who is associated with the left has proclaimed how truly proud he is to be French. Since he was not born French, his message is much more authentic than such a message generally is.

RENEWAL OF THE CARTE DE RÉSIDENT SHOULD BE AUTOMATIC
Another reader writes:
-I finally went through the 3rd or 4th renewal of my carte de résident with the Parisian préfecture after nearly a year of procedure started in March 2014 by submitting the application in the mail. I got the card, after lots of anxiety and correspondence, in early March this year, 2015. The expiration of the card was in July 2014.

-It was quite a slog but I hope this is the last one, as I do not want to be around as a late ninety-year-old man or, heaven forbid, a centenarian after this card expires.

MY ANSWER
Here is a perfect example of the difference between what the law says and what happens at the préfecture.The law on this topic has not changed for decades; renewal of the carte de résident is automatic, except in three cases:

• – 1. The applicant has served a criminal sentence.
• – 2. He/she poses a threat to national security as a terrorist.
• – 3. The applicant has been resident elsewhere for over three years.

If you do not fit one of those situations then you know for sure that the card will be renewed. That is the legal position.

I recently accompanied a client to the central office of the Paris préfecture because her carte de résidentwas being renewed. I was able to get some explanation of the current situation from the civil servant we saw. This person said that the office in charge of this task had been reorganized and new management appointed. As a result, within a few months it got totally disorganized, to the point that what usually took three to four months quickly went to six, then to a year. According to this civil servant, there is no way of knowing when it will be back to normal. So this service is not answering the phone or replying to emails. Although there is a cTake-A-Number ticket dispenser on site, taking a number in order to see one of the préfecture employees does not mean one will automatically be served, as this machine is either for the use of people who already have appointments or who are applying for other immigration papers that do not necessitate an appointment. With some persuasion, we managed to start the conversation and be reassured as to where the récépissé was issued, i.e., at one of the Centres de Réception des Etrangers. (C.R.E.). It is unwise to stay in France with expired papers for several months, even for Americans.

All I can say in response to the rest of your comment is that we can only hope the current problem will have been fixed ten years from now!

THE HARSHEST IMMIGRATION LAW WAS ENFORCED BETWEEN 1993 AND 1997
-Something strange happened to us too, still another reader writes on this topic. We applied as a family for French citizenship because my former husband wanted to.

-We were at the final step when the Minister of Interior, Mr. Charles Pasqua, declared zero immigration and this very tough law was approved. An elusive letter said they were not actually refusing us but we should wait and start all over again in three years!

Well, I said a few chosen words and threw all the paperwork in the garbage, feeling that I did not really need citizenship to carry on my life in France.

MY ANSWER
This must have happened exactly as it happened to me, under the so-called Pasqua-Debré laws, which were in effect in 1993-97. I faced the same attitude coming from a completely different angle. The painful incident I described in the last issue occurred during that time.

FRENCH INCOME TAX: TIME TO DECLARE AND PAY
Regarding the more mundane topic of income tax, I would like to remind everybody that the paper version of the 2014 income declaration must be filed in France before May 19th and the second partial income tax payment (deuxième tiers) is to be paid before May 15th (midnight, in both cases). The forms have been available since April 15th on the website www.impots.gouv.fr. It is now possible to file your declaration on this website, provided that it is not your first time filing (you need your tax ID number and some access codes).

If you file online, the deadline is later. The schedule depends on your postal code:

• – départements 01 to 19 must file by midnight on May 26th,
• – départements 20 to 49 by June 2nd and
• – départements 50 or higher by June 9th.

An important reminder: if you are a French fiscal resident (i.e., basically if you hold a carte de séjour or an immigration visa validated with an OFII stamp), you must declare your worldwide income to the French authorities even if you do not earn any income in France, do not have the right to work in France or truly do not work in France. Just because there is no penalty to pay does not mean it is legal to neglect to file.

The four situations that define a French fiscal resident are:

• – 1. Staying in France for 183 days in a calendar year, whether you have legal immigration status or not.
• – 2. Having immediate family members who reside in France (a spouse and/or children).
• – 3. Having a French employer.
• – 4. Running a French business, even something like tutoring schoolchildren in English.

OFFICE TO CLOSE FOR A NON-SUMMER VACATION!
My office will be closed from the evening of Wednesday June 3rd until 9AM on Wednesday June 17th. As always, I will be reachable by email for emergencies and important matters. The service I offer of receiving mail for clients will continue while the office is closed. I will let individual clients know how to receive or retrieve their mail during this period.

Best regards,

QUESTION

THE FRENCH SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER

I am a self-employed American living in France and I cannot create a personal account with CIPAV, RSI and URSAFF, because apparently my French social security number is either incomplete or perhaps not right.
Can you advise me on how to get attestations from any of them saying that I am paid up, as I need them for the préfecture to renew my carte de séjour?

QUESTION

CARTE DE SEJOUR VIE PRIVEE ET FAMILIALE AFTER A BREAK-UP

I am American who was PACSed for five years, and I recently de-PACSed with my French partner. My carte de séjour expires in November. I am a student and will be done with my internship in mid-June. Do I have to change my status now, or only when I apply for another visa? I am afraid to change status because I have heard so many horror stories of the préfecture deporting expats because they believe they are cheating the system. I just want to stay until the end of the visa and I will leave. What are the necessary steps I need to take so that I can stay until the end of my visa?

“Mistreated” is a song by the British rock band Deep Purple taken from their 1974 album Burn. I personally prefer the version done by another British rock band, Rainbow, in 1976. That shows my musical preferences, and I assume there are still a few fans of this 70s music around to understand.

Most of the topics addressed in this issue deal with people feeling mistreated, victims of someone else’s wrongdoing. I even tell a story that happened to me. Such situations can be traumatic, even pushing some people to move back home and give up on France. Crooks and scumbags exist in all countries, and they almost always choose easy targets: newly arrived foreigners are ideal prey. But it is possible to move to France and still stay safe, especially if you do not have romantic, idealized expectations and plan the move down to the last detail. There are professionals specialized in advising foreigners in France, and following their advice helps people avoid the most common problems. The following email from a longtime reader illustrates just this point.

Dear M. Taquet,

First, I want to thank you for your regular email columns, which I find very helpful and insightful. I retired three years ago and we moved full-time to the holiday apartment we have owned for 25 years in the beautiful Alsatian region of France. I started receiving your emails before our move and they have been extremely helpful in understanding the French system. I feel very lucky because we have had no real problem with getting our carte de séjour, French driver’s license, and last year, our Carte Vitale.

ERECTING BUILDINGS FOR TAX REASONS AND FAILING TO FIX THE HOUSING CRISIS IN FRANCE
I need to give some background in order to explain the crazy situation with housing in France. The Marshall Plan poured a sizable amount of money into helping rebuild the European countries after WWII, although France did not get a lot of money this way. It took about 30 years, from 1945 to 1975, for France to rebuild and to get rid of the slums on the outskirts of major cities. The last one to be destroyed was in the city of Nanterre, the préfecture of the Hauts de Seine department: it was located where the préfecture building stands today. During this period, a lot of tall residential buildings were constructed; they were very often low-income housing projects, H.L.M. They were financed almost entirely with public money. At the same time, the private sector was making great efforts to build individual houses for more affluent people.

A new policy put in place in 1975 created a significant tax credit for people who invested in rental properties. This was a popular move for the affluent and, for a long time, it worked well enough that many university cities benefited from the program and were able to lodge students, for example, since France had hardly any campuses with dorms. But, probably because of greed more than anything else, the program started to derail completely in two interacting ways.

1 – The investors ended up being less and less affluent and therefore less knowledgeable in how to invest money, since they were just being lured by the tax credit.

2– The buildings were situated in less and less desirable locations, making them a bad investment since fewer people were interested in living there.
No. 2 raises an important point: the apartment must be rented, as it is the rent money that creates the tax credit. Today, among my clients who have invested in products based on this program, all of them are losing large amounts of money. Here are some illustrations of how bad the situation has become:

Vichy, one of the most famous spa towns in France, now has the country’s largest ratio of unoccupied rental housing, 22%  that is, 4,700 unoccupied units in a town of 25,000 people. Historical reasons, linked to WWII, could partly explain this situation, but that is not the case for Nice (12.8%), Avignon (14.3%), or Mulhouse (13.6%).

At the same time, laws passed in recent decades to increasingly protect tenants have led to another oddity: apartments in desirable locations stay empty because the owners do not want to take the risk of renting. For example, Paris has some 98,000 apartments declared vacant, about 7.3%, and Lyon has 25,000, about 9%.

In late 1998, this crazy situation led the government to issue decree No. 98-1249, by which a tax on vacant apartments was created as of 1999. During 2012 and 2013, it produced revenue that increased from 38 to 130 million euros, and the sum could reach 200 million euros in 2015. Clearly, owners would rather pay taxes than rent. Since this segment of the population  private individuals who own several pieces of real estate  usually abhors taxes and is quite creative in avoiding them, that says a lot about the fierce resistance to renting under current legislation. Common sense would dictate that owners receive lower tax bills and that more apartments are rented. This requires finding the right balance between tenants rights and those of landlords. But because this topic is as politically sensitive in France as some of the worst issues in the USA, we will see the opposite, with more apartments sitting empty and more tax revenue coming in for this very reason, and the problem continuing to be unsolved if not worsened!
http://www.lemonde.fr/logement/article/2015/02/23/ces-villes-minees-par-les-logements-vacants_4581607_1653445.html#lRHR6vQDjk8JjfS2.99

MY WIFE ATTENDED THE FRENCH NATIONALITY CEREMONY
My wife, Paula, received notice that her request for French nationality as the wife of a Frenchman had been approved and we attended the official ceremony on March 26th in a special meeting room, called la salle Marianne at the préfecture, where she received the government decree of naturalization. One oddity linked to this procedure is that the administration created a French birth certificate for her. Many people misunderstand this, taking it to mean that France wants to erase everything from your foreign past. That is absolutely not the case. In France the birth certificate has a margin on which such life events as marriage, divorce, PACS, etc., are written. Mine includes the court decision ruling that I am French, and my marital status. Hers simply states that she is married.

France has so often changed its requirements and procedures for naturalization that it is difficult to keep track of how it has evolved. Almost 20 years ago to the day after we had moved from the suburbs to Paris’s 10th arrondissement and our first child, Lucille, was born, I started the process by going to the Tribunal d’Instance at City Hall. I went there with birth certificates for both Paula and myself, our French marriage license, our livret de famille (family register) and my military file, showing that I was a lieutenant in the non-active reserve (it had already been 10 years since I had served).

In those days, the procedure had been very restrictive for four years or so. The civil servant looked at my birth certificate and asked if I could submit my Danish mother’s naturalization paper. I answered that I had never seen it and that, in those days, the wife automatically became French. So he looked at my father’s birth certificate and asked to see my grandparents’ marriage license and my grandfather’s birth certificate, as my grandmother was born Spanish. He added that, just to be on the safe side, I should come with my French great-grandparents’ marriage license and birth certificates to make sure my grand-father and therefore my father were definitely born French. (As I recently explained, even in the early 20th century, when my grandfather was born, a child born in France was not automatically French.)

Faced with this enormous request for official documents, I pulled out the decree that made me a lieutenant, along with the latest change-of-address report I had sent to the Army, and asked if these documents had any weight. He looked at them with great contempt, and warned me pompously that even if I had been able to fool the French Army and the Saint Cyr military academy into thinking I was French, I would not be able to fool him. I felt so humiliated that I left without a word. A few weeks later, I filed a petition with the Tribunal d’Instance asking it to rule on whether I was French so I could have a definitive official document that would spare me another such painful experience. A couple of months later, I received the appropriate ruling in the mail, but by then both of us had lost interest in the process. It took almost 20 years to start the procedure again. Everything had changed and for once for the better: the file was quite simple compared to what was asked for before. About a year after we submitted the request, the positive decision came in the mail..

BUYING TAX STAMPS ON LINE
This is another illustration of how the French administration is moving into the 21st century. For the first time, certain timbres fiscaux, or revenue stamps, can be bought online. Such stamps are the way fees are paid for certain administration services. The ones needed to get a new French passport can be now purchased throughhttp://timbres.impots.gouv.fr with a credit or debit card. The transaction has an ID number, which you give to the préfecture or City Hall so they can get the stamps delivered to them.

The traditional way to buy them is at a tax office (centre de finances publiques) or a tobacconist. The new method is part of a general simplification of the administration approved in 2013. The online sale of passport tax stamps is clearly an experiment, and I can see this service expanded to all revenue stamps.

By the way, getting the carte de séjour always entails some sort of fee, paid by such stamps. Now some of them can be quite expensive  maximum 550€! There is a cashier in the Paris préfecture’s main building near the métro stop City and it is easy to buy stamps  one can even use a credit card. It is difficult to find a place aside from the préfecture that sells the highest-value stamps, i.e., over 50€. I advise my clients to be efficient with their time and to go there even if their process has been handled by a branch of the préfecture elsewhere. But some of them are so traumatized by the times they had to go to the central office that they cannot force themselves to enter the dreaded building even though it will save them hours of searching for another place that sells the stamps. I am no psychiatrist and therefore I do not try to treat this trauma.

OFFICE TO CLOSE FOR A NON-SUMMER VACATION!
My office will be closed from the evening of Wednesday June 3rd until 9AM on Wednesday June 17th. As always, I will be reachable by email for emergencies and important matters. The service I offer of receiving mail for clients will continue while the office is closed. I will let individual clients know how to receive or retrieve their mail during this period.

Best regards,

QUESTION

FRENCH NATURALIZATION PROCEDURE – WHAT HAS REALLY CHANGED

I would have found the March 2015 article a lot more interesting if you had specified just how much easier it is now to become French. I have been living here legally for over 30 years and currently hold a carte de résident, which is valid for ten years. I would love to get French nationality if it did not involve so much paperwork. Your link at the end just sent us to an article with statistics. This is no help at all. Could you be a bit more specific please?

QUESTION

WRONG FISCAL STATUS FOR THE CARTE DE SEJOUR LINKED TO A LICENSED PROFESSION

I tried to work as an architect in France a few years ago and there was a lot of confusion between my French lawyer, the préfecture and my French accountant. The latter one advised me to create a corporation called SASU (société par actions simplifiée unipersonnelle). The préfecture considered my position within the SASU to be the manager of a commercial corporation and therefore saw my profession as that of a commerçant, (a merchant). Unfortunately, according to the Order of Architects, that is incompatible with working as an architect in France. Yet the Order accepted the registration of a SAS or SASU (which is basically a company created by an individual rather than a group). This was clearly nuts: the préfecture gives you papers with the term commerçant on them, which is against the “regulation of the profession; and the Order of Architects accepts the registration as a commerçant under a SASU, against their own code of practice!
A lawyer whom I took on later said I should have had profession libérale status. It was the darn accountant who came up with the SASU and sold me on it, thus increasing his workload and fees, though I can’t say that was his intent. If the business had been successful, perhaps the SASU would have been a good structure for accounting and tax reasons. You don’t need to respond to this, unless you like, as it is water under the bridge.

I am now waiting for a final contract from a firm offering me a position in France and am taking note that it would be safe to stay put in the US and imagine a longer waiting period than they hope for from their side.

I could, I guess, be in France for the 89 days allowed with no visa, not get paid (or have some honorarium paid to my US account, as I will then be mostly working from the Swiss office), and just return to New York for my visa application appointment at the New York consulate once the permis de travail request from the employer has been approved, as it seems there are no exceptions to applying from one’s home’ city. That is costly (an extra round-trip ticket, visible stamps in my passport as well). What do you think of all this?

Close to You is the second album by The Carpenters, released in August 1970. The song named “(They Long to Be) Close to You” is a popular song written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. It was first recorded by Richard Chamberlain and released as a single in 1963. The version performed by the Carpenters is the best known one.

Clearly there is a feeling of love for France and all things French when a foreigner decides to sell everything to move to Paris. Sometimes this powerful feeling blurs the reality of living in a foreign country and disappointments come shortly thereafter. At times, the scrutiny of the French administration feels very intrusive to Americans who live in France; such Americans frequently have a typical knee-jerk reaction and want to protect their rights to privacy. The fact is, in many ways, France guarantees less privacy than does the USA, although it can be debated whether this is still true in today’s world.

On a much lighter note, people who have lived in France for the last 30 years can see the evolution of the French administration, which has become more accessible and, most of the time, more understanding in its dealings with the common man. I am not sure that recent immigrants would agree with this evaluation, as they generally are very intimidated when confronted with officials at the préfecture, the CPAM branch, or the tax office.

MS. HARRIET “HAT” STERSTEIN HAS DIED EARLY DECEMBER, OWNER OF MON BON CHIEN, THE BAKERY FOR DOGS IN PARIS
In my meetings at the office and my ministry at the church, I have helped people with so many different projects that I often feel each new client brings an opportunity to discover something totally original.

I remember the first meeting with Hat in my office. Her project of opening the first bakery for dogs in Europe sounded challenging to say the least, but it fascinated me, too, since I could see all the obstacles that needed to be overcome to open the shop and create a viable business. Several years after our first meeting, she told me that I was the only professional who took her plan seriously and was willing to work with her, which was why she chose me. I learned early on in life, from a project in archaeological aviation, that what makes the difference is not how crazy an idea sounds but how sound the business model is. If the revenue exceeds the costs by a sufficient margin, then it is worth creating the business; the rest is irrelevant as long as the business itself is legal.

I spent some of the most challenging and exhilarating moments of my professional life with Hat. Even today I recall our appointment with the inspection vétérinaire – the authority that grants the health permit to sell prepared food in a given location – as one of the five most gripping meetings of my professional life. I also have countless fond memories of her years in Paris, especially some of the parties she hosted at her shop. Rest in peace, Hat you are missed.

IT IS NOW EASIER TO BECOME FRENCH
Manuel Valls, France’s prime minister and former interior minister, has often stated his intention of making it easier to adopt French nationality, not by changing the rules but by redefining the requirements so that more people qualify. I remind my readers that he was born Spanish (Catalan) and was naturalized later in life. Before informing my readers that he was as good as his word, I wanted solid data proving it. There were 77,335 new French people last year, an increase of about 10% across all categories. Thus the improvement is not striking, but it is there. Keep in mind that it still takes over a year from the time the file is submitted until the decision is made. And, depending on the préfecture, there can also be a rather long delay to get an appointment.
http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2015/01/15/immigration-baisse-desregularisations-en-2014-hausse-des-naturalisations_4556914_3224.html#

PARIS CITY HALL IS BACK ON THE WARPATH AGAINST SHORT-TERM RENTALS
Without going into detail about the “war” on short-term rentals declared a few years ago by the previous mayor of Paris, Mr. Delanoë “rentals referred to in French as locations touristiques orlocations saisonnières ” I would like to remind readers that the legislation in effect until December 31st 2014 specified that the owner of an apartment used for such a purpose had to change the zoning to commercial so as to comply with zoning regulations, since this type of rental was treated like a tiny hotel made up of one suite. The standard procedure for changing zoning in Paris from residential to commercial involves turning a space of equivalent size from commercial to residential elsewhere in Paris. The limited experience I had with people trying to follow the law was that it was impossible. The procedure never went through, as there was always something missing.

Now a new law requires such trade-offs to be made within the same arrondissement. Paris is divided into 20 arrondissements, which correspond to the 20 postal codes in the city. Tourist rentals are concentrated in the first eight, that is, the central part, covering the Etoile and the Champs-Elysées, the Madeleine, the Opéra, the Place de la République, the Place de la Bastille, the Gare Montparnasse, Invalides and the Eiffel Tower. These are the priciest neighborhoods in Paris, which makes such swaps even more difficult and costly. There is also another new requirement  when turning a commercial space into a residential one, for every square meter of short-term rental apartment two square meters of commercial space must be turned into an apartment.

Meanwhile, the city is buying office spaces without business tenants, renovating them and turning them into modern apartments  which means the city is also collecting valuable real estate that could be used for additional vacation rentals. These can be sold: Le Monde says the market price ranges from 500€ per square meter to 2,000€ for premium locations where most short-term rentals are. The city can be expected to earn a fair amount of money this way, given the demand. Still, as I have often explained, the request to change these apartments into short-term rental units has close to no chance of success if city hall follows the same policy. The applicant must buy the real estate before submitting the request, so the money will be earned by city hall. Furthermore, if the request is successful, it will be difficult to sell the re-zoned spaces as lodgings, since they are zoned as hotel suites. Nevertheless, just as city hall is quite lenient when the change goes from commercial to residential, the same applies if the owner decides to live there permanently, for example.

My last comment may sound like it is motivated by pure cynicism, but it just reflects the reality of some aspects of French politics. A team of twenty civil servants was created, only five of whom have police clearance to enter lodgings. Yet city hall estimates that at least 20,000 apartments were being used for short-term rental in 2011 and about 3,000 new ones are added to the market yearly. I cannot see how a team of twenty people can tackle the job efficiently. At this point, official sanctions against the practice are more a calculated risk than a serious threat. I would estimate that each person on the team is responsible for at least 1,500 apartments, since the city’s figures are probably too low.
http://abonnes.lemonde.fr/logement/article/2014/12/24/paris-fait-la-chasse-aux-meubles-detourisme_4545803_1653445.html

Best regards,

QUESTION

HOW DOES THE PRÉFECTURE FIND OUT THE AUTO-ENTREPRENEUR STATUS?

I am an American working in France with a CDI with a salarié immigration status, which I renew every year. I recently registered for auto-entrepreneur status and I am looking for work this way. I am bound by an exclusivity clause (clause d’exclusivité) but when I check my contract it does not say anything about auto-entrepreneur . So I am not sure if I have the right to do this or not. My friend has been in a similar situation for a year, and he renewed his salarié visa with CDI and continues to work as auto-entrepreneur too. He has not faced any problems so far. Do I risk anything with my employer by having an activity on the side?

QUESTION

CAN ONE SPEED UP THE FRENCH ADMINISTRATION?

I received a French speeding ticket, then a second notice that I was late paying, at my home in the USA. Right now I am stuck at a point where I can’t pay the fine through the website dedicated for this (at the original or increased amount) and I am waiting for some sort of additional correspondence in the mail. I was doing some research online about the situation and cannot find how I can pay without waiting for the next step, which will be even more expensive. Do you have any suggestions on how to proceed?

French custom dictates that New Year’s wishes can be expressed until the end of January, so I have managed it a few hours before the deadline.

The New Year comes for many of us with a long list of good resolutions; it is the visible line of entering the New Year that makes the desire to improve so strong. If only decisions in life were always that easy to make, the line that easy to spot. The reality is so different, especially while living in a foreign country: What is the right thing to do? Whom should I trust? What do I want now? (this often means What is available for me?) Am I safe? The perpetual absence of road signs other than on the streets, fuels the confusion, exacerbates the feeling of being in danger. Obtaining legal status after years of fighting is nothing less than a paradigm shift that is never anticipated and for which the person is never prepared enough.

Small children for centuries have played hopscotch: the lines are drawn on the sidewalk and they hop from one place to another. As responsible adults, good parents, we think we know where we are going. As foreigners, struggling in a foreign country, we too often look like unsteady children playing a game, cursing because we do not see where we are landing!

FREEDOM OF SPEECH – THE ATTACK IN PARIS ON WEDNESDAY JANUARY 7th
I drafted this entire issue, including the title, before New Year’s Eve, so I thought I was done. But now, for weeks France has been faced with a powerful and traumatic crisis after the attack on the magazine Charlie Hebdo. A lot, maybe too much, has been said about this.

In an attempt to explain to friends in the USA what had just happened, I quickly posted on Facebook that the shooting could be compared to someone gunning down the team of Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show at Comedy Central. In short, eight people living in France were killed because they mocked, caricatured and ridiculed, which was their job. They were entertainers, comics, cartoonists more than journalists, and they never referred themselves as journalists. They had no agenda, especially no political agenda, other than ridiculing any kind of authority. Any one drawing, picked out of the magazine in isolation, could appear to be very offensive, ridiculing a minority, but if one went through the entire magazine one would see all three monotheist religions, the army, the police, schools and the government ridiculed one way or the other, usually more than once per issue.

I would like to add some historical perspective to this. With Mr. Honoré Daumier arose the modern political cartoon in the early 19th century. This is what Wikipedia states about him: Honoré Daumier (February 26, 1808 – February 10, 1879) was a French printmaker, caricaturist, painter, and sculptor, whose many works offer commentary on social and political life in France in the 19th century.

« Daumier produced over 500 paintings, 4000 lithographs, 1000 wood engravings, 1000 drawings and 100 sculptures. A prolific draftsman, he was perhaps best known for his caricatures of political figures and satires on the behavior of his countrymen, although posthumously the value of his painting has also been recognized. »

So it is safe to say that French political cartoons are almost 200 year old. This is a deeply rooted tradition. Look at Daumier’s cartoons and see how modern they are, keeping their razor edge after nearly two centuries.

Before that there was the position of the fou du roi, the jester, which as Wikipedia tells us was a historical entertainer employed to entertain a ruler or other nobility in medieval or Tudor times. «  Much of the entertainment was performed in a comic style and many jesters made contemporary jokes in word or song about people or events well known to their audiences. » The jester appointed to the king made jokes about the rulers of the time, even mocking the king himself to his face.

Thus, even before the concept of freedom of speech was conceived as a right that people should enjoy, France had developed a tradition of mocking the rulers and the authorities of the country. At the same time, especially since the 20th century, France and many other countries in Europe have put limits on the freedom of speech. My explanation is that these countries experienced first hand the results of Nazi propaganda and wanted to be able to block any further racist propaganda right away, should such reappear. Many American media outlets and public figures over the years have strongly criticized France for putting such strong limits on this freedom, since the American view is that it should be as unlimited as possible.
Yet very few American media outlets have shown or printed recent Charlie Hebdo cartoons because they were too extreme for the American public and would not have been understood. At the same time, very strong support came from the American people and American media because it was clear to them that the essence of freedom of speech had been attacked in a deadly way, and it was not just France that was attacked.

I believe that the French philosopher Voltaire (pen name of François-Marie Arouet, November 21st 1694 – May 30th 1778) best captured the very essence of freedom of speech in France and many countries in the world.

His « Treatise on Tolerance »,published in 1763, chastised the Catholic authorities in France for showing intolerance toward religious minorities, likening it to the persecution faced by early Christian communities. He also argued that the personal beliefs of one group or another could not stand above the law of the land.

As he explained it, this freedom had to go both ways to fully exist. One has the right to argue, dispute, express, publicize an opinion. In other words, I have the right to dispute your ideas that are the opposite of mine, but I also have the obligation to fight for you if your right to express your opinions, which I strongly disagree with, is being taken away from you. Interestingly, since the tragedy, this book has become a best-seller in France.

Most French people normally do not buy Charlie Hebdo and are critical of its contents. Yet about 4 million of them showed up in the streets of Paris and many other cities in France on Sunday January 11th to show their complete support of the idea that this magazine has the right to exist and to express opinions they quite often disagree with.

France has the right to freedom of speech in its DNA, just as the USA and several other countries do. But that right is lived differently in each of those countries. Let’s also keep in mind that a large number of countries have no such rights.

THE DIFFICULT CHOICE VICTIMS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE FACE
Below is the testimony of a victim of domestic violence who initially chose not to press charges against her French husband, hoping in this way to focus on rebuilding herself faster and better. The consequence is that she waited so long that the statute of limitations under French law applies and no prosecution is now possible. This is a dilemma I have heard often. It illustrates how broken down inside the person is. Anger pushes for punishment, for the idea that the world should know that he is the villain and she is the victim, and that therefore she should press charges. For so long she has heard that she was doing everything wrong, that she was worthless, and so on. The desire for healing, on the other hand, makes it seem better to just stay away from him and everything about him, let go, or on occasion even flee but in doing so, the victim far too often gives up rights and protection. The need to be left alone is very important, as it is a positive way out of the condition. As the statement below shows, however, both have serious limits, as too often the perpetrator, even today, gets away with it 100% and most women struggle for a very long time before they are functional enough, inside and outside, to overcome their trauma.

Pressing charges can be seen as getting closure, because if the state finds the husband guilty it validates the wife as being truly the victim. This logic, however, also creates two very serious problems. First, the victim feels even worse and sometimes is completely incapable of handling a verdict of not guilty. The second is that whatever sentence may be passed is never enough to make up for the pain and suffering felt during the violence itself and during the related post-traumatic stress syndrome, which often lasts for years after the violence stops. One should not forget that a criminal trial means detailing all the physical violence and therefore reliving it, which can be highly traumatic.

Not pressing charges, in my experience, prevents the victim from getting full closure. Even though the sentence is always insufficient, it is still a strong and official signal that there is a perpetrator and a victim. The other issue is that leaving on your own and working alone through the hardship of recreating a life is extremely difficult. Just to start with, the husband can stall the divorce proceedings. There is also a chance that leaving does not produce the hoped-for results. It often feels like adding insult to injury. This is especially true when the woman leaves home to escape violence and is found guilty of abandoning the family home, which can only be disputed if some violence has been done. Often the woman cannot fight effectively during the divorce proceedings without producing definitive domestic violence documentation, which can only be obtained for sure by opening a criminal investigation. The end result is too often that the self-reconstruction of oneself is poorly done, and since the statute of limitations is three years for felony charges and ten years for a crime, the victim often finds that it is too late to press charges against an abusive partner.

I do not believe there is a right or a wrong choice in these circumstances. I see people struggling for many years about whether they should have made one or the other choice. I have reached the conclusion that the victim needs both at the same time, which for a great many of them is beyond what they can handle.

HER TESTIMONY
I have been a victim of domestic violence. The last time was Sunday November 15, 2009, when my husband thrust three handfuls of a potato dish into my mouth and throat, forcing me to swallow them. My call for help was heard by the children who were in their room and by a neighbor who rang at our door and helped me get up from the chair I was seated in the whole time. When the neighbor warned that she would not accept any violence, my husband expressly stated that there was no violence going on in the apartment.

I did not file a complaint.
The following day I went to work Despite my attempt to conceal the signs, several colleagues noticed my face was swollen and two pushed me to see a doctor and file a complaint, since it wasn ’t the first time they had noticed marks. I was put on sick leave. I mostly suffered psychologically and thought that if I was treated in the way it was because it was all I was worth and thought of drowning myself in the bathtub.

Of a sound and reasonable family, I had a burst of lucidity and scolded myself as my mother would have done – you do not commit suicide for a broken heart! – and went out to see the social worker for help and shelter. She and the person at the center she called both listened and were very understanding, welcoming and professional, but there was no room for me. I understood then that if I wanted to work my way out, I could count only on myself. Sheerly through good luck, I was first able to temporarily move to a relative’s apartment before I rented my own apartment as of January 2010.

The process of « working my way out » has been very long (and is not over) despite my best efforts. For a while, on top of working weekly with psychologists at a medical center since 2006, I was seeing a psychiatrist-psychotherapist. During this same period, I also set a rule that I should spend at least one moment I could really appreciate every weekend, in order to help myself to value life and find pleasure in it again. I worked very hard at not being a victim, and I put a lot of importance in not sinking and going down, but in « working my way out, » but four years later, the pain and the difficulties (e.g., just thinking correctly) are still there.

The reason for this most likely lies in the fact that while I was trying to reconstruct myself, I was also going through an unnecessarily difficult divorce. Our divorce procedure is just like our marriage and reflects his abusive behavior – lies, intimidation, manipulation, reversing of situations – rendering it difficult to work my way out of my confusion.

On November 15, 2012, at the expiration of the limitation period, I took the time to examine whether I would file for complaint or not. My own battle to work my way out seemed already hard enough to get through; I could not take up another battle that would most probably bring me down or backward more than anything, so I did not. However, since 2012, after the unsuccessful mediation procedure I was obliged to ask for to have my rights respected, during which my ex insisted that he address me as « vous » in order to mark the distance he wished from me, I was able to live more serenely.

Though I am still going through the hardship of my divorce, I am much better and stronger, and I sense that today, if I had the possibility to file a complaint against my ex, I would do it out of the same sense of obligation that pushed me not do so at the time.
I consider that my first duty as a responsible citizen is to inform of this horrific violence done to women. From the moment I could not find refuge at the women’s shelter in 2009, I understood that I had to help myself and that what was important was not to become a burden for myself and for society. And, if I did not file a complaint, though I recognized the harm my ex could do in his state of mind, it was out of that obligation.

My wish today is that the legislation take in consideration first and above all the reality and needs of the victims, allowing them a better chance of prosecuting those who were responsible for the violence done to them and, in that way, also taking in consideration the real needs of our society, which are to save the victims and take legal action against the authors of violence.

MY ANSWER
The specific situation of foreign spouses of French husbands is that they are often very much under the power of these men from an immigration point of view. It starts with the fact that they get their carte de séjour vie privée et familiale on the grounds that they are married to a French citizen and this card will be taken away if they leave before their third wedding anniversary. My experience is that abusive men take full advantage of this domination, explaining that:

– the wife will be immediately deported if she leaves home,

– their French children will always stay with the French parent,

– the woman will be jailed for kidnapping if she tries to move back to her home with the children, and so on.

Domestic violence is evil by its nature and this total domination destroys the woman. Abusive men seem to have amazing imaginations, finding countless reasons to scare their spouses away from leaving home. Often the mental control is the hardest to break. Foreign spouses, whose right to live in France depends 100% on their husband, must fight against highly controlling behavior and the corresponding feelings of helplessness, in addition to what I have just described. For one thing, such women feel unable to contact the police, since they fear that if they report the domestic violence, the husband will be taken into custody, which will break up their life together. Wives fear the police, seeing them as French authority figures who will systematically favor the husband, though this it is not true. Going to social services and asking for support can also be frightening, since the women who are placed in shelters are protected from their partners, but they believe that they can be deported as a result of leaving the family home. The only recourse is to press charges but the help of the social worker often is not enough to overcome their fear of the police.

The main difference I have seen regarding leaving the home and pressing criminal charges, is that quite often women raised in a Western way will take the risk of moving out, sometimes on the spur of the moment, believing that they are saving their life by doing so. They also think that they will be able to make it outside the home, even in a foreign country without the ability to speaking the language well. In my experience, women from the Indian subcontinent or East Asia are so afraid – of the police and deportation, of their partners or husbands – that it is much rarer for them to move out. This is sad, since the préfecture fully accepts that, in cases of documented, serious domestic violence, a foreign wife must move out of the house before the three-year period mentioned above has elapsed. Documentation of the violence is well handled by the police through a medical visit to a hospital’s forensics section and the police investigation that follows.

Here the issue is one of trust as well as passing along accurate information. Someone who is believable needs to reach out to abused spouses so that they get the right information and believe it. But that is a completely different topic.

MY TAKE ON FATCA
Once in a while I get a call that truly makes my day. In early December, one of my readers called me to ask for my opinion and professional analysis regarding the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). The reason she called me was that she had reviewed my past issues for over a year and could not find any mention of it. Her comment was so endearing that I want to share it with you: « I count on your column to inform me of all the new legislation that affects Americans living in France. Since you never wrote about FATCA, and I just spent a long time reviewing your column pretty far back, I was wondering if it is as serious as it sounds. You surely must have something to say about it if it is that important. » This is an ego booster that lasted for several days!

However, it was easy for me to explain that my focus is exclusively about French legislation and it is extremely rare for me to comment about any other legislation, including from the USA, since I do not feel that I can be a professional in these fields.

Still, since I received this adorable call, I feel compelled to state that I know just enough about it to stay away from it, leaving this topic, as well as the Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts Report (FBAR), to people who have a professional knowledge of these regulations affecting American citizens holding accounts in foreign banks. To avoid adding to the dissension among the various groups fighting and/or explaining this type of regulation, all I will give is the page of the IRS website describing these regulations: http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Corporations/Foreign-Account-Tax-Compliance-Act-FATCA

FRENCH INCOME TAX REMINDER
French income tax is generally paid in three installments: on February 15th, May 15th and September 15th. Everyone should have received the applicable tax statement by now. If you have not received it, but you know that you owe French income tax for 2014, you must pay the required amount, which is one-third of the total tax you paid in 2013. Errors made by the French administration never exempt the individual from complying with the law.

Best regards,

QUESTION

ACQUIRING FRENCH NATIONALITY AS A FAMILY

In your December 14 issue of your newsletter, you wrote that: “A child born in France to two foreign parents can claim French nationality first at age 13. Then my question is that once the minor child becomes French at age 13, may the two non- French parents apply for French citizenship? If YES, then under what program or rationale can they do that? Also, may a younger sibling also apply for French nationality before the age of 13?