ll the leaves are brown (all the leaves are brown)
And the sky is grey (and the sky is grey)
I’ve been for a walk (I’ve been for a walk)
On a winter’s day (on a winter’s day)
I’d be safe and warm (I’d be safe and warm)
If I was in L.A. (if I was in L.A.)
California dreamin’ (California dreamin’)
On such a winter’s day
Stopped into a church
I passed along the way
Well, I got down on my knees (got down on my knees)
And I pretend to pray (I pretend to pray)
You know the preacher like the cold (preacher like the cold)
He knows I’m gonna stay (knows I’m gonna stay)
California dreamin’ (California dreamin’)
On such a winter’s day
All the leaves are brown (all the leaves are brown)
And the sky is grey (and the sky is grey)
I’ve been for a walk (I’ve been for a walk)
On a winter’s day (on a winter’s day)
If I didn’t tell her (if I didn’t tell her)
I could leave today (I could leave today)
California dreamin’ (California dreamin’)
On such a winter’s day (California dreamin’)
On such a winter’s day (California dreamin’)
On such a winter’s day

The song “California Dreamin’,” by John and Michelle Phillips, was first recorded by Barry McGuire in 1965, with backup vocals by the Phillips’ quartet, the Mamas & the Papas. They released their own version as a single the same year, and it became by far the bigger hit.

Among French people, especially those who have dreamed of moving to the USA, California has an iconic status, that sets this state aside from the rest of the USA. It has always been the land one dreams about. In May 1970, the French singer Julien Clerc released “La Californie,” which became a long-lasting hit. It is safe to say that as far back as one can remember, the state of California has nourished dreams of an unattainable better life for much of the world. This separation of the state and the nation in the popular imagination of the rest of the world, is something many Americans themselves have a hard time understanding.

The results of the midterm elections in a lot of the country were favorable to the Democratic Party. It is interesting to note that the state of California is heavily Democratic. So, for some people the election results were reason to rejoice, enabling them to dream that a better future is possible. California has also long been a magnet for people living in other states – and still is, for political reasons as well as well-paid job opportunities. California dreaming, dreaming California is still today, a real thing.

As I write these words, however, wildfires are destroying homes and killing people, and California is weeping over these deaths and other losses. This is a time of mourning. One could hope that such destructive fires will not happen again, but climate change is going to make it more difficult. In much of the USA, it has been really cold. It feels like winter already when one celebrates Thanksgiving with thick snow on the ground. What makes the fires even scarier is that they should not happen when it is that cold.

I could dwell upon the leaves being not only brown but burned to ashes, about the sky being grey and people suffocating from the heavy smoke. But rather than twirling with these lyrics, I pay my respects to the victims of the blazes, especially people who lost their homes, their businesses, a loved one. We should pay attention to them, helping them rebuild their lives and giving them a reason to dream of a better future.

As long as I can remember, I have loved “California Dreamin’,” and still often listen to the albums of The Mamas & the Papas.

HOW CAN THERE BE A FRENCH BLACK FRIDAY?
I already wrote about this last year, and this year is even worse in terms of the advertisements we are being bombarded with about huge sales only on Black Friday. It reassures me a little (but not much) that many French outlets promote Black Friday week, which indicates to me they have a poor understanding of what Black Friday normally means. I also find recent developments regarding the Thanksgiving celebration to be interesting. I cannot imagine the USA going through the season of fall without celebrating it. At the same time, I look with great interest at the fact that the narrative of Native Americans is being heard more and more, and that this celebration is unsettling, to say the least, for them.

FROM MY DECEMBER 2017 ISSUE:
“I was feeling completely exasperated at seeing ‘Black Friday’ advertised everywhere in France (in English!). I wondered how many of people would even know what it referred to. How can you have a ‘Black Friday’ if you do not celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday? The adoption of this term is totally insane and I believe it illustrates 100% bad taste consumerism. In the USA, many consider ‘Black Friday’ offensive for various reasons, a tendency that has grown with every passing year. Some believe this is insanity in consumerism, citing the craziness when crowds – I would call them hordes sometimes – enter the shops. Others focus more on the idea that family life should take precedence over consumerism, as the day after Thanksgiving is usually a de facto national holiday. There are other criticisms, but I see particular merit in those two.

“France does not celebrate Thanksgiving, and this holiday, unlike some others, cannot be easily exported, as it is part and parcel of the iconic history of the birth of the USA and the infancy of an early settlement in the New World.”

RETENUE À LA SOURCE – INCOME TAX WITHHOLDING STARTS ON JANUARY 1st 2019
I attended a seminar on this topic given by my French accounting firm, as it is now certain that it will go ahead. I would like to explain in a basic way how it will happen.

We could have feared the worst from the French administration, since the deal was locked, sealed and delivered this past September after countless months of indecision.

First, the good news, which shows there have been some significant improvements.

The provision that employees feared most was that their family information would need to be shared with the employer. This is not happening: only the tax office will be informed. It used to happen once a year, when the declaration was submitted. But now, since this information immediately affects the bracket used to calculate the amount of tax owed, the individual must inform the tax inspector as soon as possible. This is a huge relief. It is interesting to see that in France, the tax inspector is more trusted and seen as less of a threat than the employer – a situation that is impossible to explain in only a few words. Just remember that the tax inspector is a free adviser when tax season comes, and an impartial helper.

The other good news is that independents will pay monthly by automated withdrawal, and the amount will be based on what was owed the previous year. The administration has promised that any reported change will be taken into account, and the amount of the payment changed, as quickly as possible. It remains to be seen how quickly that will actually be.

The same rule applies for rental income and other types of revenue that an authority cannot withhold directly.

A NEW IMMIGRATION LAW HAS BEEN PASSED – SOME GOOD NEWS
To obtain employee immigration status, one must be awarded the right to work as an employee. A new law grants this right to all of the foreigner’s potential employers, rather than to just one specific current employer. Previously there was a risk of losing this right when the foreigner changed employers within three years.

Another good thing is that the travailleur temporaire status and designation mentioned on the carte de séjour has been done away with. The evolution was such that it was issued when the foreigner had a contrat à durée déterminée, a short-term contract with a beginning and ending date. Now both labor contracts, the CDD and the CDI, grant the right to obtain the “salarié carte de séjour”. We will see if DIRECCTE issues the same number of authorizations and implements the law with the right intent, or if some short-term contract holders will be refused, when they would have been accepted under the previous law.

A further good thing is the disappearance of the autorisation provisoire de séjour for recent graduates transitioning to work either as an employee or a self-employed person. It has been replaced by a true immigration status called titre de séjour temporaire « recherche d’emploi ou création ». This should reassure employers and facilitate the job search.

Now almost all the remaining bad news concerning immigration is about refugee procedures.

CRIMINAL FAKE MARRIAGE – ULTERIOR MOTIVE MARRIAGE
I never try to guess which couple will last and which will not. There is no way to be sure, and we have all known what appeared to be the perfect couple who ended up getting the nastiest divorce. Because of my work, I often deal with couples where one is an undocumented alien seeking to obtain a legal stay through marriage. That puts a huge strain on the couple if it is not properly handled. It gives one spouse considerable power over the other, as the couple must stay married three years before the foreigner can retain legal residence in France. I have often seen the foreign spouse effectively blackmailed. The other distortion is that the foreign spouse may disappear once the immigration status is achieved for good, giving the impression that there was no love and it was just a scam to stay in France.

Completely aside from the immigration issue, multicultural couples have a much harder time staying together, as it is harder for them to establish the common ground needed for a long-lasting relationship. At the same time, the traditional view of marriage lasting forever is shared by fewer and fewer people these days. In major cities of Western countries, half of all marriages end in divorce, with multicultural couples representing only a tiny minority.

The video linked below is ten years old, and I know the administration has strengthened its controls and now does more investigation to uncover what French officialdom considers fake marriages. It is not just a matter of foreigners paying a large sum of money to get married and obtain a legal stay; that is a felony, for which people go to jail. But there are also couples where clearly the foreigner is not involved in the relationship as someone in love, when the other one seems to be. I liked the comment the policewoman made about the Moroccan woman and the Frenchman wanting to get married. She understood the motivations of each of them, and she seemed to care about both of them, but at the same time she had to apply the law and definitively block the wedding, leaving the Moroccan woman in a precarious situation.

FRENCH CONSULATES WILL NO LONGER OFFER NOTAIRE SERVICE
Starting in 2019, French consulates are dropping the notaire service they used to provide. This might not seem like a huge loss to most of us, but it is for countries in which such a service is not offered privately. It is a big deal in countries where there is no other way to verify the signing of an official document. In such countries, it was a real service that was badly needed: the consular notarization enabled, for instance, real estate transactions to occur in France without the person having to go to France. Throughout my career I have seen more and more transactions done this way. Since the clients are almost always Americans and French notaires often accept notarization by an American notary public, this is a reasonable alternative. Yet even today, I think many rural notaires would not accept such notarizations, as they are not done according to French procedure.

https://frenchmorning.com/notariat-consulaire-supprime-a-partir-de-2019/

FRENCH BAILIFFS SEIZED A RYANAIR JET OVER AN UNPAID DEBT
Here is an excerpt of an article I found on the website www.thelocal.fr:
“French authorities said on Friday they seized a Ryanair plane, forcing 149 London-bound passengers off the aircraft, to get the Irish low-cost airline to repay illegal public aid, the latest in a string of troubles for the carrier.

“Claiming that Ryanair owed them 525,000 euros ($595,000) in subsidies wrongfully paid out to the airline, the authorities sent in a bailiff under police protection on Thursday to seize the plane on the tarmac of Bordeaux airport as it was readying to take off for London Stansted.

“Just under 24 hours later, the no-frills airline relented and paid up, authorities said Friday, allowing it to reclaim its aircraft.”

The French word for bailiff is huissier and when you see a document from them or when they knock on your door, you need to pay attention. Sometimes it is empty threats, but other times they have the power to confiscate things and sell them at auction when a debt has not been paid. Grounding an airplane to get a debt paid is rare, which is why it made the news.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46152849

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

I would like to wish you all
A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR
I am looking forward to the year to come, 2019.
Like many, I feel that 2018 was a very hard year, and
I lost a lot of sleep trying to follow everything that was going on.

Best regards,

QUESTION

REGISTERING A SMALL BUSINESS – AUTO-ENTREPRENEUR

I wanted to ask you some more about auto-entrepreneur status. I have found that there are many different methods for obtaining auto-entrepreneur status (micro-enterprise, etc.). I’m not quite sure why I would get caught, since this status is completely legal. Any information you can give would be greatly appreciated as I’m finding mixed opinions.

QUESTION

WHO PAYS THE PREMIUM FOR PUMA COVERAGE?

Is an American resident of France who receives US Social Security retirement benefits required to pay the cotisation supplementaire maladie under PUMA?

From Wikipedia
“Autumn Leaves” is a popular song. Originally it was a 1945 French song, “les Feuilles mortes” (literally “The Dead Leaves”), with music by Hungarian-French composer Joseph Kosma – derived from a ballet piece of music (Rendez-vous, written for Roland Petit), itself partly borrowed from Poème d’octobre by Jules Massenet – and lyrics by French poet Jacques Prévert.

The song is clearly an expression of pain and despair conveying the hopelessness of a child who has been torn from her or his parents.

The fall season is when the leaves fall down and even in Paris they cover the side walks, the squares and the parks. It is the time of the year that is the most melancholic. As it might surprised many, I like being melancholic, mixing past found memories with what I am doing today. Having those too few quiet moments when one measures what has been accomplished and going through all what was failed, is bitter sweet. Like the leaves, they fall on the floor dead, but we know they grow in a few months.

These four seasons, the dead leaves, have been used from the beginning of time as metaphore illustrating the human life, the force of the living, the fate that all stories and especially love stories end too soon. The song mentioned as title talks exactly, the reminiscence of a lost love.

I hope that I did not put too much melancholic drafting some sections of this issue. I thought of this businessman at St David Eposcopal church in Northern Wilmington who told me on Sunday that I had a job the next morning. The old-fashioned American businessman, working hard, giving a chance to whom he thought was deserving, a decent man from Monday morning to Sunday. I met many of those men while living in the USA, me the foreigner, the immigrant. I feel very lucky to have started my professional live with these men at a time when it seemed to be the norm, the early 1980’s. I try in my modest way to follow the footsteps of these men while living in France.

JUSTICE KAVANAUGH’S CONFIRMATION
The hearings went on for weeks. The speeches were vehement. There was a brutal opposition the entire time all the way to the last speeches at the White House. Even though I am French, I made a point of following what was happening as much as possible. I tried as much as possible to remain a witness. I watched and looked for an understanding of what was happening. The USA is deeply divided. Everybody says so, and it is quite obvious it is. This said, I would remind people that the birth of the USA as a nation showed a very divided group of people and the fight between Mr. Adams and Mr. Jefferson should put back, under scrutiny, if people think that that the USA has never been more divided. People can disagree with me about whether it was more divided then or now. I believe that this is a pointless exercise and I am just illustrating that there have always been divisions within the American population, sometimes very visible, other times hidden under the surface.

My point is elsewhere and I would like share it with you. France is known to put an excessive emphasis on diplomas and considers that the diplomas are the guarantee of an expertise. What has always impressed me with the USA is the emphasis on ‘get the job done and do it right.’ This is a very practical approach, a very efficient one too, that is a lot more democratic as everybody can excel and make it big. This is the essence of the American dream. If you work hard and you are good at what you do, you will make it, and sooner than later.

Who was invited to this American dream and how fair the system was or is, is not my topic, and I fully acknowledge that through the entire existence of the USA, there has always been parts of the population that are pretty much left out of this dream.

So, I always expect from the American leaders of the public and the private sector to be the best in their field since they made it to the top.

With the public sector, I believe that the leaders need to have a certain type of expertise, of character, and of ethics. Being French I grew up in school learning rhetoric, how to present an argument, how to structure a speech, how to write an essay, in a very formal way. Anyone who had a significant French schooling knows about “le plan.” It is the order by which the ideas should be presented in order to be clear, eloquent, and sticking to the topics.

From the founding fathers up to today, I hear or read very eloquent speeches, well structured, addressing very complex issues in a very understandable way. The speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., President Lincoln, President Kennedy, President Roosevelt, and so on, are still quoted today, referred to and studied in schools and universities. President Obama is very eloquent and belongs to my above-mentioned list. In recent years, about 30 years ago, I have been surprised and saddened by the fact that being well versed, broad knowledge, speaking several languages, was a handicap and not an asset when running for Congress as well as for the presidency. Still, I cannot get-over the fact during his entire campaign, Mr. Mitt Romney was never known as being bilingual in French, having had a significant experience living in France ending up in his early 20’s to be the leader of the Mormon church in France. For me, this is impressive, and shows the character of a superior leader.

This takes me to Justice Kavanaugh and his hearings. There are nine justices sitting on the Supreme Court, and they are supposed to be among the best judges in the entire country. Reaching that level means, to me, the need to have a superior expertise in law, an excellent temperament, a well-rounded character, and an acute respect for ethics. I listened to Mr. Kavanaugh and I was not impressed by him on any of those points. This truly says nothing about if he is going to be a good or bad Supreme Court Justice. Since I am French, that alone disqualifies me to express my judgments about this. So, I thought that this is the current situation and this should not be expected in this day and age. I did listen carefully to the hearing of Former FBI Director, James Comey, of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, of the U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. I was impressed by their eloquence, their ability to address broad issues and their calm temperament. All of them are Republican, therefore, I do not make a political issue, even on the political spectrum of being conservative versus liberal. I agree or disagree with their views, I believe that some of them did and do a good job, others did or are doing a bad job. The country is also very divided regarding these men too.

Then Justice Kavanaugh was facing accusations of sexual assaults, of lying under oath, and so on. With time, when there will not be a heated debate and the associated violence will have disappeared, the American public might learn for sure if some or all of it was true or false. Today, I see that the American nation is deeply hurt, and one of the reasons is that the political discourse has gone from disagreements to violent oppositions.

I believe that one of the solutions to have a more tamed discourse is to expect from leaders, especially in government, individuals who are only fit for the job but plain excellent.

So, the difference between the time of the founding fathers and today is those men who made the USA were brilliant, wise and passionate about the well-being of this newborn nation and were ready to compromise for the good of the nation. Today, I do not see much interest in the well-being of the nation, which includes far and foremost the care of all the people living in the USA. This last hearing did not show much genuine care for survivors of sexual attacks.

I would like to add one thing, which seems to be important. I hear a lot of Conservative Americans asking that the Pledge of Allegiance be brought back into the schools, respecting the flag and so on.
So, this is its current version:

“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

The text seems easy to understand and it guarantees rights to everybody. I want to go a step further; the USA is a Republic. There are two Latin roots “res” which means “thing” and “publica” which is for everybody. Therefore, being a citizen of a Republic means you are entitled to share with all the others the common good of the country. Since its creation and again until quite recently, this sharing was understood in the USA as the success of one person was beneficial to the others and the common good was enhanced by the successes of many and the more the better for everybody. For one thing, wages were better, when the businesses were doing better.

I have tried to stick to review cultural, historical and legal matters sometimes, comparing the two countries, the USA and France. What I saw, makes me take a stand in recent American events, and I still believe that I am staying away from the debate between the Republican and the Democrat parties.

VOICE FROM THE GRAVE
Monday at 8PM, I got a call on the office landline. I had no idea who was calling that late. I am sure that many people wrestle with the same question in this situation, “Do I pick up this late? Or Do I let it go?” It is very tempting to ignore it and to listen to the message the next morning. But this time I pick it up. I immediately feel like a voice from the grave is calling me and am brought back almost 21 years back to the day.

I had just started my business in July, 1997 and picking up business had been slow during the summer. The September month had started well. I had just found a way to meet my clients in a small apartment close to my home, owned by a friend of mine who was using it occasionally for short-term rentals to tourists.

I was doing the Saturday morning grocery shopping nearby and saw a young woman opening the door to people while selling the homeless magazine. Our family have been giving to charity faithfully, so I rarely gave directly to people. This time I changed my mind and gave a few times, feeling that I was not doing the right thing and I could help in a different way. So, one day, I told her I did not want to give money anymore but could I help in a different way. I learned that she was here with her husband, that they were undocumented aliens, and they were truly struggling. I then proposed that she would clean the apartment I used as an office in exchange for me to review her case and to get them legal status in France. This arrangement lasted a couple of months. I passed the files to a specialized law firm. Their case was strong, so I felt I had done a good thing. Soon after, I learned they had move to the South of France. I learned through the law firm that they obtained their carte de séjour, and had a daughter. This was a happy ending nothing more to say.

It was this woman who was calling me to share that she had just been naturalized French with her husband and it was the last step to their complete integration after their two children, born in France, had been French for a while. I remembered her vividly, right away, as it was my very first regularization procedure I had completed. Then she told me that she manages a recycling center for a big corporation, her husband is a pastry chef, and her daughter is studying science at the nearby university in Strasbourg (the younger child is still in middle school). That second part of their life is another success story all around. I am so happy for them. All they needed was to get out from their undocumented status, and it meant finding the way to do it when they were stuck.

In my profession we very rarely get to know what happened once we win the cases, especially with the regularization procedures. This started with this woman and I have continued to help through the ministry of the church or just on my own. It is almost always helping through the struggle of obtaining a legal stay in France. So, when I believe that I can make a difference in these people’s life, I offer.

As a professional, making money is nothing more than earning a living. Whether I am paid or not is not the point, being instrumental in those success stories is for me priceless and it still gets me going with the same passion two decades later.

PUMA IS BACK ON THE NEWS AGAIN – MORE BAD NEWS COMING
This has been an endless nightmare, which hasn’t gone away and seems to get worse each time the French administration does something about it.

I fully admit that I have advised my clients who want to avoid PUMA to sign on to be self-employed in France since this registration comes with automatic health coverage and, therefore, blocks PUMA to be implemented. It has worked every time, since despite not trying to build a successful business, the billing was sufficient to keep them just paying on their French income.

This is just a proposed modification of the system, but as it is coming from the government, it is quasi certain that most, if not all of it, will be voted as a law. So, it would be wise to take these new conditions into consideration.

I will not be able to say anymore, “just sign and do not worry about how much you make. The only real consequence is that you will be kicked out of the auto-entrepreneur status if you do not invoice anything for two years in a row. This gives us some time to think of another plan if needed.”

Indeed, if the foreigner needs to invoice a minimum of 8.000€ over a year, it becomes for many, serious work, that needs to be advertised and building a real clientele. Some of my clients were and some still are cancer patients who managed to get treatment while being covered by the public system. For them and the others who will become my clients in the future with major illnesses, I will need to find another secure solution.

A member of AARO who is also a client of mine and has done excellent research on PUMA and has sent me this review of this project.
“Article 10 of the social security budget law, filed recently, proposes several changes to the calculation of the Cotisation Maladie Subsidiaire (CSM). Grosso modo these are:

1) The amount of revenue from professional activity that completely exonerates payment of the Cotisation Maladie Subsidiaire (CSM) will be doubled. Currently it is roughly €4000/year, so that will become €8000. This was to be expected, as people could rather easily concoct earnings of €4000 to escape the CSM.

2) The threshold of revenue from capital that triggers payment of the CSM will go from 25% of PASS to 50%. So, roughly, the CSM will not be due on the first €20,000 of capital revenue.

3) The CSM rate will go from 8% to 6.5% of revenue from capital exceeding 50% of PASS.

4) There will be a ceiling on revenue subject to the CSM equal to 8x PASS, roughly €320,000. Currently there is no ceiling.

5) The digressive calculation is changed. (See the new paragraph 5 of Art. 380-2)

6) These changes will apply as of 2019, for which the CSM is paid in 2020. [Apparently there is no attempt to make payment of the CSM concurrent with income, as for income tax.”

This means the challenges to the CSM charges for 2016, 2017 (bills will come at the end of November) and 2018 must still be maintained.

These can be on several bases, including that they were levied so as to be effective prior to “affiliation,” that the definitions of residence were not complete until the arrêté of May 2017 (and we have cases where affiliation was denied many months after that date, proving that affiliation results from an evaluation and is not automatic), etc.”

GILTI TAX
The Global Intangible Low-taxed Income (GILTI) is a new provision, enacted as a part of tax reform legislation. Mechanically, it functions as a global minimum tax and introduces a lot of issues for all U.S. shareholders of controlled foreign corporations (CFCs) – especially individuals and partnerships.

• Applies broadly to certain income generated by a controlled foreign corporation (CFC).
• “U.S shareholders” (as defined in the Code) are required to include on a current basis the aggregate amount of certain income generated by its CFC(s), regardless of actual repatriation.
• U.S. shareholders who are domestic – C corporations (other than RICs and REITs) are eligible for up to an 80 percent deemed paid foreign tax credit (FTC) and a 50 percent deduction of the current year inclusion plus the full amount of the Section 78 gross-up (subject to certain limitations).

www.bdo.com/insights/tax/international-tax/the-gilti-effect-tax-reform-and-global-intangible

The concern many have is that the American self-employed people registered and living in France would be affected by this new legislation imposing even more fiscal obligations. It is not the case since it applies only to owning a majority shares of a non American company.

Also an equal split of shares does not create this obligation either because the American citizen does not meet the definition of a controlling a foreign corporation. In other word the American citizen shareholders do not own more than 50% in shares in the company.

TESTING THE LEVEL OF FRENCH FOR THE PREFECTURE
There are more and more situations where the prefecture demands a proficiency in French whether to ask for a basic carte de séjour as well as for the carte de resident and French nationality. For a long time, it was mostly checked during the interview. Lately the procedures demand holding a diploma but it is not enough, the civil servant can still consider that the applicant’s French is not good enough. So schools have followed this issue and are now licensed to test and issue the sort of diploma “test de connaissance du français (TCF).” The applicants 65 and older have no obligation to take this test and therefore show this diploma. Now the prefecture still tests the proficiency with a short discussion along reviewing the file.

OFFICE CLOSED FOR CHRISTMAS
The office will close for three weeks for the Christmas holidays, starting on Friday December 21st evening reopening on Monday January 7th morning. 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 did not take much of a summer vacation so I have decided to take some time off, close to the normal length of my vacation. Of course, I will honor the prefecture meetings already scheduled, as well as a couple of other engagements.

OFFICE CLOSED FOR MY 60th BIRTHDAY
The office will close for slightly over two weeks for this occasion. It will start on Friday June 14th evening and will reopen on Tuesday July 2nd morning. As always, I will only be reachable by email for emergencies and important matters as I will be out of France. The service I offer of receiving mail for clients will continue while the office is closed. I have not figured out how I will send the July issue considering the situation.

Best regards,

QUESTION

CHANGE OF IMMIGRATION STATUS WHEN THE MARRIAGE IS OVER

My wife is an employee of a multinational oil company operating in Nigeria and was on expatriation here in Paris. When she got pregnant, I had to come and assist her. Her employer secured a carte de sejour for me with full work permit. Early this year I started work on CDD contracts doing odd jobs. My wife later had to return back to Nigeria for another assignment, leaving me in France, and filing for divorce. My permit is going to expire next year October and I will need to renew it on my own as I cannot have the help of her employer anymore.
I will like to know the following;
How can I go about the renewal?
What are my chances for a renewal?.

QUESTION

TEACHING ENGLISH IN FRANCE

I have received a few offers to teach for French companies, and each time I explain the limitation of my visiteur visa. One company asked me to apply for micro-entrepreneur status, after which they could hire me. My own research gave me the impression that, although I could apply for and receive a micro-entrepreneur number, such a designation does not confer the right to work and I would still be in violation of my visa. The right to work comes only with the appropriate visa. Is that impression correct?

From Wikipedia
“Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” (or simply “Motherless Child”) is a traditional Negro spiritual. It originated during the era of slavery in the United States. An early performance of the song by the Fisk Jubilee Singers dates back to the 1870s.

The song is clearly an expression of pain and despair conveying the hopelessness of a child who has been torn from her or his parents.

“Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
A long way from home, a long way from home”

Negro spirituals and some gospel songs say a lot about the suffering the slaves in the USA endured. Today they are usually sung by choirs, and too often we enjoy the concert, the performance, the beauty of the music, and overlook what the lyrics meant to the people who created these songs. It has always fascinated me to see large crowds of French people listening to this music, knowing next to nothing about the lyrics and what they convey.

This might explain why so many African-American musicians, particularly jazz and blues performers, moved to Europe and especially France. This began as early as 1925 with Josephine Baker.

Longing for home is very common among people who emigrate to a different country. The farther away they are from home, the more painful this feeling is.

Clearly the title can be linked to the topic that follows, concerning the fact that the majority of French children are born out of wedlock. When I discussed this topic with my two children, their response was that the term “out of wedlock” does not mean anything, and should be changed. They were trying to find something that would mean “children born of a stable relationship.”

I believe the title can resound further with almost everybody, especially those who have lost their parents.

THE MAJORITY OF FRENCH CHILDREN ARE BORN OUT OF WEDLOCK
When I first traveled to the USA in 1980 and 1981, and during my later stay when I got married in 1986 and lived there several years, I was surprised by the large number of teen pregnancies. The expression “babies making babies” was commonly used. One day I looked at France and saw that a growing number of children there were born out of wedlock – although the cultures of the two countries in this respect are quite different. There are several reasons for that – I would like to explain them before discussing the results of recently released data.

For a long time, almost 60 years, fewer and fewer people in France have been getting married, to the point that the legislation needed to change to follow this evolution.

1 –From the mid-1970s, city halls started to issue increasing numbers of certificat de concubinage. A couple would go to city hall, state that they were living together, and walk out with an official statement that could be used to obtain benefits that otherwise only spouses could get.

2 – The kinship law of January 3rd 1972 erased the legal difference between children born within marriage and those born outside of wedlock, as long as neither parent in the latter case was married to someone else.

3 – The PACS law of November 15th 1999 established the pacte civil de solidarité, which quickly became almost a carbon copy of the institution of marriage.

With the French state officializing stable non-married couples and giving them strong legal status, more and more such couples are having children without being married.

Teen pregnancy is virtually non-existent in France, and children are almost always born to a stable couple.

In 2017, almost 6 children out of 10 (59.5%) were born outside of marriage. In 2007 such children were already the majority at 50.7%. These numbers were published by INSEE, the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies, on September 4th 2018.

The numbers indicate that churches have almost completely lost their influence on the general population, as one must be married at city hall before having a religious ceremony. It is clear that France is a secular country and can no longer be called a Catholic country. Of course, these percentages include French Muslims. However, since France does not allow data studies to be based on ethnicity or religious affiliation, it is impossible to know how many Muslims get married, and how many of these ceremonies include religious rites.

There were 228,000 weddings celebrated in France in 2017, around 5,000 fewer than the year before. Some 192,000 PACS were recorded in 2016, up 3,000 from the year before. The numbers say it all – the trend is obvious. This clearly explains how it was possible to have 6 out of 10 children born out of wedlock in 2017.

Several years ago, I met a couple who showed that the numbers were not telling the entire story. He was French, born in France of two parents from the same African country. She was from that country as well. They chose to be PACSed rather than married. But the young woman told me she had waited to be PACSed before moving in with the man and consummating the relationship, as she was an honorable woman.

I have encountered many similar situations where the couple mixes very traditional values with choosing a PACS over marriage. This puts back in perspective the variety of choices hinted at in the title, especially for people who are not used to the French situation, which is after all not an oddity. It is just people adapting to situations and making their own decisions according to the law of the land.

https://abonnes.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2018/09/04/six-enfants-sur-dix-naissent-hors-mariage-en-france-un-record-en-europe_5350153_4355770.html

EMPLOYEE PROTECTION IN FRANCE HAS A LIMIT
French labor law is extremely protective in favor of employees. This is well known, and the scariest tales heard in the expat community have some truth in them. But recent laws sought by Economics Minister Emmanuel Macron and achieved by President Macron are taking away some of this protection. A recent court decision sheds some interesting light on this issue.

A sales representative had a company car and pretty much had all of France as his territory and therefore drove a lot. He registered with the Blablacar site to drive people during his working hours. Blablacar provides carpooling, which ensures that more than one person is traveling in a car, reducing the need for others to have to drive themselves.

The initial problem was that the car was insured only for his own use when he was using it on company business. Therefore, his action constituted a violation of the labor contract.

On top of that, even though the car did not cost him anything, he was asking for cost sharing and a tad more, which ended up making him a substantial profit – several thousand euros in a couple of years – which Blablacar does not allow.

The employee argued that the fact that his participation in Blabla-carpooling did not cost his company any extra, and therefore it had no grounds for firing him.

The Rennes Court of Appeals in August 2018 struck down the decision by a lower court in Nantes because he had driven the car in violation of his company’s insurance policy and therefore his employer’s guidelines, and because he made a profit, which did not comply with Blablacar regulations.

The usual argument that “it does not hurt the employer” does not work as well as it used to.

https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2018/09/06/les-prud-hommes-deboutent-un-salarie-licencie-pour-covoiturage-avec-une-voiture-de-fonction_5351321_3234.html

THE PARIS BRANCH OF OFII HAS MOVED
Since I started my business over 20 years ago, I have seen this division of the French administration change its name many times, since it felt like each president wanted to fix the immigration problem once and for all. The office now called OFII (Office Français de l’Immigration et de l’Intégration) has several functions:

(1) It is probably best known for the mandatory medical exam for people who come to France with a visa.

(2) In the procedure of an employer hiring a foreigner living abroad, OFII carries out the second round of investigations before sending the file to the designated consulate.

(3) In the family reunification procedure, when a foreigner sponsors a spouse and/or minor children to come to France, it carries out the initial strict investigation.

(4) It also introduces visa-holders to France, showing them an explanatory movie and testing their ability to speak French, find a job and so on.

The office used to be located at 48 rue de la Roquette in the 11th arrondissement, near the Place de la Bastille. The new location opened on September 25th at 83 rue de Patay in the 13th. It is now quite far from a metro stop, and is closest to the Bibliothèque François Mitterrand and Olympiades stops.

My guess is that this will not fix the problem of the office personnel being overworked due to the number of asylum seekers who need appointments. I have not heard feedback yet, but I will make sure to let people know how it goes.

VFS GLOBAL, A NEW PLAYER IN THE FRENCH IMMIGRATION PROCEDURE
From Wikipedia:
VFS Global is an outsourcing and technology services specialist for governments and diplomatic missions worldwide. The company manages visa and passport issuance-related administrative and non-discretionary tasks for its client governments. It is based in Dubai.

The company operates in 139 countries on behalf of its 60 client governments. It has processed over 180 million applications since it commenced operations in 2001.

There are two very different issues here I would like to raise.
1 – For the foreigner, it complicates the procedure and increases the risk of getting the wrong visa. The request for the visa is filed online but VFS does not gather enough information about the exact reasons for the visa request to ensure that the visa hoped for will be the one received. I have been seeing people who went through this procedure and thought they asked for a visiteur immigration visa but instead received a one-year non-renewable one because they chose “up to one year” instead of “more than one year.” The latter is needed to obtain true immigration status that can be renewed by the prefecture a year or so later.

2 – For the government, it means trusting a private foreign corporation to handle a national security matter. Controlling the borders includes dealing with those coming into the country with a visa. French civil servants, i.e. the French administration, have a mixed reputation but most people agree they take pride in doing their job to protect the nation’s interests. The fact that this attitude can sometimes lead them to treat private individuals with contempt does not negate this point. So hiring a private company whose employees are just there to do a job does not reassure me when it comes to those employees completely reviewing a file and understanding the nature of the request. It really feels like paper pushing. All the approved requests go to the French consulate in Washington for the visa to be issued.

A reader sent me a link to a site rating this company. Its score was 2 out of 5. Many of the negative comments sounded familiar to me. Even clients of mine who got their visas recently have not been impressed by the quality of the service. In the most striking case, the address for the meeting was wrong because VFS had moved without informing the people who had appointments.

www.trustpilot.com/review/vfsglobal.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VFS_Global

CPAM IS NOW TIGHTENING PUMA REGISTRATION AND COVERAGE
President Macron has stated a few times that the Assurance Maladie should do more to keep people who do not live in France from abusing the system. I have seen this happen; sometimes it is people do not know they are breaking the law, but others know the regulations very well. The Assurance Maladie covers only residents of France.

Thus, alongside PUMA coverage, we have seen a growing effort to identify users who do not live here but have their medical check-up when they come to France on vacation.

First CPAM suddenly refused to register foreigners with visiteur immigration status. This lasted several months until the rule changed and these foreigners regained the right. Then came a hassle in obtaining coverage for people who could not prove they had been living in France for the previous three months. The immediate assumption was that they were not residents, even people who had their immigration visa, the OFII stamp, and utility bills in their name. Such scrutiny has decreased significantly, but proof of residence from several sources is still required. Therefore, if you are one of those affected, be ready to bring your lease, rent receipts (quittances de loyer), utility bills and Internet provider bills for the last six months. If you have children in school, bring their school registration statement.

The latest development is that some foreigners are receiving very detailed questionnaires asking their whereabouts. One of my readers writes:

“The letter was received at the beginning of this week – which is not only the middle of the vacation period but includes the August 15th holiday – demanding the return of a dossier within three weeks, without which the rights to health coverage will cease and steps can be taken to recover medical expenses already paid.”

Though the vast majority of PUMA beneficiaries are French nationals from birth, it seems they will also need to prove residence in their native country each year.

There was also apparently a request to furnish a RIB in the name of the individual person, even though couples often have joint accounts. The points is that Sécu accounts are now individual. It is not clear whether the submission of a RIB in the name of the individual was optional.

I am attaching the complete letter for those who are interested.

Best regards,

QUESTION

INSURANCE COVERAGE FOR FRENCH SMALL BUSINESSES

I am an American who teaches in France with auto-entrepreneur status. My most recent client demands proof of insurance. Have you any thoughts on that? It is a bilingual school, and the manager wants me to have two separate types of insurance – one for working with children and the other for being in the actual school building. Both are very expensive and I honestly do not understand the need for two policies. Can’t I have just one insurance policy that covers me for the work I do wherever I do it? Do you have an insurance company you recommend?

QUESTION

FRENCH HEALTH COVERAGE AND BREXIT

I am British, married to an American. I understand that because of Brexit, we wil find it very difficult to get health insurance when we move to France. She received a liver transplant twelve years ago, and recently was successfully treated for hepatitis C. Am I right in my understanding or do we have to wait to see how the EU treats the Brits in the coming months?

QUESTION

IS A STUDENT IN FRANCE A FRENCH FISCAL RESIDENT?

I am an American who recently received a two-year student visa and now hold the OFII stamp. I arrived late April 2018. I have several questions to which I cannot get a straight answer:
Am I subject to French tax (income or other)?

1. If I am subject to French income tax, what is the trigger and can it be avoided?
2. Does opening a bank account in France have any impact on the answer to the first question above?
   I ask because HSBC is telling me to fill out an auto-certification tax form, and since my HSBC account is linked to my new French address, my banker is saying that the country of tax residence (currently USA) needs to match the address and be in France as well. This doesn’t seem right, considering I am just on a student visa.
3. I want to continue filing my taxes in the USA. If I cannot escape French taxes, do you think it’s best that I find a French accountant?

I ask because HSBC is telling me to fill out an auto-certification tax form, and since my HSBC account is linked to my new French address, my banker is saying that the country of tax residence (currently USA) needs to match the address and be in France as well. This doesn’t seem right, considering I am just on a student visa.

I want to continue filing my taxes in the USA. If I cannot escape French taxes, do you think it’s best that I find a French accountant?

From Wikipedia
“We Are the Champions” is a song by the British rock band Queen, first released on their 1977 album World. Written by lead singer Freddie Mercury.

The World Cup, Trevor Noah and French nationality
If something could not be missed this summer in France, it was the French men’s soccer team winning the world championship in Russia. I am not much of a sports fan, but there are some events that are worth following, as their impact is much bigger than just winning a game.

Twenty years ago, the French national team won the same championship. Even in 1998, almost everybody spoke positively of the racial diversity of the national team, which in those days looked much the same as it does now.In 1998, hardly anyone dared to criticize this diversity. They were French, and they had won. The celebrations were peaceful, with very isolated exceptions.This summer it was a very different atmosphere. There was looting in the streets of Paris and fighting with police.Interestingly, a controversy arose in the USA when late-night comedian Trevor Noah expressed joy that “Africa” had won the tournament. Noah is from South Africa, where for decades soccer was the favorite sport of black people while whites preferred rugby, especially during apartheid. Not only is soccer South Africa’s most popular sport, but most members of the national team, nicknamed Bafana Bafana, have been black since the early 20th century. Black South Africans would attend rugby games just to support the opposing team as a way of showing their opposition to apartheid. By the way, “Bafana Bafana,” from the plural of the Zulu word for “boy,” means “Go, boys! Go, boys!”

Noah later got a letter from the French ambassador to the USA, scolding him for his statement on the grounds that the players were born in France. It would have been more accurate to identify the only clear error Noah made in his presentation.

Stating that the players do not look as though they have some Gallic ancestry is wrong, as the French population is not in fact descended from the Gauls, the Celtic peoples who fought Caesar.

This error has been made for centuries in French textbooks so it is difficult to criticize Noah for perpetuating it. Every French person has heard at least once,“Nos ancêtres les gaulois”!

After Julius Caesar defeated a confederation of Gallic tribes in the Battle of Alesia, Roman influence grew in Gaul. The Romans ended up having a tiny role in Brittany – which may be the only (loosely) historical fact in the Asterix comic books! Then Germanic tribes conquered all Western Europe, defeating the Roman Empire in 476, and each tribe settled where it chose. In France, two Germanic groups grew and battled for superiority: the Francs and the Burgundians (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgundians ) under whom the remainder of the Gallic nation was destroyed. Not until 1477 did King Louis XI, called “Louis the Prudent,” defeat the Duke of Burgundy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_the_Bold.

The kingdom of Brittany, whose capital was Nantes, existed from 849 to 1532, when Queen Anne de Bretagne married the king of France. Brittany was independent for so long that today it is the only place in France where one still finds Gallic people, descended from the Celts. There the road signs are written in two languages: French and Breton, a Celtic language.

But Noah is right in saying that when members of the far-right wing made similar statements, they were using the players’ origins against them. So I understand and agree with the content of the ambassador’s letter, from a French point of view. Made in France, such statements are racist. But given what I know of Trevor Noah, South Africa and soccer there, I cannot find an ounce of racism in his statement.

I have always known that the French soccer team is made up of first and second-generation immigrants, as far back as one can go, and I got interested in digging up some historical facts.

For example, during the 1958 World Cup competition in Sweden, one of the French players was Just Fontaine. Born in Marrakech to a French father and a Spanish mother, he was the best player of that tournament, surpassing the number of goals made by Pelé, the Brazilian icon. The captain of the team was Raymond Kopa, born in Poland. In those days, if someone were to have made the same kind of remark as Noah, they would say the French team was mostly East European.

Then, for many years, the French soccer team no longer made it to the soccer finals until the 1976 European Cup, when the Saint-Étienne team lost to Munich. Saint-Étienne, led by brothers Hervé and Patrick Revelli, second-generation Italian immigrants, was made up of French players with origins mainly from Italy and Eastern Europe, as well as from Spain, to a lesser degree.

Michel François Platini is regarded as one of the greatest footballers of all time. He won the Ballon d’Or three times, in 1983, 1984 and 1985. He is also a second-generation Italian. Then there was the 1998 team, which won the World Cup – led by Zinedine Zidane, born in Marseille to Algerian Kabyle parents.

As I continue to look at French history, I realize that the first wave of immigrants in modern times came from Poland, starting in the late 19th century. By the time it flattened out in 1931, some 500,000 people had immigrated to France. About 30 years later, French players of Polish origin were represented on the French soccer team.

Another 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 up to then. About 30 years after the beginning of this wave, they were represented in French soccer.

Another 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. About 30 years after this wave began, players of Algerian origin were represented in French soccer, as they still are today.

Does it really matter? Yes and no. Clearly, from its creation by the German tribes called the Franks, France has been a country made by continuous waves of immigration, unlike most other European countries, which historically saw their population emigrating, mostly to the USA.

Soccer in France is played mostly by low-income people, and is especially popular in cities dependent on heavy industry. Thus it makes sense that it takes about 30 years to bring these populations to the top of the game.

The chanting heard the night of France’s World Cup win, continuing very late into the night, just reminded me that France stands by its tradition of welcoming immigrants, as it was created by immigrants themselves. For any country, welcoming immigrants is never an easy thing. Immigration brings out the best as well as the worst in people.

THE IRS AND HOLDING AN AMERICAN PASSPORT
A new policy authorizes the US Internal Revenue Service to block the issuance or renewal of an American passport to American citizens who are in arrears or have pending tax issues. If you owe the IRS more than $51,000 in taxes, it may not be possible to get a new passport or renew an existing one. Your passport might even be taken away.

The media has mainly reported that the IRS says some 362,000 Americans could fall into this category by the end of this calendar year. This situation could represent a significant limitation on travel freedom.

The regulation is very likely to be extended to American citizens living outside the USA who have not met their IRS obligations. Many Americans citizens living in France have never filed annual declarations, or stopped doing so. A plausible scenario is that, if such people visit the USA, they will not allowed to leave if they appeared on the authorities’ radar when they entered the country and this information was passed on to the IRS to see if they have met their fiscal obligations.

A RECENT NATURALIZATION PROCEDURE 
The following account (lightly edited for clarity) was sent by one of my clients who recently obtained French citizenship. We are regularly told now that this procedure takes less than a year. I am sure the prefecture is working on it, but clearly it is not happening yet. This one took two years, almost to the day:

“I sent my file on July 11, 2016. My appointment occurred at the prefecture on December 7, 2017. The file then was sent to Rezé, where the registrar of l’état civil des non residents is located, during the month of February. My name was published in the Journal Officiel on July 8, 2018. So, the whole process was almost two years. I have requested my birth certificate and am waiting for that now.

“According to other cases and statistics I have seen, this timeline is currently average for Paris for naturalization by decree (other departments are quicker; it seems Paris is the slowest). Most people are having to wait at least a year to get an appointment in Paris, and sometimes closer to 18 months.

“My understanding was that the ‘official’ one-year (max. 18-month) timeline for a decision starts only from the time of the interview. In fact, the agent told me that day to expect to wait up to a year for a decision (in the end it was only seven months). Perhaps the discrepancy is in how the time is calculated.”

I confirm what this client says. I will keep you posted if I see a significant increase or decrease in how long it takes to complete the process. The truth of the matter is that everybody knows the concept of the procedure taking one year refers to the time between the file reaching the prefecture and the official decision being published in the Journal Officiel.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH ON SOCIAL NETWORKS
At first social media was seen as fun. The idea was to share pictures and emotions, keeping people informed. Social media, especially Facebook, is now criticized by some for allowing unacceptable messages, while others find this criticism to constitute censorship. I am staying away from this debate, as France has rather strict laws limiting what people can say regarding specific topics, especially for publication. France and the USA have very different views on the definition of freedom of speech.

Recent French Supreme Court decisions shed some light regarding its consequence on social media and hence the limits of the individual right of freedom of speech on Facebook. The cases involved an employer who fired an employee for negative posts that damaged the employer’s reputation. In most cases, this is considered a valid reason to fire an employee, as there is a loyalty obligation as well as an obligation to work for the interest of the employer. The key question is whether the message can be considered slander or objective criticism.

https://abonnes.lemonde.fr/emploi/article/2018/07/25/critiquer-son-employeur-sur-internet-mieux-vaut-y-reflechir-a-deux-fois_5335564_1698637.html

RETENUE À LA SOURCE – INCOME TAX WITHHOLDING STARTS ON JANUARY 1st 2019
I first mentioned that this would happen in my July-August 2015 column. The tax office has been communicating by email and post about this enormous reform, and now people are receiving information about exactly how it will be done. The bottom line is that the employee will have the money withheld by the employer; for the self-employed, the tax office will take a set amount from the bank account linked to the income declaration.

Many in the French media continue to state that the system is not ready yet and could lead to some serious problems. The one segment of the population that will escape this new policy is people working for private individuals, who are the cleaning ladies, the nannies, and the tutors among many others.

The French administration has come with several sophisticated explanations for this exception, but they are not at all convincing. It is pretty obvious what happened. The French pay slip is so complex that it is nearly impossible for anyone but a French CPA to issue a valid one. Therefore, over 20 years ago, on December 1st 1994, le chèque emploi service universel was created so that URSSAF, a division of the French administration, would issue those pay slips. URSSAF is very qualified to calculate social charges, as it collects them from businesses. I am sure the people who planned the new policy totally forgot this type of situation. Only about 250,000 people nationwide fall into this category, which does not match either of the two situations mentioned above.

The people affected are employees, but the employer is not issuing the pay slips; the tax office could take the money from the employees’ bank account but they are not self-employed, even though some of them have a lot of employers. I have known some cleaning ladies who have ten employers at once.

But URSSAF has not had the time to add this new function to the service it already offers. It really requires redesigning the calculation of the bill sent to the employer.

Many of the employees affected have very low wages and therefore do not pay income tax. This may be another reason the French administration did not push as hard as for the other categories: there will be very little money to collect.

https://abonnes.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2018/07/05/le-prelevement-a-la-source-decale-d-un-an-pour-les-salaries-des-particuliers-annonce-darmanin_5326048_823448.html

TAX OWED ON 2017 INCOME IS DUE SEPTEMBER 15th 
This is the last year in French history that people pay their income tax in the traditional three installments on February 15th, May 15th and September 15th. The new system will be implemented on January 1st 2019, as mentioned above. There is a special office in the Parisian suburb of Créteil for residents of Paris. It used to be that the two divisions of the French tax administration involved in the reform had different locations. Today they share the same buildings, but still function as separate entities. Nevertheless, the September 15th deadline will be retained so as to wrap up any discrepancies between what was paid and what is owed.

Best regards,

QUESTION

BUYING AN APARTMENT WHILE RENTING IT

I have been renting a furnished apartment for over a decade. A few days ago, my landlord sent a real estate agent to my place to take pictures, and a surveyor for all kinds of testing. Later I learned that the landlord has signed an exclusive sale mandate and plans to have me move out.
I am really mad because for several years I have told him I would like to buy the place. I thought I had the right of first refusal before he could give me notice. Also, I thought he could not do this in the middle of the lease but needs to wait until the anniversary date. I reminded him that the lease states primary residence and as such he should have dealt with me first. He answered that his hands were tied and I should make my offer to the real estate agent.
I feel bullied and cheated. Do I have any recourse?

QUESTION

SPOUSES OF DIFFERENT NATIONALITIES IMMIGRATING TO 

I am American and my wife is Filipina. After a couple of years of marriage and just a few months living together in the USA, she has been denied residence status for technical reasons. We are continuing the legal battle to extend the time before deportation, without much hope of success. So, she will be forced to leave as early as February 2019. We might make it to May 2019 at best. We have been through so much, emotionally, being rejected by my home country, coming to terms with leaving my grown children and the beautiful financial situation I have worked my life to attain. I am proud to run a successful business. Our only choice appears to be to commit, financially and emotionally, to a new life in France. Having our visa requests rejected would be a catastrophe. In the hope of success, we have chosen either Dordogne or Occitanie to be our new home.
Most immediately, we need to know if she has the right to apply for her French long-term visa in our French consulate in the USA or if she will need to return to the Philippines to apply. What are our chances of success?

Let’s assume that she is successful in obtaining her long-term visa at either location. I would then need help in securing permanent residency for both of us. This means I need to work to sustain our stay in France. I believe that living in France is our best choice and maybe the only one, considering her status. I have nightmares thinking about what can happen if our visa requests are rejected. I hope and pray for a yes, against all odds, considering what we went through. Please help us.

I would like to wish all of you a great summer
and a very nice vacation;
I will start mine in about three weeks

From Wikipedia
“The Sound of Music is a 1965 American musical drama film produced and directed by Robert Wise, and starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, with Richard Haydn and Eleanor Parker. Based on the memoir The Story of the Trapp Family Singers by Maria von Trapp, the film is about a young Austrian woman studying to become a nun in Salzburg in 1938 who is sent to the villa of a retired naval officer and widower to be governess to his seven children. After bringing and teaching love and music into the lives of the family through kindness and patience, she marries the officer and together with the children they find a way to survive the loss of their homeland through courage and faith.

Maria Augusta von Trapp (January 26th 1905 – March 28th 1987), also known as Baroness von Trapp, was the stepmother and matriarch of the Trapp Family Singers. She wrote The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, which was published in 1949.

After performing at a festival in 1935, they became a popular touring act. They experienced life under the Nazis after the Anschluss, i.e., the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, which took place on March 12, 1938. Life became increasingly difficult as they witnessed hostility towards Jewish children by their classmates, the use of children against their parents, and finally by the induction of Georg into the German Navy. They visited Munich in the summer of 1938 and encountered Hitler at a restaurant. In September, the family left Austria and traveled to Italy, then to England and finally the United States. The Nazis made use of their abandoned home as Heinrich Himmler’s headquarters.”

The American media is buzzing and it feels like every hour there is a new tweet, a new statement. Comparisons are made, and the people offended express their indignation.

I use comparison to explain things, to help people understand foreign concepts and so on. It is now common to hear comparisons of what is happening in the USA to the period mentioned above.

From a technical and historical point of view, I find these comparisons inaccurate, even though I believe asylum seekers are by definition covered by the Geneva Convention and therefore can exercise their rights to ask for asylum in whatever country they choose. Considering such people criminals is wrong from a legal point of view, and it is wrong to persecute them.

The Trapp family’s final destination was the USA. They ended up living in Morrisville, Vermont. My wife and daughter can sing the soundtrack of this movie from beginning to end. I know the movie quite well and like everybody else I enjoy the sweet and/or comic scenes which constitute the vast majority of it. One character often overlooked is the father, Georg von Trapp. He is part of the Austrian aristocracy, a senior officer in the Austrian armed forces. He is as strict and stiff as an old-fashioned father can be, even according to the standards of that time. When he is told to go along with the flow and remain quiet, he rebels, and he publicly denounces the loss of Austrian sovereignty. The consequence is that the entire family has to flee the country to seek asylum elsewhere. The movie is not 100% accurate as to how the family sought asylum, but it is a fact that they managed and settled in the USA with this status.

FEELING UNSAFE IN THE USA WITH TEENAGERS 
I have been in business for over 20 years. When George Bush Junior was elected, I noticed a surge of people who wanted to move to France. The reality is that most of them had already been thinking about it for a while and the presidential election just accelerated the process. Lately, I have seen Americans deciding to move to France because they refuse to live in the USA while President Trump remains in office.”

A few weeks ago, I received a call from a woman living in the USA with her 12-year-old daughter. She had decided to send her daughter to live with her father, who lives near Montpellier, France. They have been divorced for many years and yet the father has never paid any child support. The court awarded her full custody of the child with visiting rights for the father, who rarely exercised them. I asked about her motivation, saying “Why do you want your pre-teen daughter to live in France with a father she barely knows?” Her answer chilled me to the bone. She first mentioned school shootings and said she thought they were living where these incidents usually happened. She added that life in the United States today is more dangerous than in Montpellier. Her ex-husband lives in a small village on the outskirts of town, where there is less danger than in a big town, and she felt her daughter would be safer living with him. I believe that a significant part of feeling scared lies in perceptions, and rarely is it an accurate reflection of the danger. I am convinced that her fears do not reflect the reality of the situation, even though she lives in a dangerous area.

It is undeniable that school shootings occur and it could appear that nothing is being done to stop them. Similarly, even though the #metoo movement has opened up the topic of sexual harassment, which makes for a safer environment, it can lead to the impression of an epidemic of harassment since so many stories are becoming public. Bullying is being discussed with more fervor, while schools take more positive action. I conclude the fear is real here, and since I do not have all the details of her life, I can only assume that her plan is not a hasty decision. It is true that attending French middle school for several years would enrich this young girl’s life and there are clear benefits to the idea. In fact, the woman did put the benefits first when she called.

I am still wrestling with this choice, however. How can a mother send her daughter to France, with all the uncertainties and potential risks involved? It is bound to be quite traumatic for all. It feels to me like a desperate decision, choosing between two evils.

DEVELOPMENTS ON SHORT-TERM LODGING IN FRANCE
The new administration in France is more conservative than expected at the time of the election. Nevertheless, the fight to restrict very short-term rentals continues pretty much the same way. One recent change is that the current administration has figured out that French fiscal residents are involved in this activity and they can be caught because of the tax implications. It has always been true that the easiest way to nail someone involved in an illegal activity is often through tax laws concerning the income they generate.

I would like to address three principal issues here:

First, in mid-June URSSAF sent out a memo about how to declare the income generated from short-term rentals. If the annual gross income thus produced is less than 23,000 euros, all one needs to do is mention it on the standard income declaration form. Such rentals cannot be what is called location de chambres d’hôtes et de meublé de tourisme, although I have a hard time coming up with what else to calls such rentals.

If the annual gross income is between 23,000 and 70,000 euros, the owner must declare this as a professional activity. This means obtaining a SIRET number (tax ID number) and paying social charges on the profit made. But the activity can be done under auto-entrepreneur status.

The above concerns purely the fiscal side and says nothing about registering the activity at City Hall.

Second, on June 9th the Assemblée Nationale (lower house of parliament) voted to start the legislative process on a bill dealing with, among many other things, Airbnb-type rentals. As a result, several provisions will now be better enforced, and there are also new regulations. A primary residence can only be rented 120 days per year. The owner must make an annual declaration to City Hall on how many nights the place was rented out. Fines for non-compliance will be between 5,000 and 10,000 euros. Websites such as Airbnb must verify that every ad is legal, i.e., that the owner has registered the activity with City Hall. The companies managing Airbnb-type rentals can now be fined between 10,000 and 50,000 euros if there are ads without such registration.

“Our targets are individuals who buy apartments dedicated to short-term rental” (Notre cible, c’est ceux qui achètent des appartements pour faire de la location à court terme), said Sylvain Maillard, an elected official at Paris City Hall who belongs to President Macron’s party.

One last thing: city employees will have the authority to monitor the concerned websites and apartments.

Just to show the diversity of the topics covered by the bill, victims of domestic violence will not be liable to pay rent once they decide to move out to seek safety. The law states that the spouses are legally obliged to pay the rent unless a formal notice has been given to the landlord. In the case of domestic violence, the process that terminates the lease is respected, for obvious reasons. This is common sense, but a provision needs to be voted in to make it possible.

Owners renting out slums risk having their property confiscated and being prevented by law for five years from buying any real estate in France.

https://abonnes.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2018/06/08/locations-type-airbnb-l-assemblee-vote-des-sanctions-accrues_5311995_823448.html

Third, on June 23rd Le Monde published an article about landlords getting out of Airbnb-type rentals, even when it is done 100% legally.

There are several reasons. The main one seems to be the very high maintenance needed. Because guests stay for short periods, the wear and tear is much higher than with a normal rental. Furniture and appliances need to be repaired and/or changed frequently, as does the bedding. Paying for the cleaning lady, handyman and perhaps a manager to keep the place ready to rent is quite costly.

Also mentioned was the ever-present risk of one tenant destroying the place. Often the apartments used for short-term rentals are inherited, or the owners used to live there. Hence there may be considerable emotional attachment involved, in which the place is not an investment or a revenue source, but is loaded with memories. During the walk-through one might hear about three decades of family history!

Another complaint is one that I find very symptomatic of the French apartment rental sector: French owners do not want to satisfy guests’ wishes to the extent needed to get a good grade on the site and thus maintain good referrals. The French tend instead to feel that guests should be happy with what they get as long as the place is good enough for sleeping.

This shift is not yet obvious, as so many people still do Airbnb-type rentals. But for people who need a place to stay when they arrive with their immigration visa in hand, it helps to know that there are likely to be more and more apartments available for longer-term rental, three to six months at a time. Such places are vital for new arrivals, enabling them to take care of immediate needs such as securing the immigration status related to their long-stay visa, and being able to open a bank account with a stable address, to mention the most obvious ones.

https://abonnes.lemonde.fr/argent/article/2018/06/23/logement-les-limites-de-la-location-de-courte-duree_5320031_1657007.html

SUMMER VACATION: PERIOD THE OFFICE IS CLOSED THIS SUMMER
The office will be closed for less than a month, starting Friday, July 23rd. It will reopen on Monday, August 20th. 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. Prefecture appointments already scheduled will not be affected – I will be there.

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

Best regards,

QUESTION

CHOSING BETWEEN A CARTE BLEUE EUROPEENNE AND SELF-EMPLOYED IMMIGRATION STATUS

I am an American, working and living in Paris, who has been living and working in France with a carte bleue européenne visa (I have lived in France for 2 years). However, I am considering switching to the self-employed status, which will I think require a visa change to something like profession libérale or another visa.
Is this possible?

QUESTION

WHEN RENOVATIONS VOTED BY THE OWNERS’ COUNCIL GO WRONG

I bought an apartment in Paris about 15 years ago as I thought I would be relocated in Germany. This did not happen but I still have it and am making the best of the situation. All these years the building has been more or less reasonably managed. A couple of years ago, the general meeting voted the renovation of the courtyard facade. The initial work started about a year later, to be stopped almost right away.
The property manager, i.e. the syndic, is now telling us it has JUST! discovered (as if this could be believable) that the structure of these walls is made of wooden beams and all of them are rotten. So, a new and now extraordinary general meeting has been called to approve the investigation of the condition of these walls, and there will be a need for another one to approve the renovation of the beams. In short, they have scheduled one year of work instead of four months and doubled the budget from 140,000€ to 300,000€.

What incompetent crooks! As a co-owner can I sue the syndic by myself? For sure they are not going to get my money just because they are incompetent.

“Dreamer” is a hit single from the band Supertramp’s 1974 album Crime of the Century.
Some people dream of living in France. For generations, many French people dreamed of emigrating to California. Most people dream of a better life lying ahead.
All people who emigrate to another country – or, less dramatically, move to another state – are motivated by that belief that life will be better elsewhere. It is more often a dream than a planned action. My professional experience of over 20 years in the business is that moving to France as an immigrant is the pursuit of a dream, as it is impossible to plan everything when making a move of this magnitude.
If there were just one thing I would retain from my years of living in the USA, it is the core belief that one should follow one’s dream and that the sky is the limit in life. A good part of my adult life has been governed by this gift that the American nation gave me – along with my spouse, pretty much at the same time!
I just would like to add that Crime of the Century is my favorite album by Supertramp. Given my comments below about the DACA policy in the USA and what will happen to the “dreamers,” I find it quite a propos that the song “Dreamer” is on this album.
One thing I am 100% sure of, Roger Hodgson never made that connection!

CAN WRONG BECOME RIGHT? – DACA VS FRENCH POLICY
I would like to describe the history and provisions of French policy regarding how undocumented aliens can become legal residents of France. This is by no means an attempt to take sides regarding the US policy known as deferred action for childhood arrivals (DACA) or what the rights of the “Dreamers” should be. I just want to bring the French perspective to an issue all Western countries have: “What do you do with undocumented aliens who are already in the country?”

The authorities’ official and first answer is: “Deport them to their country of citizenship.” This is the first thing to do because they have no right to be there. But we all know that there are many more who stay than are deported. Therefore, sooner or later another question arises, “Are there situations in which giving them legal status makes more sense than deporting them?” In several countries the answer is linked to the length of stay in the country.

This question is the one raised by supporters of the DACA program and the Dreamers – a nickname based both on “American Dream” and the long-delayed Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act. It refers to people who arrived illegally in the USA with their parents when they were babies or small children and today are adults still living in the USA, such as a 22-year-old who arrived at age 5, has lived there for 17 years and is the parent of two children who are Americans, as they were born in the USA.

French policy took a radically different perspective 20 years ago and has been more or less the same ever since, under both conservative and liberal governments.

On May 12, 1998, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, then minister of the interior, issued a memorandum called a circulaire spelling out clear guidelines on how undocumented aliens could obtain legal status in France. One of the best-known provisions that has been little changed is that a 10-year presence in France, proven beyond a reasonable doubt, grants the right to status as a legal resident for life.

The logic of this policy and all those that followed is that France benefits more by granting such people a legal stay than by forcing them to keep living clandestinely. These are people who, despite having an illegal immigration status, have managed not to be caught by the police for years and are so well integrated that they can document living in France for 10 straight years with utility bills, bank statements, pay slips, income tax declaration and payments, and often health coverage from the public system. Given how tight the net of the French administration is, the fact of their achieving this proves that these applicants have mastered French red tape, probably better than a native French citizen. The guidelines require the applicant to prove their stay with at least one valid document per calendar quarter. The sum of all this documentation indicates a real and respectful integration, which is rewarded with legal immigration status.

The latest addition to the policy is a circulaire of November 28th 2012 by Manuel Valls, which came shortly after the end of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s term. It added more situations and made it easier to obtain legal status.

Today the private life and professional life of an applicant form the basis for the grounds for a legal stay. Almost all the grounds require a proven stay of at least five years in France.

Here are the situations that enable an illegal immigrant to obtain legal status.

PRIVATE LIFE – VIE PRIVEE ET FAMILIALE

Parent of children going to school

Spouse of a legal immigrant

Minor who became an adult (the situation of the Dreamers)

Spouse of a French or EU citizen living in France

Parent of a French citizen

EMPLOYEE
Three-year presence in France and 24 months working at least 18 hours per week
Or
Five-year presence in France and eight months over the past year or 24 months working at least 18 hours per week.

It is absolutely clear that France and the USA take opposite approaches to this problem. The very practical French approach violates the law, as it grants rights for committing the daily illegal act of living in the country without legal immigration status. Should the policy be condemned for encouraging people to break the law?

Considering how rigid the requirements are, however, the undocumented aliens who meet them thus prove that they abide by the law regarding pretty much everything in their life except immigration itself.

So, should this long-term upstanding behavior be rewarded? France has said yes for 20 years.

Regarding DACA and what is happening to the Dreamers, there is one aspect rarely mentioned on either side of the issue. From a practical point of view, what is in the best interest of the USA and its citizens?

Many Dreamers have children who were born in the USA and are American citizens. Should the administration protect them? Should decisions be made in the best interest of those citizens? Do they have the right to pursue happiness as established by the 14th amendment to the Constitution?

I do not have a problem with a conservative approach to the immigration issue, such as deporting illegal immigrants. That is simply strict application of the law. But I believe the Constitution limits the extent to which the law is applied, how the judge rules, and so on.

I know for a fact that French law cannot be a model, as it goes so far in the other direction. I am unqualified to come up with a solution regarding DACA. I just see that there is nearly complete bipartisan agreement that such a solution must be found. A very recent CBS poll shows 90 percent of Americans favor allowing those who registered for DACA to stay in the USA.

What I see here is that the USA as a country and as a nation of almost 326 million people is hurt by this. It is estimated that there are 3.6 million Dreamers, which more than 1 percent of the American population.

THE NEW CEILING FOR MICRO-ENTREPRENEURS (FORMERLY AUTO-ENTREPRENEURS)
I have been slow at addressing this issue mainly because of incoherence in what was being presented, and I still see the new system as incoherent. Nevertheless, this is the new regime and there is nothing I can do about it. The new figures apply to the fiscal year 2018.

Service providers’ annual revenue ceiling went from 33,100 euros to 70,000 euros
The annual ceiling for sales activities went from 82,800 euros to 170,000 euros

As for the calculation of profit, the ratios stay the same:

• Profession libérale (professional) – the profit is 66% of sales.
• Artisan (craftsperson) – profit is 50% of sales.
• Commerçant (merchant) – profit is 29% of sales.

Other features include the following:

1 – Immediate payment of social charges, monthly or quarterly
Being a micro-entrepreneur has this excellent feature: You declare your revenue either 12 times or four times a year, paying the related taxes at the same time, thus immediately freeing the business from tax debt. This is a wonderful change from the previous system, which delayed the payment of some social charges by up to 18 months. It should clearly be adopted for many other types of business, as it prevents people from spending tax money so that they are unable to pay their taxes.

2 – TVA
The sales tax called value-added tax or TVA is the single largest provider of funds to the state coffers, so any change could have serious consequences for the budget. Previously the auto-entrepreneur income ceiling was low enough that it did not have much effect on the amount of TVA collected.

Now, the decision made is the one I feared, which I detailed in my November 2017 issue. While the income ceiling has doubled for payment of social charges, the old limits still hold for TVA:
33,100 euros for annual revenue ceiling and
82,800 euros for sales.

In my view, the best feature of the auto-entrepreneur status was that no accounting was needed. As it was 100 percent sales based, the only things one needed to do were issue invoices and receipts, and keep track of the amount invoiced to make sure not to go above the limit. Now, to pay the sales tax to the state, one must do some accounting and itemize each sale in order to separate out the amount of tax. The TVA calculation is a lot more complex, as it deals with both purchases and sales. The amount paid for purchases bears TVA and therefore becomes a credit. The amount collected from sales includes the TVA charged. The TVA owed is the difference between the two.

To do this calculation, one must itemize everything, including all spending. This is what I call doing full accounting, so professionals might as well take advantage of having done the work, and claim their true expenses. But that would mean renouncing the micro-enterprise benefit, which is too bad.

SUMMER VACATION: PERIOD THE OFFICE IS CLOSED THIS SUMMER
The office will be closed for less than a month, from Friday, July 23rd, reopening on Monday, August 20th. 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. The prefecture appointments already scheduled will not be affected – I will be there.

THERE ARE THREE AMERICAN NOTARIES PUBLIC IN FRANCE
For a long time, I believed the only American notary public was at the US Consulate in Paris. But I recently discovered there are two others, at the Marseille and Strasbourg consulates.

The question of when and how to get documents notarized comes up all the time. I find it very interesting that France, a country known for its obsession with documents, requiring handwritten signatures everywhere, does not have any notaries public and has no idea of the concept. France, despite its obsession with having everything verified, evaluated and done with precision, has never really questioned the validity of a signature, considering it pretty much sacred, even though this is an exaggeration.

Another point is the common confusion by American people in France who think that a notaire is a notary public.

French notaires have three hats:
Tax collector. The so-called frais de notaire in a real estate transaction are for the most part taxes that the notaire collects.
Official supervisor. The notaire represents the interests of France first and foremost. The duty of the notaire is to guarantee that a deed is in the best interest of all parties involved.
Private adviser. As a professional, the notaire establishes a personal relationship with the client and can be a normal legal adviser, either paid by a standard fee or according to a fee schedule. This is the least important of notaires’ duties/missions.
The notaire in France has a monopoly on real estate transactions, signing of prenuptial agreements and handling of estates. The scope of their power is impressive. While a notary public guarantees the validity of a signature, the notaire guarantees the truthfulness and legality of an entire deed. So it is not at all the same job.

On occasion I have had a French notaire act as a notary public. I do it less and less, as on the American side the certification does not fit what is expected. It is ironic that the document is not accepted because of insufficient certification, when the professional who did it has so much more power and better credentials than an American notary public. This is just one more of the countless oddities one encounters going from one side of the Atlantic Ocean to the other.

REGISTRATION ON MY MAILING LIST
The EU General Data Protection Regulation came into effect on May 25th 2018. It guarantees greater protection of your personal data. If you wish to continue receiving my newsletter, you do not need to do anything; by this lack of action, you authorize me to send you my column 10 times a year.

I assure you that I will use your data for our communications exclusively and will not share any information of yours in any circumstances. If you no longer wish to receive the newsletter, you always have the possibility of unsubscribing from the mailing list with the link at the bottom of the issue.

I have patiently gathered addresses and entered them by hand, one at a time, into my mailing list throughout the 20-some years I have sent out my column by email. No one else has ever had access to the list, nor have I ever shared it. So I feel fairly confident that the list is quite well protected, especially after I recently had my website security upgraded.

Best regards,

QUESTION

NAME CHANGE AND THE FRENCH ADMINISTRATION

I have asked for a long-stay visa at my Chicago French consulate and I showed the French health insurance policy I bought in France which is approved by the Parisian prefecture as part of the documents requested on the list. This policy was refused because it does not offer repatriation back to the USA.
This makes no sense since I plan on living in France for the foreseeable future and I have no interest in going back to the USA as it is now. I much prefer being treated by French medicine, as I have been told it is one of the best of the world.
The woman at the consulate did not want to hear a word of what I was saying, and stated that repatriation was on her list in order to issue the visa, so either I showed another policy fast which includes it or I would not get the visa.
Can you explain what is going here?

QUESTION

IS EMIGRATING TO FRANCE THE SAME THING FOR FRENCH NATIONALS COMING BACK HOME

Your articles are very interesting and very much appreciated. I wish you would address some issues that some French retirees (for ex. with US and French social security) would face returning to La Belle France after having spent many years abroad (50 years in the US for instance, as in my case). Some of us worked for a few years in France before leaving for new horizons.
We all have the same questions:

• health coverage with the Sécu.
• paying taxes in France.
• buying vs renting real-estate.

From Wikipedia:
The Gospel Train (Get on Board)” is a traditional African-American spiritual first published in 1872 as one of the songs of the Fisk Jubilee Singers. A standard gospel song, it is found in the hymnals of many Protestant denominations and has been recorded by numerous artists.

The original meaning of the word “gospel” is “good news.” The title may be deceiving, since this month once again I do not have much good news to offer. But I enjoyed drafting the section about the SNCF and the trains, and thought it would be nice to refer to it.

HAD TO BUY A NEW COMPUTER URGENTLY IN EARLY APRIL
In early April, my computer was stolen. This disorganized my work a lot more than I would have thought.

After trying for a week to use my son’s computer and my backup, I found that several programs were not compatible. After a week I gave up and bought a new one with a French keyboard, which I was not used to.

Now I am starting to catch up with the work that accumulated during the two weeks where I could not be efficient on the computer. I tried my best and prioritized as much as I could. If I missed anything, just send an email again and I will get to it.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

FRENCH INCOME TAX: TIME TO DECLARE IS NOW
Regarding the more mundane topic of income tax, I would like to remind everybody that the paper version of the 2017 income declaration must be filed in France by Wednesday, May 17th and the second partial income tax payment (deuxième tiers) is to be paid by May 15th (midnight, in both cases). The forms are already available at www.impots.gouv.fr. It is possible to file your declaration on this website, provided it is not your first time. To do so, you need your tax ID number and some access codes

• .Note that 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 22nd
• départements 20 to 49 by May 29 th
• départements 50 or higher by June 5th

An important reminder: if you are a French fiscal resident (i.e. if you hold a carte de séjour or an immigration visa validated with an OFII stamp, and comply with the requirements), you must declare your worldwide income to the French authorities even if you have no income in France and do not have the right to work in France. There is no penalty for neglecting to file, but not meeting this obligation is illegal and can have consequences.

You are a French fiscal resident if you:

• 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.

Current government-sponsored advertising campaigns call the paper form a thing of the past and say filing on paper is obsolete. For now, declaring electronically gives you an extension of a few weeks.

RETENUE À LA SOURCE – INCOME TAX WITHHOLDING STARTS ON JANUARY 1st 2019
I first mentioned that this would happen in my July-August 2015 column. Now the tax office is communicating by email and letters in the mail informing everybody that this enormous reform to the taxation method is in place and people need to get ready for it.

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 have been reluctant to change this set-up, but all of them combined are not enough to explain why it has not yet been done.

Under the new system, everybody, even the self-employed, will make monthly payments.

There is only one technical reason that withholding tax would be very difficult to set up. It is called the quotient 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.

Such events occur frequently enough in the course of a lifetime that they could significantly change the amount withheld. A withholding system works best 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.

Neither employers nor employees are very happy with the coming reform. Employers do not want an extra task to complicate the French pay slip even more. Employees dislike the fact that employers will know much more about their private lives: Employees will have to tell employers right away if any of the above-mentioned changes takes place, and employers will have to inform the tax office to calculate the new amount owed. Given the level of distrust French employees have toward employers, this could create major difficulties.

For self-employed people, the tax office relies on the previous year’s income and the amount of taxes owed to determine how much money will be taken out monthly. The same reasons for a radical change in the amount of taxes owed also apply here. Presumably the person in this situation can tell the tax office directly to modify the calculation accordingly. Knowing how such withholding is done today – it is set in stone for the entire calendar year – I am really not sure this has been changed to accommodate the above situations.

PACS DISSOLUTION: THE LACK OF A COURT DECISION CAN COMPLICATE MATTERS
A faithful reader who is a marriage counselor has sent me a comment worth reflecting on.

“Thanks for your latest column which, as usual, is full of useful information and interesting reflections. On the subject of the PACS, it might be useful to point out that a PACS can be unilaterally abrogated at the request of one of the partners. This happened recently to one of the women in my support group. A few days later the man showed up at the couple’s flat late at night with the police and literally threw the woman out in the street with her belongings!”
My reaction: There must be a lot more to the story, given how primary domicile is protected in France. But this illustrates one of the downsides of the PACS. Since there is no judge or notaire involved in the dissolution, the partners are left to determine the split of assets and debts on their own, as well as finding a way to agree on practical matters so each partner can leave the relationship with what is theirs.

It is rarely the case that the agreement is amicable, given how often relationships end in acrimony. This is a good opportunity to remind you once again that a PACS can indeed be unilaterally abrogated, and the consequences can be terrible. In such cases, filing in court is often the best thing to do, particularly if one partner is being bullied as described above and may have trouble securing their rights.

AN AMERICAN GOT FINED LEAVING FRANCE FOR OVERSTAYING THE 90-DAY PERIOD
It is clear that the French police at airports are getting stricter about overstaying. I learned from one of my clients that an American citizen was fined about 100€ for overstaying the 90-day Schengen limit. As far as I know, this person has actually been living in France without any immigration status for a very long time and has regularly overstayed in the past, always by a few days or a few weeks.

Therefore, to me this is a signal that the French police are now looking at what is inside the passport and not just the first page. While other feedback I am getting indicates there are still many going through without any consequences, the trend is clear. There will come a day when overstaying will mean paying a fine.

FRANCE IS FACING MORE AND MORE STRIKES
At the time of writing, the national train company SNCF, university students and Air France are on strike. I do not intend to discuss or even review the new government policies against which people are striking.

Foreigners are generally amazed at how and why French people go on strike. In many countries, labor and management negotiate, with a deadline. If an agreement is not found by then, the confrontation leaves the negotiating table and goes into the streets, with demonstrations, picketing and so on. It becomes an arm-twisting match.

In France, on the other hand, strikes and street demonstrations occur before negotiations really start, since France has never had a culture that promotes negotiation and compromise as a way to obtain negotiated agreements. The public and private sectors both are then crippled, and for the same reason. It is almost as if each party is presenting its position as definitive, with no room for negotiation. Strikes then become a way to determine who wins. In the end, there is little negotiation. Either the unions are unable to mobilize enough people and there is a lack of popular support, so the reform goes into effect pretty much as is. Or the strike is strong, picking up momentum and public support, in which case the government is left with little option but damage control. The reform is stopped, and the status quo – which is not good most of the time – is maintained.

Given the nature and extent of President Macron’s reforms, it was clear that no matter how much of a wizard he is in public relation and negotiations, there would be strikes and strong opposition. Personally, I was surprised the strikes did not start much sooner, and they are a lot less severe than I expected. The credit goes to President Macron, who has done quite well so far.

Clearly the SNCF needs to be drastically reorganized, as the overall quality of service is poor, the trains are often not on time, the comfort in the trains (aside from the TGV) is not great, and the suburban trains and infrastructure are in bad shape; by the way the Parisian suburban train system has already started its makeover. There is a need to shift the focus away from the TGV so the rest of the system can deliver decent service.

There is fierce debate about the special status the SNCF employees have, especially the ones operating the trains. The cheminots – the name today refers by extension to all the people working at the SNCF – have an honored history:

From Wikipedia:
The Battle of the Rails (French: La Bataille du rail) is a 1946 war movie directed by René Clément which depicts the efforts by French railway workers to sabotage German troop transport trains.

During the war, members of the CGT union, many of them also members of the Communist party, launched their own battle against the Germans, making it more and more difficult for the Wehrmacht to move troops, artillery and other weapons. This, among many other things, had a measurable impact on the success of D-Day, for example. At the end of the war, the surviving leaders were decorated as exceptional warriors. It is interesting that even today this has an echo in the general population, much more than one would expect some 75 years later.

This overly emotional discussion of whether rail workers deserve their so-called perks distracts from a more interesting issue, which I believe should be the main one. Trains today are powered by electricity and there are railroad tracks everywhere in France. Is it time to favor rail over road, to fight global warming? It could be a good idea to promote and heavily invest in train transport both for shipping and travel as a way to fight fossil fuel usage. Then the government could emphasize the fact that the men and women of the SNCF take extra pride in the work they do for historical reasons. At first there should be no discussion about their contracts. Developing and improving the quality of the services the SNCF offer will reassure these workers about the future of their jobs. Then modifications in their status, perhaps offering less job security and discontinuing benefits inherited from the past, would not alarm them when there is a plan lasting a decade or more designed to make the SNCF become more competitive in transporting both goods and people.

For those who think this is pure utopia, check out how much the Paris metro is being renovated, as well as the Parisian suburban trains and infrastructure. There is a huge amount of work to be done before people see a measurable result. Just the number of stations fully closed for months for a complete makeover the last ten years, gives a pretty accurate indication of the work’s scope.

You may think I am comfortable and not affected by this, but I recently waited over an hour in the cold for a train at a station in Versailles. This is sometime inconvenient to me, as it is to so many others almost everyday.

Best regards,

QUESTION

NAME CHANGE AND THE FRENCH ADMINISTRATION

I am an American citizen born in Israel and I moved to France about two years ago. Due to my age and medical condition, I registered with my local CPAM. I have had problem after problem with them. Nothing was good enough for them to register me. Now that I have the temporary number that means I am covered, they have refused my birth certificate and the documents proving my name change. My first name, chosen by my parents, was that of my paternal grandfather. It was a quite an oddity (I was never called by it), and we moved to the USA when I was young, where everyone called me Billy. So I applied for an official name change, which was fine for many years. Much later in life, it became evident that it would be a good thing to change again. I then chose David.
The prefecture reluctantly accepted all the paperwork, officially translated, of all this and I now have my carte de séjour.
CPAM refuses the same documentation even though everything is explained and clearly spelled out. They now want an attestation de concordance. What is that? Am I being discriminated against? What can I do to be certain that this is truly the last document they need? Frankly, I do not trust them anymore. How can I report this anti-Semitic discrimination?

QUESTION

NATURALIZATION AND NON-COMPLIANCE WITH FRENCH INCOME TAX FOR STARTING A BUSINESS IN FRANCE?

I came to France as an American holding a long stay visa. After a few years I managed by myself to become self-employed and got the related carte de séjour and I was very proud of myself. This year I got the carte de résident, which lasts ten years. So I decided that I would ask for French nationality and went to see a lawyer, who told me that I did not qualify because I was cheating on my taxes. I left the firm outraged at such an unfair accusation.
Every year I fill out the form sent by RSI, and I pay on time all the tax bills I receive from URSSAF, RAM, and CIPAV. I have a perfect record for that. Once a year I send my #1040 to the IRS. The lawyer mentioned the French income tax I was not paying. What was he talking about? As you can see, I have always paid my taxes on time!

The link between this title and the various topics addressed in this issue is probably not obvious for many. I consider both the 1946 and 1981 film versions of The Postman Always Rings Twice to be absolute masterpieces. It is rare that I am this enthusiastic about a remake. Each in its own way, these movies portray the bleakness of the Great Depression, and tell the bitter-sweet story of a Greek immigrant who marries a younger woman, and is murdered by her and her lover.

The book The Postman Always Rings Twice is a 1934 crime novel by James M. Cain. Fast-moving and only about 100 pages long, this novel mixes sexuality and violence. The action takes place in a desolate place in California.

The Postman Always Rings Twice is a 1946 movie directed by Tay Garnett, featuring Lana Turner, John Garfield, and Cecil Kellaway.

The 1981 remake is the fourth movie version. It stars Jessica Lang and Jack Nicholson, and was directed by Bob Rafelson.

The parallel between poor Americans of those days and today is obvious. An immigrant is featured, one who has successfully integrated into American society and who then is murdered. Repetition is an important device within the plot, as the first attempted murder fails and the wife and lover have to go though the steps twice before succeeding in killing the husband.

Maybe it is just because I am a fan of Lana Turner, Jessica Lang and Jack Nicholson. The truth is that I find life tainted with violence, with confrontation; this is true in France as well as in the USA and other western countries. In recent weeks, people have been shot in both countries, reactions to these shootings have been passionate, and there have been demonstrations with marchers taking over the streets.

Closer to the topics I chose this month, there is also the idea that first impressions can be misleading. I believe that there is always a need to look twice at situations and sometimes more. Foreigners are often faced with painful and incomprehensible situations. I also want to take a closer look at these foreigners, whether refugees or not, who are gathering and sleeping in the streets of most European cities.

Nothing big in life can be done without passion. Passion can also blind people to catastrophic consequences.

WHAT DO REFUGEES LOOK LIKE?
The immediate, common sense response should be “How can this be even a question?” It happens that several discussions I have had recently made me reflect on the refugee topic and wrestle with this question. Behind it are two very poignant questions to me: “Who is a refugee?” and “How does one define refugee status?” The UN has issued a definition, and its High Commissioner for Refugees handles people who seek refuge, and it is very good that their guidelines are there to help countries pass legislation that translates them into their own domestic laws.

The reality is that most countries make welcoming refugees more difficult as the number of refugees trying to get in increases. So, whether this is the right decision or not for the country, refugee procedures let in the least number of people when the need is the greatest. On TV news shows, we see images of “hordes” of people. Because the media shows these images that are scary and unsettling, people have a negative idea of who refugees are. The main difference between what is happening in the USA and in Europe is that refugees come to Europe by their own means, landing on our shores. Given the geography, refugees entering the USA from Africa or Asia have gone through a very strict screening process and therefore are handpicked, unlike refugees entering Europe. The boat ride to reach Greece or Italy is about the same distance as that between Cuba and Florida. Many Cubans fled their country that way.

When militants or professionals work with refugees, they meet people, just people. Should a militant accept the narrow definition? Should a solution be found now that refugees are here sleeping on our sidewalks? Clearly the system of welcoming refugees is not working – handling their claims, offering the bare necessities of life. I am describing issues raised in France about immigration, refugees and so on. A new law has been proposed and is expected to be passed shortly and implemented right away. That being said, from what we know about it, it decreases the chances that any given refugee will obtain the legal status sought.

As far as I am concerned, a refugee looks like anyone else, like other people I help as either a professional or a volunteer. All the success stories I know regarding refugees have the same element: the refugee is helped individually and is taken care of. It is a person-to-person relationship.

There is another aspect of how this situation is being viewed and accepted (or not) in France and in the USA. Since the Civil War, the USA has not had battlefields on its soil or vast numbers of people fleeing war zones.

For France, on the other hand, with its thousands of years of history, 80 years or so feels like yesterday. In May and June 1940, about two million French people fled their homes as German troops swept through northern France. They became refugees in their own country. Most grabbed a few of the essentials of life, pushing a stroller or pulling a wagon with their bare hands. The same thing happened in most of Europe as the German troops advanced. This came just after half a million Spanish refugees arrived in France in 1939.

So, what do refugees look like? They look like any of us. They were my grandparents during the war, and my dad, who was quickly sent to a boarding school in the south of France. Like them, the refugees now congregating in France and elsewhere in Europe had jobs and families, and had to leave everything, sometimes in a matter of an hour or less.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exode_de_1940_en_France

THE PUMA BILLING SYSTEM IS STILL INSANE BUT THINGS MAY BE IMPROVING
For about six weeks, from mid-December to late January, many of us were helping people who received a bill from URSSAF for the premium to be paid for 2016 health coverage. This is so wrong on so many levels, I cannot go through all of them. (Last month I detailed why it was wrong for many people.)

The situation is far from fixed but we are getting a glimpse of good news. About three months after the appeal was sent, people are getting URSSAF’s answer. The letter states that the person does not owe the money and the related account has being closed. It also mentions that they should contact their local CPAM if they wish to be covered by PUMA.

It is way too early to claim victory, as many appeals have not been answered yet. Still, the initial answers are reassuring.

NEW PROCEDURE TO REGISTER A PACS
I was so focused on the changes in immigration procedures brought about by the legislation implemented on November 1st 2017 that I overlooked another change. This one comes from the same law that gave notaires the power to grant a divorce to a couple in the case of an uncontested split (requête conjointe).

A civil union (pacte civil de solidarité, or PACS) is no longer registered in court (tribunal d’instance) but instead at the family office of the local mairie.

Both changes stem from the same motivation: relieving pressure on the courts, which are overcrowded by procedures that are contentious by nature. But the two procedures are totally different. The very existence of a divorce procedure implies disagreement, though a couple may come up with a sound deal on issues that needed a resolution in order for a divorce to happen.

The nature of a PACS registration, on the other hand, is to make a couple official, with the associated rights and obligations.

PACS has always been an oddity according to French legal logic, but a fantastic solution to fix what used to be a painful situation, as it made it possible for same-sex couples to have a legal existence and rights. Today, over 80% of PACSed couples are heterosexual.

Originally, to keep the PACS registration from looking like a wedding, the choice was made to have it resemble the formation of a corporation, with the contract registered by the parties in court. Corporations have their by-laws registered in a business court, and a similar procedure was the best way officials could imagine to prevent the appearance of a PACS being a marriage.

The PACS was created on November 15th 1999. Some 18 years later, with same sex marriage have become a fact of life, there is no need to keep this procedure in court. The fact that PACS registrations and weddings both occur at city hall no longer bothers many people, if any.

I have been very critical of the divorce procedure being removed from the court system. The reason is that the foreigner, then the less informed spouse, can be taken advantage of much more easily this way than when the judge rules. I believe that today marriage and PACS are so close in so many ways that it makes sense for them to be handled by the same office. But they should still involve different procedures, to show that there is a difference in the nature of the union.

A wedding is performed by an authority, and a similar authority accepts its dissolution. A PACS is the acknowledgement of the existence of a couple, and the same couple can inform the authorities of its dissolution.

La loi de modernisation de la justice du XXIe siècle, publiée au Journal officiel du 19 novembre 2016 (Art. 48):
http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/eli/loi/2016/11/18/JUSX1515639L/jo

Best regards,

QUESTION

IS THE AUTO-ENTREPRENEUR STATUS COMPATIBLE WITH THE CARTE DE SEJOUR ETUDIANT

In your Q/A about student vs auto-entrepreneur I was surprised by your answer, because the two statuses are not mutually exclusive. You can be a student AND have the auto-entrepreneur status at the same time – all without changing your visa status (student or otherwise). I know people who have had the student visa and then have also signed up as an auto-entrepreneur. This has zero impact on the student visa. I was just at URSSAF last week when I asked about this specifically. I’m about to become a student again (on a visa vie privée) and I want to keep my auto-entrepreneur status. The URSSAF agent said I can have both statuses at the same time. I hope you can update your answer to include these details.

QUESTION

IS THE CARTE DE SEJOUR PASSEPORT TALENT THE BEST ONE FOR STARTING A BUSINESS IN FRANCE?

My wife and I are Americans, currently in Boston, but are interested in moving to France to start our own business. We’ve been looking into the visa options lately, and are a bit stuck trying to decipher the difference between “talent passport – new business” and “entrepreneur/profession libérale”. I’ve read many of the blog posts about the profession libérale visa, but would appreciate any clarification between the two, specifically: 

1 – Does anyone feel like one of these visas is easier to get or better to have than the other? For the passeport talent you must “prove that you have a real and serious business creation project” as well as hold a master’s degree or have five years’ experience. To get the profession libérale visa you need to “demonstrate the economic viability of your project.” I’m having a hard time determining what meets the latter requirement. Does the idea need to be much more unique to qualify for this versus the talent passport? 

2 – My wife and I are going to run our business together. With the talent passport, family members are issued a multi-year residence permit. How would this work with the profession libérale visa? Do we both have to apply for separate visas? can we apply jointly? can one of us apply and the other then get a spouse’s visa? or is there something else? 

3 – Assuming we get approved for one of these visas, after we move to France and start creating and running our business, are there any differences or restrictions for talent passport holders versus entrepreneur/profession libérale visa holders?

QUESTION

DOES A SIX MONTH VISA GRANT IMMIGRATION STATUS?

At the French consulate in Chicago, I got a six month visa instead of a twelve month one. Do I still need to present my forms to the OFII and have the medical exam/validate the visa long sejour? Or only if I am staying longer than six months? Everybody is telling that I cannot stay past six months. Did the French consulate screw me over?

“Ball and Chain” (also known as “Ball ‘n’ Chain” or “Ball & Chain”) is a blues song written and recorded by American singer-songwriter Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton in the early 1960s and best known through the version by Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company, who first performed it at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967.

Some Americans have long looked at living in France with horror because of what they see as an absence of freedom and an omnipotent state regulating every aspect of people’s lives. This was never true, however, and the last 30 years have seen modernization of the French administration, linked to drastic changes in the legal system that have increased the rights of French citizens and others living in France.

Nevertheless, many see the protection universelle maladie (PUMa) as an imposition of this magnitude. Another vestige of the old view that the state knows best is the way French law and courts still limit rights regarding name changes. And there was a time when getting married with a prenuptial agreement was seen as being the prisoner of an institution – wearing a ball and chain. As for the other topics below, I will let you decide if there is a connection.

UPDATE ON PUMA, WHICH TURNED INTO A NIGHTMARE FOR MANY 
I would like to thank the Association of Americans Resident Overseas (AARO) for its help on this issue. They are on the forefront of this, and as far as I know are the only organization actively helping members deal with the problem and possibly lobbying in favor of a change. In particular, I would like to thank Eric Fenster, the AARO member who helped me draft this section.

We had feared that the new system would result in adverse situations after being implemented for about two years without collecting premiums for the coverage offered. In fact, the situation is even worse than I had expected. I would like to highlight some of the worst examples I know of (and I am not sure I have identified all of them).

1 – The 2016 premium came due after all.
In almost all situations, especially in the private sector, people expect to have to pay health insurance premiums on time. For over a year, the impression was given that the premiums for 2016 would not be collected. I was one of the few doubting that this would be true once the administration got its act together. Sure enough, it was announced that January 15 was the deadline to pay the 2016 premium. But this came as a surprise to many.

2 – People have been charged for coverage they do not have.
Since December 2017, foreigners who declare their foreign income in France while being properly covered by a private health insurance policy have received bills from URSSAF for 2016 coverage that they have never had. The reason is that URSSAF, instead of checking the database of the caisses primaires d’assurance maladie (CPAM) to find out who was covered by the old couverture maladie universelle (CMU, which PUMa replaced), got its information from the tax office and never checked if people were covered by the public system.

People who received the URSSAF bill had subscribed in good faith to private medical insurance, and no public authority had given any notice of an obligation to join the public system. Indeed, for nearly two years no one was even able to answer questions from those who had heard about PUMa.

When I learned from my AARO connection that many Americans had received the bill, we began to help them contest it on the grounds that it charged for a health coverage system in which they were not enrolled, even though French legislation stated that payment liability did not begin until the date of enrollment.

3 – People are not being charged for coverage when they need it.
This might sound like good news but it can have very adverse consequences. URSSAF was supposed to charge 8% of the global taxable net income for the year, payable per quarter. It took considerable work to figure out that some income, mainly retirement income, is exempt from this 8% premium calculation. For many foreigners who have retired in France, most if not all of their taxable income is retirement income. So they received a letter stating that they owed nothing.

The problem is that the prefecture insists all foreigners have comprehensive coverage from either the public system or a reputable company and also pay for health coverage. So foreigners who were covered by the CMU and now PUMa must show that.
First, they have sufficient assets or income from a foreign source and that the annual net income exceeds minimum wage (14,000€).
Second, that in the case of being covered by the public system, the income used for calculating the 8% premium exceeds 9,654 euros. If the income on which the calculation is based is less, the foreigner pays nothing for the health coverage.
In the past, the prefecture has always interpreted the absence premium payments, as indicating insufficient income, as they then expect a minimum income of 14,000 euros for the same period. In such situations, the prefecture systematically denies renewal of the carte de séjour based on insufficient funds entitling the foreigner to free coverage. It was somewhat logical to expect foreigners to pay for their coverage. Today, though, many foreigners have an income far exceeding this amount and yet the new way URSSAF calculates the premium results in their coverage being free of charge. The main reason is that pensions are not used in URSSAF’s cotisation subsidiaire maladie (CMS) calculation, i.e., the name of the premium paid for the public coverage.

I have no idea how the prefectures will address this issue. If they do not get new guidelines, I fear the worst, i.e., refusal to renew cartes de séjour. I really feel that one part of the administration is not keeping another part informed, and the refusal to renew the “visiteur” immigration status will come as a very nasty surprise. One can hope that properly documenting the way the CMS is calculated should force prefectures to reconsider their procedures in view of this radical change.

4 – Some people previously covered by CMU never declared their income to France.
Holders of a carte de séjour visiteur can have the card renewed without showing a French income tax statement. I advise my clients nevertheless to show the two first pages of their last #1040 to the prefecture just to prove that they had made an income declaration. But whether these people have complied with French fiscal law is irrelevant here.

Because URSSAF got only tax information from the French tax office and not CPAM, such people never got a letter and were never charged, but they continue to be covered, as CPAM does not verify whether the insured is paying into the system.

How long will this situation last? What are the likely consequences regarding the premiums owed and not paid? I ask the same question about the fact that there was no filing in France even though the person was clearly a French tax resident.

I fear the worst, as URSSAF can easily and rightfully consider this as tax cheating. In this specific instance, to help understand the gravity of the situation, I would compare URSSAF to the American Social Security.

SOUVENIR SOUVENIR – I SERVED IN THE FRENCH ARMY AS AN OFFICER
Even though I lived some years in the USA, as a Frenchman I clearly see several topics with a non-American eye.

I did my military service as an officer, having the rank of lieutenant when I left. I trained a platoon through boot camp. I was on active duty for nine months in a military academy, mainly as a juriste, but doing all the chores like any other lieutenant.

My military specialty was firearms. I trained many soldiers on the full range of firearms, from the traditional long rifle to the fully automatic machine gun.

Anyone who has been in the military has a similar experience of having been surrounded by firearms – that is the norm.

There is one experience I would like to share. The officer of the day, who is on security duty for 24 hours straight, sleeping next to the main gate, is obliged to carrying a loaded handgun at all times. The lieutenants, the youngest officers, most often served as duty officer. We were trained to be tough, and on we duty we knew what to do; military discipline ran our life, especially at such moments.

I can still remember, over 30 years later, the heaviness of this responsibility. It felt like I had about 20 pounds more on my shoulders. I took the duty seriously; in retrospect, I believe that carrying a loaded gun all the time and being the one allowed to use it in case of danger added to the weight. Of course, I never had to use it, but living with this responsibility makes one act in a more responsible, more controlled way.

The day I was discharged was the last day I operated a gun. In all my years of living in the USA, I had many opportunities but I never fired a gun. In my mind and in my life, guns are associated with a military uniform.

I know very well that the US constitution is understood to dissociate the right to bear machine guns from being in the military.

My point is that anyone who carries a firearm should be well trained, should handle the firearm responsibly as it is lethal in a manner of seconds, and should comply with security guidelines. My point of view – which I admit is a French point of view and could be completely irrelevant in the USA – is that the issue should be about the training. Getting a gun license should be like getting a driver’s license. I would go so far as to say that, just as there are several types of licenses, for driving vehicles ranging from a motorcycle to a 16-wheel tractor-trailer, there could be a similar range from permits allowing ownership of traditional hunting guns up to fully automatic machine guns.

FBI CHECK FOR VISA PURPOSES
Asking for French immigration status requires submitting proof that one does not have a criminal background. The French administration asks applicants to prove that there are no criminal convictions on their record.

In the USA, this is done through an FBI background check. The problem is that it used to take a few weeks. Now it takes several months. But in immigration visa requests, the applicant often has just a few weeks in the USA to get such documentation. Many have already settled in France in order to have everything ready to submit solid proof of an address in France and to make it easier to obtain the visa. Therefore, some private companies have managed to speed up the process.

More information can be found on the FBI website:
http://www.fbi.gov/services/cjis/identity-history-summary-checks
http://www.fbi.gov/services/cjis/identity-history-summary-checks/list-of-fbi-approved-channelers-for-departmental-order-submissions

AARO RECORDED MY 2-HOUR PRESENTATION ON DECEMBER 18
The presentation, on “Coping with French Administration,” is now accessible from my website, too, at http://www.jeantaquet.com/aaro.

I have been happily surprised by the number of people who have contacted me after watching it. I thought that a 2-hour recording was quite long, but these people did not seem to agree.

Here is AARO’s introduction to the video:

French Logic
Jean started the talk by telling the audience that France is logical. This got a good chuckle, but he continued to explain exactly how that logic works. It starts with the French Revolution and having to deal with the old elite (aristocrats) and establishing a fair system for all to be equal under the law. This was achieved with the Napoleonic Civil Code. The way that France can maintain its republic is by treating all equally and that means through identity, not aristocratic rank. Identity is established by name, date and place of birth, domicile, and profession. Your name, your birth certificate, and proof of where you live and what you do. (Reporter’s note: In France, the extrait d’état civil, which is the birth certificate document, contains more than just your birth information, which is why the administration frequently wants to see a recent one.) That is the logic behind the constant request for documents.

The video is accessible on the AARO website at:
https://aaro.org/events/event-reports/641-coping-with-french-administration

Best regards,

QUESTION

WHAT DOES A PRENUP DO?

I am American and intent to marry my French fiancée in France.
We are signing a prenuptial agreement with two major components in mind. First, my business is to remain my property after the marriage to protect the accounts of my spouse from debt and creditors. All earnings and debts will remain with me.
Second, to protect our inheritance from our parents, we both wish our inheritance to remain our own; assets are to remain the property of the inheriting spouse.
Which marital regime would best suit these provisions? Can a regime be created to address ONLY these two issues?

QUESTION

WHAT HAPPENS AT OFII DEPENDS ON IMMIGRATION STATUS

I have a question about the renewal of my titre de séjour salarié. In the list the prefecture gave me to renew my carte de séjour, one of the last things that is listed is a bilan de compétence. After doing some research, I have found that the OFII sometimes does not require this. How do you know if you need it or not? If I do have to do it, it is very expensive. … My job does not require me to do this so it means it would be up to me to pay for it. I have seen prices up to 1300 euros.

QUESTION

AS A MARRIED WOMAN, WHAT IS MY LEGAL NAME IN FRANCE?

While in Brive in the South of France with my husband, I got a message from my son who was staying at our apartment in Paris saying that the prefecture called and said there was a problem with my visa. My son understood they wanted to put both names on my visa, but I only need to have my late husband’s last name as my legal name on my US passport. So, anticipating some serious problems, I asked my sister back in Seattle to get a copy of the death certificate of my late husband. I am afraid that I will need to show them an original document with a seal. The states are so afraid of identity fraud that they make records difficult to access and she might not be able to get it.
Is it possible to convey to them that my last name is the one on my passport and leave it at that? What’s wrong with these people? Can’t they accept that a passport is an official legal document, which should not be questioned?

First of all, I would like to wish all of you a very happy and prosperous 2018! 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.

I was thinking of using the Beatles’ song “Yesterday” for the title of this month’s issue, but the melancholy lyrics are so much about the past that this song did not capture my message. For the first issue of 2018, this title seems too simplistic. New year’s resolutions are inspired by the feeling that something new and, of course, wonderful will happen during the next twelve months. What if we were to talk about what seems to be a radical change in attitudes towards sexual harassment? Or discuss the new French labor law? Or reflect on some significant changes in French taxation policies? I believe that these topics alone would legitimate my title.

We continue to see such situations evolving in both France and in the USA, and we are incapable of predicting what the next move will be, the next reaction of the populace. This is very unsettling for people who are used to predictable decisions. If there is one thing we have learned in 2017, it is that the “old” is fading fast and 2018 will see a lot of new things emerging, both good and bad. I continue to find it fascinating that the president of France is as unpredictable as his American counterpart, and that only one of them has been considered by some to be capricious. The two presidents resemble each other in their determination to implement their electoral promises now that they are in office. One could object that their promises were not of the same nature and would not have the same consequences, and this is absolutely true, but it is a definitive change to have presidents who are determined to have their pledges turned into legislation. So we are in with the new; this is certain and for many it means riding on a rollercoaster, an activity that very few of us enjoy. As for France, which I know better than the USA, there is an obvious need for a lot of radical changes. I just hope that France as a nation will benefit from the freight train of sweeping change and that not too many people will be led astray while this is happening. The new legislation that brings improvements should benefit everybody.

PROUST’s CONTRE SAINTE-BEUVE IN THE AGE OF HARVEY WEINSTEIN ?
Contre Sainte-Beuve (“Against Sainte Beuve”) is an unfinished collection of essays by Marcel Proust. Written between 1895 and 1900, it was discovered among Proust’s papers after his death and published posthumously in 1954. Three of the essays take issue with the body of work of the 19th century French literary critic Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve.

Proust is by far my favorite author; he stands apart from the rest. He is too often known only as an author whose sentences typically cover several pages of a book. Reducing him to his exceptional grammar skills is comparable to demoting him to the status of a well-trained monkey doing impressive tricks.

After recent events in France and the USA, I thought of the issues involved through the lens ofContre Sainte-Beuve. People unfamiliar with this 19th century debate might be confused by my choice.

Briefly, Sainte-Beuve believed that art, especially literature, was best understood when the reader knew the author’s life and intentions so as to put the work in context. Proust feels that literature, and art in general, is best appreciated on its own and that information related to the author distracts from or distorts the work’s message. While he does not discourage learning about the artist, and admits some benefits of doing so, in his view this makes the reader start becoming a critic, thus changing the focus.

The French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine have been studied in French secondary schools for decades and are considered the major poets of their generation. Rimbaud (1854-1891) influenced the modernist movement in literature and art, prefiguring surrealism. An excellent student, he started writing very young but left school as a teen and ran away from home. He completed the bulk of his literary output in late adolescence and early adulthood, then stopped writing at age 21. He and Verlaine had a sometime violent love affair, which lasted nearly two years. In later years, Rimbaud traveled as a merchant before dying of cancer at age 37.

Verlaine (1844-1896) was associated with the Decadent movement and is considered one of the greatest exponents of fin de siècle French poetry. After starting a correspondence with Rimbaud, he lost interest in his wife, Mathilde, effectively abandoning her and their son for the younger poet. Their stormy affair culminated in Brussels in July 1873 when, in a drunken rage, Verlaine shot at Rimbaud, wounding him in the left wrist, although not seriously. As a result, Verlaine was imprisoned for two years in Mons, Belgium.

Over a century later I have yet to meet a French school teacher who explains the personal life of these men when their poems are being studied. My question is, can the revered artist and complete scumbag coexist in the same person? Verlaine, for example, is a revered poet who was also a criminal who served two years in a Belgian jail. I believe he illustrates quite well that such coexistence is entirely possible.

So where does this take us regarding the current wave of denouncement of sexual misconduct by men? My initial reaction is to look at the gravity of the misconduct, as criminal law distinguishes between misdemeanors and felonies. Then the criminal justice system should do its work. These men are stepping down or being fired from their jobs because of public pressure, because their positions are incompatible with such misconduct. That is one side of the issue. The public eye and the media should be addressing the issue differently depending on the nature of the alleged misconduct. Some of the accused are facing or will face criminal charges, others not. In France as well as the USA, some had or continue to have prominent careers as artists but could end up spending time in jail.

On both sides of the Atlantic, living and dead artists are being described as despicable people – recent cases in the news, for instance, range from Woody Allen to the anti-Semitic 20th century poet Louis-Ferdinand Céline, and several other cases are likely to arise in the weeks and months to come. In many ways, it is an excellent development and people should know of the criminal activities. But I would prefer that the focus stay on the criminal aspect rather than tainting such men’s artistic output.

Hitler had a short-lived career as a painter, but his art is all forgotten. History remembers him as the Nazi leader of Germany in WWII. History is very good at discerning the most important thing to remember about a person.

AARO RECORDED MY 2 HOUR PRESENTATION ON DECEMBER 18

Here is AARO’s introduction to the video:

Coping with French Administration
It is rare that AARO has a presentation about immigration to a country, but since so many AARO members live in France, we made an exception. Jean Taquet and his wife, an American, are AARO members. He studied law in France and then lived in the United States for many years, becoming an associate of the Delaware Bar Association. Upon returning to France, through his contacts at the American Church, he became an expert on immigration to France. He was also a regular contributor to the now defunct Paris Free Voice.

French Logic
Jean started the talk by telling the audience that France is logical. This got a good chuckle, but he continued to explain exactly how that logic works. It starts with the French Revolution and having to deal with the old elite (aristocrats) and establishing a fair system for all to be equal under the law. This was achieved with the Napoleonic Civil Code. The way that France can maintain its republic is by treating all equally and that means through identity, not aristocratic rank. Identity is established by name, date and place of birth, domicile, and profession. Your name, your birth certificate, and proof of where you live and what you do. (Reporter’s note: In France, the extrait d’état civil, which is the birth certificate document, contains more than just your birth information, which is why the administration frequently wants to see a recent one.) That is the logic behind the constant request for documents.

The video is accessible on the AARO website at: https://aaro.org/events/event-reports/641-coping-with-french-administration

I would like to thank AARO for the opportunity; I really enjoy giving this kind of presentation, trying to liven up topics that by definition might seem quite boring.

FRANCE IS CHANGING ITS POSITION ON OVERSTAYING WITHOUT IMMIGRATION STATUS
For the first time, a client was nearly fined for overstaying the visa waiver program after being stopped by French police at the airport. The risk is still quite low; the fact that the person is not American may have made a difference. This is their account of the incident.

“When I left Paris at the immigration at the airport they noticed I entered in September. He was gonna charge me 180 euros but not my son, and then he said, ‘This time is fine, you don’t have to pay, but you can’t enter Europe for 6 months unless you get a visa.’ Then I explained and showed him my appointment at the consulate that I was going to apply for the visa to stay longer in France. He didn’t question the fact that I stayed over 6 months in a year but that I stayed 113 days instead of 90. I said we traveled around Europe during this time.”

This is a warning signal that should be taken very seriously.

THE TAXE D’HABITATION IS FADING OUT QUICKLY FROM JANUARY 2018 
Lower-income people are to be exempted from paying the taxe d’habitation under the new French tax law, fulfilling a campaign promise of President Macron. The estimate is that about 80% of households will not pay it by the 2021 fall when it is normally due.

Many question what will replace it, as it is the main local tax that cities and departments count on to balance their budgets.

The tax authorities have set up a simulation page to let people see if they will be affected by this radical change: http://www.impots.gouv.fr/portail

SELF-EMPLOYMENT IN FRANCE AND THE NEW LABOR LAW 
The question of labor law in France is currently a very political one. Several French leaders have fought the new legislation because of its decrease in the protection afforded to French workers. Even without taking a political position, it is possible to witness the rapid evolution of the French labor market.

I want to stay away from this debate, as I feel totally incompetent as a grammarian, whether in French or in English. I would just point out that English as it is spoken all over the world stigmatizes gender differences a lot less. And yet Anglophone countries are facing sexual harassment issues as much as France, and many other countries, for that matter.

For about 80 years the trend was always to protect French employees so they were secure in their jobs, with this stability allowing people to make long-term plans. The banking industry adapted to the situation as well, enjoying a financially stable client base. Similarly, landlords were supposed to be reassured by the stability of their renters.

The recent financial crises badly disturbed this picture, and for years now a high rate of unemployment has indicated that not everybody was enjoying the same security. The resulting labor market rigidity led to a significant increase in the volume of temp work, although the French administration and courts could, and often did, rule that several temp contracts that amounted to missions for the same job with the same company was in effect a traditional French labor contract. Moreover, even temp workers are employees, and therefore benefit from generous unemployment payments and cost a lot of money in social charges.

Former President Sarkozy tried to deliver on his main presidential campaign promise, “travailler plus pour gagner plus” (work more to earn more). But he failed to significantly change the legislation limiting the workweek to 35 hours and the overall amount one can work, in one or more jobs, to 48 hours a week.

However, there was never a limit to the number of hours a self-employed person could work. Hence, Sarkozy created a simple fiscal status that would allow people to work legally on the side instead of taking a second job, as is common in the USA. The loi de modernisation de l’économie, passed in August 2008 and in effect as of January 1, 2009, created the auto-entrepreneur status. It was intended for side jobs, but very quickly many unemployed people signed up for it as a way to get some work and be active again. As recently as 30 years ago, working as an independent and running your own business was frowned on. People who made this choice were seen as either too incompetent to get a normal job or crooks using the status to steal money from clients and cheat on taxes.

One very visible evolution in the labor market is that this stigma is almost completely gone. Today in many parts of the country, there is excitement about creating your own business, and some French people now admire those who do so. A significant portion of the French population now has this status. In 2016, 331,500 people signed on to be auto-entrepreneurs, an increase of 3.3% from 2015. That same year, 261,000 signed off, for a net total of 70,500 auto-entrepreneurs in 2016.

So many people holding this status has shifted the way employers view the situation. They no longer need to hire, and can have a labor force with no strings attached. Many employers dismissed their salaried employees so they could get auto-entrepreneurs to do their jobs. The English teaching industry in France is now dominated by this status. Even nannies and cleaning ladies increasingly have it.

The latest labor laws, passed on September 23, 2017, can only be understood with this background. The idea is that if French workers are less protected, employers will choose an in-house labor force over subcontracting. Among the many areas the new law covers are that dismissal is less difficult and severance pay less onerous, there is more freedom to reach agreement within the company, and working remotely is better defined. Clearly, for the first time in about 80 years (aside from WWII), a law has been passed that deregulates French worker protection. A few years ago, it would have led to a general strike, France would have shut down for days and the government would then probably have resigned. This is one way to see the sweeping effect of theauto-entrepreneur status. Of course, it is not the only reason; most people credit President Macron with being an excellent politician, able to pass laws the French would ordinarily have a great deal of trouble accepting.

For more info (in French), see http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2017/12/21/bienvenue-dans-la-societe-free-lance_5232996_3232.html

Best regards,

QUESTION

WHAT RIGHT TO WORK DO FOREIGN STUDENTS HAVE IN FRANCE?

I am an American on a student visa, and will be teaching English on the side. My student visa states “authorized to work limited to 60% durée légale”. I have been offered a teaching gig one day a week for three hours. My visa is to be renewed in a couple of months. My employer has strongly recommended that I then change my status to auto-entrepreneur so I may bill her with an invoice as all her other staff do. I would also be able to take on more teaching work. Everything I have read suggests that I should stick with the student visa, that auto-entrepreneur should be the last resort. What are your thoughts or recommendations?

QUESTION

WHEN THE LANDLORD GIVES NOTICE FOR THE WRONG REASON

I have rented an apartment for 25 years, and today I received a letter from the owner telling me I need to move out. The owner states that she intends to lodge her granddaughter and her partner in this apartment. I am 75, retired and live on a small, fixed pension that is too low to be taxable.

All this has come about because I asked the owner not to increase the rent over last year’s since I was already paying 50% of my income in rent, charges and apartment tax. Taking more money from those of modest means so that those who are doing well can do better doesn’t seem fair or logical.

• 1) Which family members does the law allow owners to replace tenants with?
• 2) What is the maximum allowable annual rent increase? My apartment owner says it is 2%.
• 3) Is the maximum increase retroactive and cumulative? i.e. if there was no rent increase last year, can the owner charge a 4% increase this year?
• 4) Is non-payment of a rent increase grounds for eviction?
• 5) Do retired seniors have any special rights to stay in their rental apartments? (Or which administration branch should I contact for this information?)
• 6) Can the notice be given by email?
• 7) Can she propose a smaller apartment in the same building?

Do I have any recourse in this matter?