I would like to wish you all you a great summer and a very nice vacation, enjoying the freedom of the moment.
I will start mine in ten days 

When I get older, losing my hair,
Many years from now, 
Will you still be sending me a Valentine, 
Birthday greetings, bottle of wine? 
If I’d been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door? 
Will you still need me, will you still feed me, 
When I’m sixty-four? 
You’ll be older too
And if you say the word, 
I could stay with you. 
I could be handy, mending a fuse
When your lights have gone. 
You can knit a sweater by the fireside, 
Sunday mornings go for a ride. 
Doing the garden, digging the weeds
Who could ask for more? 
Will you still need me, will you still feed me, 
When I’m sixty-four? 
Every summer we can rent a cottage
On the Isle of Wight, if it’s not too dear. 
We shall scrimp and save. 
Grandchildren on your knee: 
Vera, Chuck and Dave. 
Send me a postcard, drop me a line, 
Stating point of view. 
Indicate precisely what you mean to say, 
Yours sincerely, wasting away. 
Give me your answer, fill in a form, 
Mine forever more. 
Will you still need me, will you still feed me, 
When I’m sixty-four?

Well, not quite – I just turned 62, the ripe age to retire in France. Some days I feel as old and in as bad shape as the song states. By the way, we do not have grandchildren yet! My birthday was yesterday.

After over two difficult years, I am seriously looking forward first to my vacation, starting in a few days on July 9th, as well as decreasing my workload starting in September so it is compatible with my age. One thing needed is stricter control over my schedule. Way too often I meet clients at lunchtime so I can accommodate their urgency. In retrospect, I realize this is no longer sustainable.

Even though there should be no more curfew or confinement in the foreseeable future, I have enjoyed getting home in time for dinner, and will make sure I continue to do so.

I am happy that I continue to have projects I want to do and the desire to get a few things done, both personal and professional. I have no intention of retiring but I have come to terms with the fact that I need to slow down. I also count on the pandemic being pretty much behind us: even though it will be a new normal, things will likely settle down to the extent that I can put together robust plans for my clients, knowing the rules and regulations are no longer liable to change overnight.

EXPECTATIONS ABOUT BEING OLD 
Another song sung by the young about being old and at the end of a career, like “When I’m Sixty-four,” is a French one. “Quand j’étais chanteur” (when I was a singer) came out in 1975, when the artist, Michel Delpech, was only 29 years old. It is a bold move by young artists, early in their career, to sing about its end. The vast majority of people do not like to think about getting old and what it means in terms of staying fit physically and mentally.

Western culture glorifies youth, being athletic, having a perfectly toned body. Asian and African cultures, by contrast, traditionally value older age, which they associate with knowledge, wisdom, authority.

HANDLING CULTURAL DIVERSITY 
I have been a fan of John Oliver since his debut with The Daily Show. His Wikipedia bio states:

“John William Oliver (born 23 April 1977) is a British-American comedian, writer, producer, political commentator, actor, and television host. Oliver started his career as a stand-up comedian in the United Kingdom. He came to wider attention for his work in the United States on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart as its senior British correspondent from 2006 to 2013. … Since 2014, Oliver has been the host of the HBO series Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.”

I watch this program online the Monday after it airs, when it becomes available on YouTube. Recently Oliver addressed two topics that resonated with me personally.

“hair, specifically black hair” on May 10th 
The first was “hair, specifically black hair.” I have been a member of the African Fellowship of the American Church in Paris since 2003. I have learned a lot and continue to be honored to feel I belong there. This connection has led to many interesting situations stemming from cultural differences and my need to quickly adapt. Oliver’s commentary in his May 10th segment called “Hair” was 100% right: Either you were born with it or you have no idea what it means, unless you have been personally confronted with the issue. I was amazed how balanced the program was. Although this white, British-born man admitted he had no grounds for addressing the issue, he managed to explain its many facets in a caring way.

Like him, I am a complete outsider. I had no idea about this issue until I was faced with it. About 15 years ago, I met with a friend from Zimbabwe one Saturday afternoon in Paris’s Chateau Rouge neighborhood, which is largely African. Most everything from the continent is available, and almost as much business is done on the sidewalk and even the street itself as in the shops. Eventually we went into beauty product shops. She went in first and I followed. What I was used to seeing, regarding hair care, was not there. Instead, I discovered a new world. Even the topics of discussions were different.

Eventually, I walked into one such shop first, momentarily blocking my friend from view. “A fish out of water” would be a major understatement. I was met by the saleswomen with total disbelief. It was inconceivable that I could have any business there. Clearly, I did not belong. A few seconds later, my friend stepped up and the situation went back to something more normal.

That is how I became familiar with this issue and with the huge disconnect between the standard hair care industry in the Western world and what it means to have black hair. 
You can watch the segment here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf1c0tEGfrU

“Asian Americans” June 7th 
About a month later, Oliver’s main topic was Asian Americans. My wife and I used to be active members of the Multicultural Couples group at the American Church, which was started about 15 years ago. The members were often Franco-American couples, but not always. I remember a Spanish-Russian couple who had to do everything twice – wedding, baptisms – since their families were traditional and religious, so the ceremonies had to be first Catholic and then Orthodox. Stuck in the middle, this couple had to deal with all kinds of issues, the most obvious being juggling how and when to celebrate Christmas and Easter.

Another couple who caught my attention were both East Asian. Their story was a true eye-opener, and still fascinates me all these years later. In both cases, their parents came from the area of Wenzhou, a port city in Zhejiang province, China. Thus they spoke the same dialect, ate the same food, were raised with similar parental styles in the same culture and traditions. During their courtship, they felt they had everything in common and there were no cultural differences for them. Only after they married and had lived together for a while did they realize how far apart they were culturally. The husband was born and raised in Canada and the wife in the Belleville neighborhood of Paris. One was a Canadian citizen, educated in Canada, with Canadian reflexes. The other was French, with French schooling and everything that goes with it. Unlike the other couples in the group, they had never expected to have to adapt to each other’s culture and deal with obvious differences.

On June 7th, John Oliver’s segment titled “Asian Americans” dealt with the diverse population in the USA with origins in Asia, especially Southeast Asia. Along with Chinese immigrants, with whom they are often conflated, these people have been the victims of racist aggression in recent years, especially since the beginning of the pandemic. John Oliver discussed the stereotypes associated with Asian Americans. Regardless of whether they reflect reality, stereotypes are hurtful. 
Once again, I was impressed by how easy he made it seem to explain complex issues in detail:www.youtube.com/watch?v=29lXsOYBaow

Recalling these episodes of Last Week Tonight was an attempt to choose some lighter topics and stay as far as possible from the political issues of the moment. It is aligned with my job which is, among other things, to adapt to the cultural differences, which I face while trying to help foreigners living in France.

FRENCH LOCAL ELECTIONS
On consecutive Sundays, June 20th and 27th, France held elections for the regional and departmental levels. Turnout is always lower in local elections than in national ones, which involve presidential elections. This time, the vast majority of eligible voters stayed away, setting a record low of 33.28% voters. Of course, everybody has an explanation and blames others for the situation. I do not believe there is just one reason or one person to blame. But a particular reason I have heard makes sense to me, although I am sure it is not the only one and may not be the most important.

France’s regions have their roots in provinces that were formed after the fall of the Roman Empire. They have always had strong cultural identities. Even today, some have their own languages, not always with Latin roots. Law No 2015-29 of January 16th, 2015, turned 22 historical provinces into 13 regions, thus aggregating areas that often had little in common except being next to each other. In American terms, it would be like joining Texas and Louisiana in a single unit just because they share a border. True, Brittany and Corsica were left alone in the reorganization. Both had suffered terrorist attacks in the 1970s in campaigns for independence from France. This may have deterred the central government from changing their status. These two exceptions could make my comparison with Texas and Louisiana less pertinent.

The real issue is that one motivation for voting is to feel engaged in matters. Ideally, it is things like knowing the candidates personally and having an opinion on local projects that draw people to the voting booth.

Also, there were two elections at the same time, as the one for thedépartements had originally been scheduled during the pandemic. The structure of the départements has scarcely changed in 200 years. I cannot remember France ever conducting elections for two levels at once, though this is the norm in the USA, with multiple ballots.

Many think the French democratic system is in crisis. If the low turnout in June proves to be an isolated incident, COVID-19 may be one of the main reasons. But I am not convinced of it.

ALL TYPES OF VISA ARE NOW AVAILABLE
For a long time, I was asked almost daily when the French consulate in Washington, DC, and VFS Global’s offices would fully reopen. Now information I am getting through my clients indicates that things started to move after June 9th, and it seems that everything was back to normal by the 21st. That is so recent that I do not know how easy the visa issuance is, the timeframe for each type of visa, and so on. Overall, though, this is going to facilitate my work a lot, making it much easier to help clients plan their immigration projects.

CONSEQUENCES OF BREXIT AT THE PREFECTURES
Advice on French administration websites says if you could prove you settled in France before December 31st, 2020, you had to file your request for an EU card by June 30th, 2021. Then the actual carte de séjour must be available before September 30th. Those who settled after December 31st have no EU card available and they have to prove grounds for residency as defined by the six types of cartes de séjour:

• – visiteur
• – étudiant
• – salarié
• – vie privée & familiale
• – commerçant & artisan
• – passeport talent

Hence, I strongly advise British people to ask for immigration status immediately by booking an appointment with VFS Global. The challenge is to put together a file corresponding to one of the choices above. In my experience, many British people got used to coming and going, having part of their life in France, while never establishing solid roots that would enable them to obtain a carte de séjour. It will be a rude awakening to find out that they need to ask for a visa and give a reason in order to spend more than three months in France!

TENANTS LEAVING AN APARTMENT UNOCCUPIED CAN LOSE THE LEASE
The tenant of a primary residence is well protected and almost nothing can be done to jeopardize the right to stay there. As almost everybody knows, it can take about three years to expel a non-paying tenant. I have reported on a case where a tenant lost their right for running an Airbnb rental business, and common sense indicates that engaging in criminal activities and living in deeply unsanitary conditions would also affect the right to stay.

Now a court decision has shed light on a more obscure provision: occupying the premises. One would think it is evident that a person would only pay rent for a long time if they live there. But the pandemic led to situations where people left their rented lodgings vacant for a year or more. Even if such a pandemic occurs only once a century, situations where rent is paid for months or even years, without anyone staying there, exist more often than one would think.

The tenant of the main residence must occupy it “effectively and continuously,” i.e., at least eight months a year, failing which the lease may be terminated. The Cour de Cassation, the French Supreme Court, in a ruling on May 6th, 2021, shed some interesting light on this issue. It involves the terms of the standard lease, which state that the tenant must occupy the lodging. This is also a provision in French law.

Obligation du locataire d’occuper effectivement et personnellement le logement. Lorsque le logement est occupé à titre de résidence principale, le locataire est tenu d’user paisiblement des locaux loués suivant la destination qui leur a été donnée par le contrat de location (loi du 6.7.89 : article 7).

In other words, “The tenant is obliged to effectively and personally occupy the dwelling. When the dwelling is occupied as a principal residence, the tenant is obliged to use the rented premises peacefully according to the purpose assigned to them in the rental agreement.”

Here is a summary of the case in question: In 2014, the landlord wondered if the tenant still occupied the premises, even though the rent was paid. He went to court to obtain the right to verify the tenant’s presence. A bailiff forced the lock and observed that the apartment “had not been inhabited for a long time.” This was confirmed by the minimal water consumption and the presence of unopened mail dating back to 2008. The tenant lost the lease as a result.

I am sure it is extremely rare for a tenant to pay rent on an apartment left empty for years. Still, many foreigners are unaware of the importance of the primary residence, and therefore of choosing one. The primary domicile address is the cornerstone of a large part of the French legal system, despite the fact that in 2021 hardly any postal mail is still delivered.

www.lemonde.fr/argent/article/2021/06/05/immobilier-le-locataire-qui-s-absente-trop-risque-l-expulsion_6082950_1657007.html

MY BUSINESS HAS A NEW FACEBOOK PAGE
Over the holidays, my assistant, Sarah, took an interesting initiative and created a new Facebook page. It is a good move for her since she and I both moderate it. She can show off her expertise and her ability to give good advice and clearly explain solutions. She does this in French, leaving the queries in English to me.

Since I am already active in a few Facebook groups and my website is my main showcase, I did not feel I needed such a page. On the other hand, it will no doubt benefit her. I do not have the time to monitor this forum and so far, it has been fairly quiet. Sarah is still figuring out how to handle this new task, being quite busy herself. I am sure it will be a great space for exchange, and hope it will pick up in the near future.

You are welcome to join:
https://www.facebook.com/rattachement

SUMMER VACATION: THE OFFICE WILL BE CLOSED JULY 9th to AUGUST 23rd
The office will be closed for a month and a half, starting Friday, July 9th, and reopening on Monday, August 23rd. As always, I will be reachable by email for emergencies and important matters. My service of receiving mail for clients will continue while the office is closed.

THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE ALREADY HAS A TITLE
Dreamboat Annie was the band Heart’s first album. A reader challenged me to title the next issue this way. Two years ago, for the July 2019 issue, I was faced with the same challenge with “Father and Son” by Cat Stevens. This time the challenge is much more difficult.

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

Best regards,

QUESTION

IS SELF-EMPLOYMENT IN FRANCE & EMPLOYEE IN THE USA COMPATIBLE?

Following your answers read on Facebook, I’m just asking a follow-up question. With a micro-entrepreneur permit in France, as a consultant, I leave France for a year or two to take up a job in country X. During that time, I pay micro-entrepreneur related taxes to France and job-related taxes to X. At this time, I’m a fiscal resident of France but since I don’t have a physical residence in France, will that be a problem if I want to count this time of absence towards my applying for residency (= ten-year card) in France? I noticed that in your answer, you mentioned legal and fiscal residency is needed even though one lives abroad. So what constitutes legal residency?

QUESTION

OWNING AND SELLING REAL ESTATE IN FRANCE: CAPITAL GAINS AND PRIMARY RESIDENCE

I own an apartment in Paris in full. I finally got in there after almost two years of being blocked. I never want that to happen again. I need to secure my stay in France once and for all. My apartment is quite spacious and therefore great for a family of three children in the 16th arrondissement. Now that I am single and an empty nester, I need to downsize some and get to a livelier neighborhood. My children want to keep a place to stay in Paris, but I am afraid of French estate taxes. Right now I am even more afraid of the capital gains tax I will pay when I sell the apartment

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

Father & Son
Cat Stevens

It’s not time to make a change,
Just relax, take it easy
You’re still young, that’s your fault,
There’s so much you have to know
Find a girl, settle down,
If you want you can marry
Look at me, I am old, but I’m happy
I was once like you are now, and I know that it’s not easy,
To be calm when you’ve found something going on
But take your time, think a lot,
Why, think of everything you’ve got
For you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not
How can I try to explain, when I do he turns away again
It’s always been the same, same old story
From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen
Now there’s a way and I know that I have to go away
I know I have to go
It’s not time to make a change,
Just sit down, take it slowly
You’re still young, that’s your fault,
There’s so much you have to go through
Find a girl, settle down,
If you want you can marry
Look at me, I am old, but I’m happy
All the times that I cried, keeping all the things I knew inside,
It’s hard, but it’s harder to ignore it
If they were right, I’d agree, but it’s them you know not me
Now there’s a way and I know that I have to go away
I know I have to go

The song “Father and Son” was recorded on Cat Stevens’s fourth album, Tea for the Tillerman, released in 1970.

The choice of this title is very unusual. I was discussing the previous title, “Hard-Headed Woman”, with a longtime friend of mine who did not know the artist or song. We were talking about what defines a “hard-headed woman”, how it can be a compliment for a woman today, and so on. As a person of conservative Asian origin, she felt uneasy about this term being applied to her as a compliment..

Looking at all the songs on the same album, Tea for the Tillerman, she picked “Father and Son”, saying she felt a lot closer to it and especially to the lyrics. She added, “This should be the title of your next issue.”

It has been a challenge as well as a difficult exercise to start drafting everything through this prism, instead of drafting first and finding a title that can unify the patchwork my column has always been.

I would like to thank you, my friend, for putting me to this test. After all, this is summertime and I am writing while on a road trip.

AN UPDATE ABOUT THE CHANGE OF RESIDENCE CERTIFICATE
I just received a message from a client about the outcome of an issue with the French consulate in Los Angeles.
Since our last correspondence, the Los Angeles office of the French Consulate has issued us a certificat de changement de résidence. They sent it with a note that this was an exception. However, we did notice they have changed the information on their website to state that you can apply for the certificat even if you are a foreigner. So, we will hope for the best for moving our Alfa Romeo, and will check into getting a tax certificate as indicated in your most recent newsletter. I love the newsletter. Your Hard-Headed Woman article is terrific.”

NEW LAW AFFECTING THE TENANT-LANDLORD RELATIONSHIP
The Loi Elan, passed in November 2018, changed a lot of things. I would like to focus on the rental side of the law. It has been said it seems to remedy some of the negative consequences of the crackdown on short-term Airbnb-type vacation rentals. I tend to disagree with this analysis, as it worsens the penalties and controls. On the other hand, it creates a specific lease that maintains the French approach to the tenant-landlord relationship while addressing the trend of people wanting to stay longer term.

Bail mobilité
The most interesting new provision is probably the,i> bail mobilité, a lease for between one and ten months that can be renewed once as long as the total stay is not be more than ten months. It only applies to furnished apartments.

The following provisions in particular that show this is not Airbnb competition:

• 1 – There is no security deposit, and the rent can be freely set as long as it stays within the rent control of the city, where applicable. Also, the lease itself must state why this type of lease is needed.
• 2 – If the rental goes past ten months, it becomes a normal furnished apartment lease lasting nine months for student tenants and one year for others.

Rent control
As mentioned above, rent control in Paris has been reinstated for a five-year test period. The administration sets a maximum that depends on location, size and a few other conditions.

Further crackdown on Airbnb-type rentals
As you will see the controls will be increased and the sanctions will be stiffened

Any private individual who does not declare such a rental to the city can be fined up to 5,000€, and failure to report the number of nights booked carries a fine of up to 10,000€.

If the booking website does not comply with its legal obligations – by, for instance, publishing properties without the city-issued registration number or neglecting to report the number of nights booked – it can be fined as much as 50,000€.

Definition of decent lodging now covers pests such as bedbugs
Infestation of apartments by vermin has become increasingly common. The normal regulation states that the tenant takes the apartment as is, and is responsible for what happens in it. Tenants often discover infestations quickly but until now, when they reported it, the owner could disclaim any responsibility.

Domestic abuse victims can leave without being liable for rent
It is difficult to find the right balance between the landlord’s right to be paid rent and a domestic abuse victim’s need to flee for her life and cut all ties with her previous life, including paying rent for a place where she no longer lives.

The law lays out guidelines for such cases. The woman is off the hook if she produces a restraining order from a judge or the record of the perpetrator’s conviction. At first sight this might seem to be of little help for the victim. But French court procedures are quite slow and can be stalled enough to get documentation. I am pretty sure that when the woman presses charges and the criminal justice system starts a procedure against the perpetrator, the landlord will go easy on collecting the money. The debt will be dissolved, legally speaking, when the above-mentioned documents are filed with the landlord.

I have no idea how the Loi Elan is going to affect landlords and agencies or how they will react. The bail mobilité will be easy to abuse, so I hope some provision for oversight is being made. I am sure that nonprofits dealing with domestic violence are preparing procedures and are training staff and volunteers to systematically make sure that this provision is properly followed. I hope the testing that landlords are supposed to carry out before renting will now include various types of infestation.

More generally, the Civil Code used to refer to normally expected behavior, exonerating a person from liability, as en bon père de famille, which literally meant “like a good father” but essentially translated as “reasonably”, the word now used (since 2014). When a law creates a new right, such as that implied by thebail mobilité, and there are no precedents, the lower courts often base their rulings on this concept.

BOOKING AN APPOINTMENT WITH MOST PREFECTURES
An article in Le Monde on June 1st carried the title Titres de séjour : le prospère business de la revente de rendez-vous en préfecture .

The article
Residence permits: the successful business of reselling appointments in the prefecture.
These days, the business of making appointments at the prefecture to apply for a residence permit is flourishing.

This formality, which has long fed endless lines of foreigners in front of the prefectures, is increasingly done online. At least half the departments in France have developed paperless procedures, which have led to physical waiting lines being immediately replaced by virtual ones. The gray-market appointment resale system had only to be brought up to date with digital technology.

“For the prefecture of Bobigny, count 15 euros for a request for renewal of a residence permit,” announces the young salesman of a shop, who in a few days and as many clicks can get an appointment for the start of the 2019 school year, while for the average person no available slots have appeared for more than six months.

For those who can’t go to a shop, there are plenty of solutions on the Internet. “Limited offer – first come, first served!” “Appointments available at very low prices!” “Only 35 euros!” On Facebook, pages are springing up and their purpose is unequivocal: “SOS prefecture appointment,” “Exceptional appointment for admission to stay,” “Getting an appointment for naturalization.” A business approach is taken for granted: “If you sponsor six people, you can have your appointment for free,” promises one site. “And we don’t forget those who … want to help! You’ll get a really tempting commission!”

The administrator of one such page explains: “The prefecture opens weekly time slots, but there are so many requests that after five minutes everything is full.” He and other intermediaries take this congestion as an opportunity to exercise their computer skills. “We have a program that automatically checks free slots, and when they appear, we register you,” says another Facebook page administrator. “First, we register you, and then you pay.”

The service is generally priced between 15€ and 200€, depending on the prefecture, the papers requested and the reseller. The Ministry of the Interior is aware of the gray market and ensures that “the facts are reported to the courts.” In early 2019, the Bobigny and Nanterre prosecutors’ offices opened investigations – a drop in an ocean of informal-sector resourcefulness, which feeds on the scarcity of appointment offers.

“The problem is the lack of slots made available,” says Nicolas Klausser, who is responsible for residence issues at Cimade [a nonprofit that works with refugees and undocumented foreigners]. “The administration does not have sufficient resources and foreigners suffer as a result.” In 2018, Cimade accompanied foreigners several times in administrative courts to denounce the public service dysfunction and force prefectures to register title applications.

In France, 3 million people hold residence permits. They may have to apply for renewal of papers, naturalization or a travel document, or exchange a foreign driver’s license for a French one, and so on. In addition to these people there are those apply for regularization of their status. The Ministry of the Interior does not deny the administrative overload exists but admits it does not know how to “statistically estimate the number of people who fail to get access to the prefectures.”

In November 2015, Cimade began developing a bot that evaluates service congestion hourly. The results can be striking. On the Cergy prefecture website, since December 2018, no bot test has managed to identify a slot to request renewal of a residence permit. In Meaux, no bot test has succeeded since December 2017. The same applies throughout April in Nanterre for naturalization applications, in Bobigny for exceptional residence permit applications. “There is no free time slot for your appointment request. Please try again later,” says the prefecture. And so on, in Metz, Strasbourg, Toulouse, etc.

Mariam is a member of the invisible contingent frantically refreshing a prefecture web page on the lookout for a slot – in vain. In France since 2013, the Guinean mother has been trying to get an appointment in Seine-Saint-Denis to ask for regularization of her status. Two or three times a month, she goes to Bobigny to seek information from prefecture officials. “Once, in the queue, there was a man who said he was a lawyer and offered to help me, for 1,000 euros to be paid in several installments,” she says.

Tati, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has been trying to make an appointment at the prefecture for six months to apply for an illness-related residence permit because her son has sickle-cell anemia. “The lines were long, but I knew in the morning if I was going to get in. With the new system, I’m constantly on my phone. I wake up every night too. I’m exhausted,” she sighs. She heard about the gray market schemes that are proliferating, but never wanted to take the plunge.

Klausser of Cimade points out that people who fail to renew their papers face “major problems of disruption of their right to work or social benefits.” Those trying to regularize their situation run a risk of expulsion.

Oksüz was one of the latter group. We met him during a visit to the Mesnil-Amelot (Seine-et-Marne) administrative detention centre in early May. A Turk who had been living in France for twenty years, he was arrested at a construction site and detained. “I work in the construction industry as a carpenter or mason,” he assured Le Monde. “I am on permanent contract and have had pay slips since 2015.” As he met the criteria for possible regularization, he had tried – but failed – to make an appointment.

The Ministry of the Interior recognizes that “we can do much better, even if there is no magic formula.” An upper level civil servant at the ministry said, “In the long term, solutions must be found to simplify procedures.”

As early as 2015, a report by the Inspection Générale de l’Administration [which oversees the ministry] called for rationalization and simplification of the administrative process for reception of foreigners. “In the short term, we are trying to give the prefectures some fresh air by allowing them to recruit agents,” but there is a risk of these new resources being co-opted to meet other needs. “Credential services are stripped of personnel to cope with an increasing workload,” the ministry acknowledges. In 2018, the prefectures had to deal with a 20% increase in asylum applications and a 30% increase in the number of expulsion orders.
End of article

The Napoleonic vision was that the state had an iron fist to protect the population from wrongdoing, and this was the basis for a criminal justice system favoring the prosecution. In the 20th century, the successful fight for individual rights in virtually all possible domains severely weakened the mighty power of the state over the people. Many rightly see this as unquestionable progress. But as the prefecture procedure shows, some problems in France stem from the fact that the system continues to be structured around the type of power it used to have, and efforts to find a quick fix seldom solve the problem but instead just hide it from view. The absolute power that fathers had over their wives and children is long gone and the current balance of parents’ authority over their children is a good thing. A more democratic system is a good thing. Ascertaining the authority that the state has over the people, so that the state offers fair and equal service and protection, should be the duty of the system. I believe the French government and administration currently fall short in many instances.
www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2019/06/01/titres-de-sejour-le-business-de-la-revente-de-rendez-vous-en-prefecture-prospere_5470146_3224.html

WHETHER TO HAVE A CONCIERGE THE DILEMMA FACING PARISIAN CONDOMINIUM OWNERS 
Is it better to have a concierge (gardien/ne d’immeuble) or not? This question can lead to hours of discussion at the annual general meeting of the copropriété, the co-ownership group of most every condo apartment building.

The classic situation is that the concierge lives on the ground floor in a space called the loge and keeps an eye on everyone who enters and leaves the building (even though this has never been their official job), watching from behind the curtained door at the bottom of the stairs. They are in charge of cleaning and light maintenance in the common areas, and in buildings lacking mailboxes they distribute the post.

Over the past 40 years or so, I can identify three very different periods in the way the concierge was viewed. Initially no one thought of getting rid of them, as they were doing their job. Then, about 30 years ago, there was a trend of getting rid of them, for several reasons.

First, social charges had significantly increased, so employing them cost more than hiring a cleaner. Second, even though the loge was tiny, it was worth a lot of money if sold at market value. Finally, French labor law, combined with the legal protection of the domicile (which the loge certainly qualified as), made concierges virtually impossible to fire even when they did not do their job at all. So, as concierges retired, the loges were sold and a new industry developed: contractors specialized in cleaning Parisian buildings’ hallways, staircases and courtyards, and putting out the garbage bins.

Then about ten years ago I started to hear a completely different tune. Even companies that do an excellent job can never compare with the scope of the work a concierge does just by virtue of living at the bottom of the stairs. Many tenants leave a set of apartment keys with them so that meter reading can always be done and the person is never locked out of their home. Parcel delivery, which has grown enormously with Amazon and other online retailers, is a nightmare if it cannot be done during business hours. The concierge often also does cleaning and/or babysitting for a few tenants in the building and the proximity makes everything easier. Last but not least, buildings with a concierge suffer a significantly lower burglary rate than those without because the presence of a person scrutinizing everyone coming and going deters burglars.

Today, the real estate market puts a premium of about 10% on having a concierge. This is definitely something to think about when seeking to rent or buy an apartment in Paris or other major French cities. The court case detailed in this Le Monde blog illustrates the new trend very well. I hope this explanation makes it easier and more interesting to read.
http://sosconso.blog.lemonde.fr/2019/01/10/copropriete-comment-supprimer-ou-conserver-le-poste-de-concierge-3/#more-22830

SUMMER VACATION: THE OFFICE WILL BE CLOSED FROM JULY 19 TO AUGUST 19
The office will be closed for one month starting Friday, July 19, reopening on Monday, August 19. As always, I will be reachable by e-mail for emergencies and important matters. My service of receiving mail for clients will continue while the office is closed.

MY FEES WILL GO UP ON OCTOBER 1st 2019
I plan to change some aspects of my business when I reopen the office on Monday, August 19th. The main reason is to allow my assistant to do some tasks more systematically. One of them is to accompany the clients to the prefecture, URSSAF, CPAM and other public offices. She already handles most of the dealings with the offices where self-employed people are registered. She has also accompanied my clients to the prefecture several times. As her fees are lower than mine, this should compensate for the increase in my fees. On October 1st, I will raise my initial retainer from 270€ to 300€ and the hourly rate from 110€ to 130€.

Best regards,

QUESTION

THE LANDLORD’S RIGHT TO VISIT RENTED PREMISES

Less than two months into a one-year lease, my landlady in Australia notified me that due to changed family circumstances she wanted me to vacate the apartment right away. I balked. At about same time, the key in the apartment lockbox was removed. I consulted with a lawyer at ADIL in the 17th. They say the lease is valid, and the notice does not follow the proper notification process, so there is no reason to vacate, nor to take the walk-through meeting with the owner, who was passing through Paris. I also learned that taking the extra key was a criminal offense. I notified the owner of all of the above via e-mail, noting that using a key to enter without my permission is an additional criminal offense. I taped a note on the door in French and in English, reiterating all this. When I came back, the note had been removed and jammed under the door. I assume that someone entered the apartment again. Any idea about the best next steps? I am a poor French speaker, and over 65.

QUESTION

AUTO-ENTREPRENEUR AND CARTE DE SEJOUR

I have one simple question: Can Americans on student visas set up as auto-entrepreneurs? I ask because at our school in Toulouse we have a lot of Americans who would like to do our course to learn to be teachers, then work for language schools teaching English. They would do all this while studying French, so they arrive with the visa d’étudiant. I know they can work around 20 hours a week , but the problem is that language schools are no longer giving CDD contracts, they only take on auto-entrepreneurs.

The album Burn was released in February 1974 by Deep Purple. I always find it interesting that lyrics can be understood in a way totally different from their intent when they were written. Reading the lyrics of this album’s title track once again, I felt it could apply poetically to what happened to Notre-Dame Cathedral.

The sky is red, I don’t understand
Past midnight I still see the land
People are sayin’ the woman is damned
She makes you burn with a wave of her hand
The city’s ablaze, the town’s on fire
The woman’s flames are reaching higher.

It felt like the whole world watched the cathedral burning. Almost everybody was talking about this tragedy, and rightfully so. Now France needs to start the rebuilding. I hope it is well done, with the finest craftspeople doing the work. Almost certainly, the Compagnons will be called upon – possibly the same guilds that built the cathedral in the first place. Many guilds were created in about AD 1000 to make the building of churches and cathedrals possible. I find it reassuring that they have been able to maintain their traditions and craftsmanship through the centuries.

https://compagnons-du-devoir.com

https://compagnons-du-devoir.com/les-compagnons-du-devoir-caen

A NEW OFFICE PROJECT SHOULD BE COMPLETED BY THE END OF THIS YEAR
For about seven years, when I had an office near the Place Saint-Georges, I rented the other room out, usually for about a year at a time and no longer than two years. Most of the people renting it were creators of start-ups, consultants or independent contractors who needed this place to make their professional transition. I always liked being able to offer a professional setting at an affordable price and thus help people launch their careers.

As many people know, my current office has three rooms: one is where I meet my clients, one is my workroom with files, printers and a large desk, and the third contains a kitchen corner and my assistant Sarah’s workspace.

For almost a year now, I have been interested in purchasing a place in close proximity to my office in the same building. I have just received the seller’s approval from the real-estate agent. As long as the sale goes through, I should be able to offer the use of a completely independent space very near my current office. I cannot say more until I have the presale contract. But I am already thinking about offering a small discount to any of my readers who might like to use this space as an office space or Airbnb place to stay.

I will probably not have much of a summer vacation, as I will be working on this project so as to have everything ready for September. It will likely be necessary to do some renovation so that the place offers a comfortable setting.

PAPERLESS OFII PROCEDURE
The Office Français de l’Intégration et de l’Immigration (OFII), the part of the French administration dealing with the side effects of the immigration procedure, has gone completely paperless, as many of us have long wished. There is no longer a paper form; instead, an electronic procedure is activated once you arrive in France. When you receive your passport with the visa for France in it, on the next page is the URL of the website where you go to ask for an appointment once you arrive in France. It asks for your date of entry into France, and you will be asked to prove it, if possible. This seems to have shortened the time it takes to obtain an appointment.

PUBLIC HEALTH COVERAGE AND VISITEUR IMMIGRATION STATUS
French immigration law has always put an emphasis on the health insurance coverage valid in France. The most recent evolution is creating some serious problems for the foreigner holding a ‘visiteur’ immigration status. I had hoped that the prefecture had taken a definitive position after taking into consideration the vast changes set in motion by the creation of PUMA. Sadly, the prefecture has once again changed its position on whether people withvisiteur status must provide proof of health coverage.

The starting point is simple. To obtain visiteur immigration status, you have to prove that you have a certain minimum income, often retirement funds or other assets. You also have to prove that your health care is covered by a policy valid in France, and that the premiums for it are being paid regularly, either directly or indirectly (as part of a retirement package, the person often gets coverage for life, whether or not an amount is deducted from the pension for it).

Before the protection universelle maladie (PUMA) went into effect on January 1st 2016, each person covered by the couverture médicale universelle sent in an income declaration and the cost of the premium was 8%. The coverage was (and still is) free for those with annual earnings below 8,951€, which is pretty much poverty level. With the prefecture looking for annual income of at least 14,000€, the system was set up so that a foreigner covered by the public system called Assurance Maladie would easily be able to prove payment of some premium and therefore comply with the requirement.

Since the 8% of income used to calculate the premium does not include retirement income, many American retirees with visiteur immigration status can sign onto PUMA and be covered for free even if their global income is $100,000 or more, way over what the prefecture requires as a minimum.

URSSAF handles PUMA billing and collection, as it is the collection agency for social charges in France. Instead of receiving a special declaration of income, as before, they now get the information from the French tax office. This leads to several crazy situations. Some foreigners who declare their worldwide income to France without paying anything have received bills from URSSAF even though they have always been covered by the private sector. Under the old system, some foreigners paid their premiums in order to be covered by French public health program. These same foreigners now pay nothing because they do not declare their income to France.

Because of the craziness of the situation and the fact that for about two years URSSAF did not send a single bill to anyone, the prefecture agreed to renew people’s immigration ‘visiteur’ status without proof of health coverage. But my experience is that since the beginning of this year the prefecture has once again been asking for such proof. Several of my clients’ requests for renewal are up in the air, and they are waiting for the prefecture to decide about this situation. Some foreigners have ample income but do not pay anything for their public French health coverage. If that describes you, and you are about to go to the prefecture, be ready to face this issue.

MORE DOCUMENTS NEEDED FOR SELF-EMPLOYED STATUS
The prefecture has added to the list of documents required to be registered as self-employed, opening up a can of worms much bigger than you might think. The first requirement has long-lasting effects and creates serious problems.

Domiciliation professionnelle
The prefecture has a clear tendency to treat self-employed people registered in France as consultants, as if they were opening a shop, or as a limited liability corporation. Now it is asking applicants to submit a statement under oath that their business is domiciled in the home, even though all the other paperwork proves that this is the case.

The next step is that the prefecture may ask to see a lease or other document proving the grounds for the person’s tenancy. Leases almost always state that the apartment is residential and that no businesses can operate on the premises. So the prefecture requires the statement ofdomiciliation professionnelle to be signed by the landlord, authorizing something that is prohibited in the lease, as if a consultant’s activity were the same thing as having the public enter a shop or operating heavy machinery.

This has damaging consequences. Often landlords and even property agencies have people sign a hosting agreement (attestation d’hébergement), when all the utilities and local tax liability remain in the landlord’s name. Getting them to sign a domiciliation professionnelle document is close to impossible. Formerly, one way to block unscrupulous landlords was to have a business registered in the home. This meant declaring income for tax purposes and billing of business taxes at that address, documenting that the person was staying there as their primary domicile and therefore giving them domiciliary protection. This is no longer possible, however, and one might quickly need to find a new place. Thus, for people with this kind of profile, instead of risking being put out on the street, you may want to get yourdomiciliation professionnelle from asociété de domiciliation professionnelle, which may cost about 10€ to 20€ a month for the base service, equivalent to a PO box corporation in the USA.

By doing this, one gets the carte de séjour and the right to work, but gives up the right to deduct a substantial portion of the rent from one’s taxes, which can represent a significant loss. Considering how difficult it is to find lodging in Paris, this adds considerably to the existing problem.

Attestation de vigilance
This is a completely counterintuitive request regarding a review of the payment of taxes and social charges required of those with the self-employed immigration status. Until recently, URSSAF readily made available a statement of what was paid and how much the social charges were. If the statement indicated that the outstanding balance was zero, the person was paid up. The prefecture accepted this was proof of good standing.

Now the prefecture wants another document that does not show any figures but states at the bottom of the second page that the person has complied with all the requirements linked to their status. I would like to raise a couple of questions:

What other requirement could be as important as being up to date on your payments, when one knows that not declaring means getting a fine?

Would not it make more sense to match the four individual URSSAF bills, one for each quarter, with the statement wrapping them all up so as to see if anything is missing?

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 2018 income declaration must be filed in France by Wednesday, May 17th midnight. The declaration forms are available at www.impots.gouv.fr. You can 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 acarte 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 refer to paper forms as thing of the past. For now, declaring electronically gives you an extension of a few weeks.

CHOOSING BETWEEN FRENCH NATIONALITY AND A CARTE DE RESIDENT
A couple of weeks ago, while attending one of Stephen Heiner’s monthly entrepreneurs’ lunches, the topic of naturalization came up and I could see that there is a misconception about the naturalization procedure, especially when comparing it to obtaining the carte de résident, which is loosely the equivalent of the American green card.

Many people read the requirements and conclude that the naturalization procedure asks for almost nothing, as the current requirements are: 

• 1. Having had a permanent legal stay in France at all times.
• 2. Being a French fiscal resident.
• 3. Mastering the language at B1 level (the government is thinking of increasing it to B2)
• 4. Having lived in France for five consecutive years, or possibly two consecutive years for applicants who have received a master’s degree in France.

The carte de résident requirements are much stricter: 

• 1. Having had a permanent legal stay in France at all times.
• 2. Having lived in France for five consecutive years, without exception (years holding a student carte de séjour do not count).
• 3. Showing four consecutive avis d’imposition, the French income tax statement, with a consistent annual income at least equal to French minimum wage, the SMIC.
• 4. Mastering the language at A2 level.
• 5. Preferably owning one’s home, or renting with a full lease.
• 6. Preferably being covered by the French public health care system.

The requirements for a carte de résident are more numerous, more demanding, and more rigid than those for naturalization. This confuses a lot of people. They do not understand why becoming a French national looks so easy, when even asking for carte de séjour can entail a longer list of required documents.

My explanation of this apparent oddity is that the naturalization procedure is like a funnel: the entrance is wide but the exit is tiny. What I mean is that it is true that the requirements for submitting a file requesting naturalization are simple, but the ones for obtaining it are strict. There are a lot of unwritten requirements that are not mentioned in the documents the prefecture gives you when you ask for the list.

By contrast, the carte de résident procedure is like a straight pipe: If you qualify to submit the file requesting it, it is nearly certain to be approved.

Finally, in my experience, many people do not know the rights associated with the carte de résident. It gives you various types of right to work and guarantees that you can live forever in France; you can even live in another country without losing the right to live in France.

I would say the objective when asking for naturalization is to prove complete allegiance to France and, ideally, to have all aspects of your life grounded in France. Hence some of the unwritten requirements when asking for naturalization, such as holding a carte de séjour salarié as well as vie privée et familiale, which gives you a better chance of success. Otherwise, asking first for the carte de résident is pretty much an obligation. Another is earning most, if not all, of your income from a French source, ideally as an employee. This is just to give an idea of what is truly required, but, to be fair, miracles can happen, so if you think you have a special profile that offsets what is missing, you should still apply.

I would like to remind my readers who hold a ‘visiteur’ immigration status that after a lawful presence of five years and compliance with all the abovementioned requirements. They can easily get the 10-year carte de résident because they already comply with everything on the list by virtue of their annual renewals. Some prefectures can be extremely lenient with American citizens who can often renew their immigration status without complying with this abovementioned list. So this is one of the first things to check. Then the only thing that is left uncertain is their competency in French. This said, an A2-level of competency can be presumed after a presence of five years in France.

DISCUSSION OF RAISING TAXES AT THE 2019 DAVOS FORUM
The article I cite below has a direct link with the section of my January 31st issue in which the gilets jaunes movement is discussed. Their members still demonstrate every Saturday, regardless of what the government proposes. Clearly this is not something that can dealt with by announcing last-minute changes. Several other countries have also been experiencing weekend demonstrations, notably Algeria. What is going on there deserves much more attention than the Western media, including French media, are giving it. Western economies need a radical new way to address taxation, especially taxation of income and wealth. These are the tools that enable countries to deal with their primary mission of national security and inhabitants’ well-being. I am happy to see that terms such as socialism, taxation and wealth regulation are no longer considered obscene and taboo but have become issues to discuss and review. The definition of well-being varies by country but the constant decreases in the services and protection the state guarantees its people now has a visible result: multinationals have more power than many countries and their money controls democratic elections more and more, stripping away what democracy should be: the voice of people.

The following article was published in the Guardian on February 1st 2019.
Rutger Bregman had not really intended to stick it to the global elite. He never meant to have a pop at the idea that inequality could be solved by philanthropy or inviting Bono to Davos. But when the Dutch historian decided to go off-piste at the World Economic Forum and tell the assembled billionaires they should stop avoiding paying tax, he became an overnight social media sensation.

“It’s been a crazy week and just for stating the obvious,” said Bregman, when asked about a panel discussion at the WEF last month in which he said the issue was “taxes, taxes, taxes, and all the rest is bullshit in my opinion”.

Bregman had not been to Davos before. He was invited on the basis of the book Utopia for Realists, which argued for a basic income and a shorter working week, ideas that have been taken up by some of the Silicon Valley billionaires who show up for the annual event in the Swiss Alps.

But he grew more irritated as the week wore on. Bregman gave a speech to a dinner of technology chief executives and then spoke at one of Davos’s private sessions, off limits to journalists. There he was surprised and maddened by the pushback when he mentioned tax. “One American looked at me as if I was from another planet,” he said.

As a result, Bregman decided to change his plan for a panel on inequality organized by Time magazine on the final morning of Davos. “I went to my hotel room and memorized what I wanted to say by heart,” he said.

“I more or less ignored the question asked by the moderator and gave my speech instead. It was mainly to ease my own conscience: someone has to say what needs to be said.”

What Bregman said, put simply, was the Davos emperors have no clothes. They talk a lot about how something must be done about inequality and the need to address social unrest, but cavil at the idea they might be a big part of the problem.

He told his audience that people in Davos talked about participation, justice, equality and transparency, but “nobody raises the issue of tax avoidance and the rich not paying their share. It is like going to a firefighters’ conference and not talking about water.”

Nothing happened over the weekend. Bregman went back to Amsterdam wondering whether his colorful language was a mistake, but then a video of the Time panel went viral, and it has received millions of views on Twitter alone.

Bregman, 30, is not entirely surprised at the reaction. He said he is part of a generation not traumatized by the cold war and radicalized by the financial crisis of a decade ago. “When we say what’s needed are higher taxes and the response is ‘that’s communism’, we say ‘whatever’,” he said.

“I am part of a broad social movement. Ten years ago, it would have unimaginable for some random Dutch historian to go viral when talking about taxes. Yet here we are.”

As a historian, Bregman noted the most successful period for capitalism occurred in the years after the second world war, when the top rate of tax in the US was above 90%.

“This is about saving capitalism,” he said. “Most innovation has come about through government spending. During the golden age period [after the second world war], there were way higher taxes on wealth, property, inheritance and top incomes. That’s what we need today if we are going to tame this beast called capitalism.”

Bregman was born in 1988, the year before the Berlin Wall came down. He grew up in the Dutch city of Zoetermeer, studied history at Utrecht University and contemplated doing a PhD before deciding he was not cut out for a career in academia.

“I didn’t want to waste four years on an insignificant subject nobody cares about,” he said. Instead, the global financial crisis pushed him in a different direction.

“I thought that we needed historians to take the stage and explain what’s going on. When I watched the crisis on TV, the only people being interviewed were economists, and these were the guys that didn’t see it coming. I thought that we needed some historians there, so I left academia,” Bregman said.

He spent a year working on a left-of-centre Dutch paper before joining a new journalism platform that paid him a basic income and provided the freedom to write about anything he chose. Utopia for Realists was the result.

Bregman is working on a new book in which he intends to challenge the view that humans are inherently selfish. It is not true, he said, that people revert to their true, nasty selves when the thin veneer of civilization is stripped away.

“If we assume the best in people, we can radically redesign our democracy and welfare states,” he said.

Bregman bridles at being called an optimist. “I prefer the word possibilist,” he said. Optimists are the sort of chief executives found at Davos, who think globalization is working, neoliberalism is a good idea and inequality is on the decline, he added.

“A lot of great things are going on. In many ways, the past 30 years have been the best in world history. But we can do much better. I prefer the word hope over optimism,” Bregman added.

So, would he make a return visit to the WEF next year?

“I would definitely go. I would just give the same speech. It is going to be a dilemma for them. If they don’t invite me, it will prove my point. If they do, I’ll say the same thing all over again,” he said.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/feb/01/rutger-bregman-world-economic-forum-davos-speech-tax-billionaires-capitalism

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.

MY SUMMER VACATION: THE OFFICE IS CLOSED from July 19th to August 19th
The office will be closed for one month starting Friday, July 19th, reopening on Monday, August 19th. 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.

MY FEES WILL GO UP ON OCTOBER 1st 2019
I plan to change some aspects of my business when I reopen the office on Monday, August 19th. The main reason is to allow my assistant to do some tasks more systematically. One of them is to accompany the clients to the prefecture, URSSAF, CPAM and other public offices. She already handles most of the dealings with the offices where self-employed people are registered. She has also accompanied my clients to the prefecture several times. As her fees are lower than mine, this should compensate for the increase in my fees. On October 1st, I will raise my initial retainer from 270€ to 300€ and the hourly rate from 110€ to 130€.

Best regards,

QUESTION

PROBLEMS LINKED TO THE ABSENCE OF A BUILDING PERMIT

My French boyfriend owns a tiny house at the end of a courtyard in the middle of Paris, which makes for a wonderful place to live as it is so quiet, no street noise and no neighbors. When I moved in with him, there was a large toolshed against our wall which is located in a different condominium association. After several months of heavy work, which felt like a complete renovation, someone moved in and because there is a tiny brick wall between us, we hear everything, and we smell all his cooking. It has become a nightmare. When my boyfriend called the owner of this toolshed, the answer was that this is private property, he can do whatever he wants and we should get over this. Can we stop him bullying us this way? Can he face some significant consequences? Can someone sleep in what is zoned as a toolshed?

QUESTION

CHANGES TO AN APARTMENT WHILE IT IS BEING SOLD

After several years of living in France, I finally made the bold move of buying an apartment. Finding a decent place at a decent price felt like going through combat, as some places were beyond horrific.

At the time of signing the presale contract, la promesse de vente, we discussed whether anything would be left in the apartment in terms of appliances and furniture. There was an amazing refrigerator. I cannot remember seeing such a big and fancy one before, including in the USA. It was over 6 feet with the all features one could dream of. The seller valued it to be worth 1,000€ second hand. I had no idea if this was the right evaluation, as I understood that the higher we all agreed to value the appliances and furniture, the less I would pay in frais de notaire, which are in fact mostly taxes, with a tiny fraction being the notaire’s compensation.

I was shocked, when I visited the apartment minutes before the closing, to see a broken tiny refrigerator instead. I was fuming as I entered the meeting to sign. The man, the seller, never budged during the entire meeting. Both notaires tried to explain that the presale contract gave the list of appliances and furniture and it was binding. His answer the entire time was that the contract says a refrigerator and there is one, so the contract is being met. I was told by the notaires that they did not have any coercive power and there was nothing they could do. So, in the end, I gave in and signed, but I am mad as I believe I was the victim of a dishonest person. Could things have turned out differently? What should I have done?

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.

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?

Back in Black was the seventh album by the Australian band AC/DC, released on July 25th, 1980. Malcolm Young, its co-founder, rhythm guitarist, backing vocalist and songwriter, died in November, although that did not motivate my choice of title. AC/DC fans are well acquainted with the brutal and unflattering lyrics this band is known for, associated with a heavy metal sound. The title song from this album is about disillusionment and having to come back to an unfriendly environment. How many Americans will feel this way traveling back to the USA for the holiday season? And how many Americans living in France will feel this way on their way back to France after the holidays?

HOW CAN A FRENCH BLACK FRIDAY EXIST?
The title of this column actually came to me when 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.

So my choice of title can be understood in many ways. The very point of calling the day after Thanksgiving “Black Friday” is that it is the starting point of the Christmas shopping season, when many stores truly break even and get into “the black,” which means having money in the bank instead of being in the red! One can hope that small businesses will also go “Back in Black” and that they too will benefit from the seasonal improvement of the economy, at least in France.

I would like to wish you all
A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR
I am looking forward to the year to come, 2018.
Like many, I feel that 2017 was a very hard year in which to stay focused on the issues that matter.

AARO HAS INVITED ME TO DO A PRESENTATION ON DECEMBER 18th 
The Association of Americans Resident Overseas (AARO) has asked me to speak about “Coping with French Administration” on Monday, December 18th, from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM.

The event is open to the public. It will be held at Reid Hall, 4 rue de Chevreuse, 75006 Paris. For more information and to reserve a seat (€10 – seating limited, registration required), see.

https://aaro.org/events/upcoming-events/event/102-coping-with-french-administration

This is their text presenting the event:
“Join us to hear Jean Taquet, a legal consultant, talk about the ins and outs of French Administration regarding living in France temporarily or indefinitely. Topics will include how to get, retain, change or upgrade your residency status; become covered by French health insurance; open a bank account; be an employee, an entrepreneur, a retiree; and how to surmount the paperwork and the bureaucracy.”

HOW EMAIL AND SOCIAL MEDIA HAVE CHANGED THE WAY I WORK
I started my business in July 1997 when telephone and fax were the backbones of communication with clients, as they were in those days, for me and many others, the only immediate means of communication. I remember how we had a phone message notebook to make sure we called people back, and were judged by how quickly we managed to return calls. We needed a dedicated line for the fax machine; documents were sent this way.

Then there was the postal mail. Even today in France, a lot of things are still done by postal mail. Twenty years ago it was the normal way to send anything the least bit official. How often did we hear “The check is in the mail!”? It was the common way to send a payment, as wire transfers were complicated and expensive.

Today, corresponding by fax is an oddity, but it is still the only thing some divisions of the French administration accept, making them a laughing stock, and not just to Americans living in France. Postal mail is still important even though, as in all western countries, the volume of mail has considerably decreased. Even traditional Christmas letters are now rarely sent by mail, but go by email as an attachment and often with a lot more pictures! I still make sure I check the mailbox at the office every day, though the home one is more often forgotten.

I remember an American and a good friend of mine who used to live in Paris complaining about ten years ago that people dared to call her cell phone before trying the landline. The latter was the important one, and some of us can remember when many American homes where a teenager was living had two phone lines. Today I am rarely called on my landline; and the cell phone has replaced it. We have reached the point where calling is no longer our first reflex. Actual voice calls are now a lot less common than text messages and social media messages.

I freely admit that I have followed this trend, as I like writing. Professionally I favor emails by far, at least for now. I consider text messages and social media, in my case Facebook, as personal tools – non-billable ways of communicating. I have replaced phone calls with Skype or FaceTime. So do not be surprised if I do not return calls as quickly as I answer emails!

THE PUMA BILLING SYSTEM IS STILL NOT READY 
On January 1st, 2016, a form of insurance called protection universelle maladie (PUMA) replaced thecouverture maladie universelle (CMU), which had worked very well for foreigners who chose to sign on to the public healthcare program.

Since then, for many people, it has been a situation of URSSAF saying, “Your account has been closed; please refer to CPAM if your account is still open”; then their caisse primaire d’assurance maladie (CPAM) would reply, “Your account works well, you are covered, and we know nothing about billing – we are not involved with that.”

In other words, the answers people have been getting from CPAM and URSSAF have been murky at best, and “We do not know anything” when they were being honest!

As I have already noted, many of my American clients freaked out more than once upon hearing such statements. For them, their coverage was at great risk, since it had been months (now almost two years) since they made their last payment into the system. I fully respect their concerns, knowing how easily insurers drop those who do not pay their premiums.

In early October 2017, the people concerned received a letter from CPAM stating that finally things were falling into place and that billing would resume later that month. It went on to explain the calculation of the premium: 8% would be based on the 2016 income declared to the French tax office. Then in late November, many received another letter but from URSSAF stating that bills would be issued by the end of the month. As usual, they are not capable of meeting their own deadline, even though the French administration is moving, slowly but surely. URSSAF’s latest answer is that the first invoice (appel de cotisation) should be sent in mid-December. So I anticipate that at the latest they will be issued in January. The payments are expected to be made within one month. Always keep in mind that you can ask for a schedule of payments, even though these premiums are paid quarterly.

There is also the issue of foreigners holding a carte de séjour mention visiteur who do not declare income in France since they do not stay more than six months a year. I intend to investigate this situation, which covers several of my clients. If people are in France less than six months a year, they are not considered residents of France, even if they have a French address and a French bank account, and have held a carte de séjour for several years. For a while, the CPAM guidelines stated that even carte de séjour visiteur holders who declared income in France were not allowed to register. That nonsense has since stopped, but clearly they are still worried about proving French residence in terms of physical presence. Current applicants must send updated utility bills, internet bills and so on, three or sometimes four times, just to convince CPAM that they are indeed resident in France.

So this creates serious concern for people who are to renew their carte de séjour visiteur in the near future –in December and, most likely, in January. All they can show is a letter stating that they will receive a bill shortly, plus their claim that they have received nothing. As any junior lawyer knows, it is basically impossible to prove that something has not happened. So I hope we find a way out of this situation, knowing that both URSSAF and CPAM have been unwilling to help in any way. I think it will be hard to get a statement out of either of them explaining the situation.

I will keep my readers informed as things unfold, since finally, after almost two years, they are in fact unfolding!

DOES FRENCH GRAMMAR HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH SEX EQUALITY?
As far back as I can remember, since I was a very young boy, this issue has always come up one way or another. I was in elementary school when my mother stopped going to her gym class. There had been only women and so the teacher addressed them as “Mesdames,” but then one man joined and from then on the teacher called them all “Messieurs” even though the ratio was probably 30 to 1. My mother could not stand it and quit the class. Right now there is a very serious debate in France on whether French grammar should be changed so that it enhances equality between the sexes, mainly so as to address situations like the one I have described.

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.

Women in many countries, including France, the USA and the UK, have been revealing sexual harassment and even criminal offences, by prominent men. Have Western societies at last reached such a turning point that there will be no going back? Perhaps, but it is too soon to be sure.

In the 1970s I saw the Scandinavian countries address gender equality in a definitive way. From education to the surrounding culture and the media, it felt like everything needed to change, pretty much overnight. These countries now face their own issues, mostly related to immigration and integrating the refugees who have arrived in recent decades. Nevertheless they remain steadfast on gender equality, in a way that is somewhat mindboggling for the rest of the world. I saw what it took for these countries to turn things around on this issue.

Clearly education – in the broad sense, not just in schools – has something to do with changing behaviors and expectations. The way language and grammar deal with gender affects people nearly as much as the way people speak and the words they use. But I am not sure that changing grammatical rules is the top priority in this matter. I might go so far as to say that significant improvement could be made without changing French grammar, which might be the right fight at the wrong time, when more urgent and effective measures should be taken.

On a totally different and much lighter note, I would point out that French is already quite complicated when it comes to mastering masculine and feminine. Adding another layer of complication will not make it any easier to learn.

For more info (in French), see http://abonnes.lemonde.fr/education/article/2017/11/08/apres-l-ecriture-la-grammaire-inclusive_5211949_1473685.html?xtmc=inclusive&xtcr=8

HOW TO FIND OUT WHERE A FRENCH WILL IS HELD 
Someone recently asked me, “How do I know if my deceased French resident client has a French will?” The American answer would be, “Who is their lawyer? Where is their safety deposit box?”

It is quite common in the USA for an individual to have a private lawyer, and many more keep valuable stuff in a safe at home or safety deposit box at the bank. This is mainly because most wills in the USA are drafted by lawyers and are witnessed, and thus in many ways are more public than French wills.

By contrast, the typical French will is handwritten on a completely blank sheet of paper by a person who is totally alone in the room. A French will is generally one page long, rarely more than two. So it is hardly an excruciating physical exercise, even now when few people write by hand anymore. One reason French wills are so short is that it is impossible to disinherit your children or, more recently, your spouse or to favor one child over another. In fact, there used to be so many limits that many thought it was not worth writing a will. The most common will, in my experience, pretty much just states, in this order:
1 – I bequeath everything to my surviving spouse.
2 – I bequeath the rest of my estate in equal shares to my children.

A notaire then takes this document and registers it, for a cost of about 30€, at the central database in Aix-en-Provence.

At the time of a loved one’s death, sometimes even before contacting a notaire, it is possible for a member of the family who is considered to be “the public” by the notaire profession, to check whether the deceased left a French will. However, it is only possible to see if the will exists and which notaire registered it. So it helps to know whom to contact to handle the estate.

Here is the site to check. One needs to know the details of the deceased and the closeness of the relationship to the deceased in order to get access to this information. A third party cannot get it.
http://www.adsn.notaires.fr/fcddvPublic/profileChoice.htm

THE FRENCH ADMINISTRATION WANTS TO REVIEW HLM LEASES EVERY SIX YEARS
HLM stands for habitation à loyer modéré, or low-income housing project. Most American or British people think of public housing as rundown, poorly maintained and dangerous. That is true in some cases in France, but the vast majority of HLMs are in much better standing. I know a few in Paris that look like quite desirable places to live, and there are HLMs in some of the most expensive districts of Paris. So people should look at French housing projects very differently from American or British ones.

However, it is true that there are problems with the HLM program. To start with, obtaining an apartment takes ages. There was a time when it took ten years except in a dire emergency. Another problem, linked to waves of immigration, is the lowest income families had top priority, which reduced social mixing and resulted in ethic enclaves about twenty years ago, which still exist today. At the other extreme, some Parisian HLMs lost tenants when the family income rose to the point that they were no longer eligible to live there.

In early 2011, an experiment started modeling the amount of rent paid compared to the income earned by the family so as to allow a much wider range of people to live in the same building. One positive financial effect of this experiment is that higher rent is being paid. It also helps keep the buildings in good condition, as people with higher means often have higher expectations.

Meanwhile, the solidarity and urban renewal law (SRU), passed on December 13, 2000, specifically article 55, obliged all major French cities to have a minimum of 20% social housing or be fined. The fines have risen with the passing years so that now only a handful of cities are not compliant. The most notorious one is Neuilly-sur-Seine, whose mayor has full support from the voters to pay the ever increasing fines, no matter how high. But this is a true oddity compared to the rest of France.

A new housing bill, into which the strategy is to be incorporated, is expected to be discussed by the cabinet by the end of the year. It would allow the HLM program to check their tenants’ situations every six years. It is meant to address a particular dysfunction in the system. Say that a young family with two small children gets a three-bedroom apartment. Twenty years later, the parents move out but one of the children stays in the apartment as a newlywed and starts a new family. The old parents still pay the rent and are considered on paper to be the tenants. This shows how much people cling to such housing, knowing how difficult it is to come by. Such situations are not being addressed because they do not create any incidents that would force the management to review who was living there. The biggest problem for HLM authorities is fluidity: People moving out should leave the place for people who deserve to move in. The system would be a lot less clogged if this happened. The proposed housing bill, to be discussed soon in the cabinet, targets exactly that.

It will be a long time before France restores safety and order in all neighborhoods, including those with high concentrations of the worst HLM projects. But I believe these kinds of actions, taken one after another, go in the right direction, although it will be hard to change the true ethic enclaves.

For more info (in French), see
http://www.lemonde.fr/logement/article/2017/09/18/locataires-hlm-le-maintien-dans-les-lieux-sera-reexamine-tous-les-six-ans_5187202_1653445.html

OFFICE CLOSED FOR CHRISTMAS
The office will close for three weeks for the Christmas holidays, starting on Friday December 15th, reopening on Monday January 8th. 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.

Best regards,

QUESTION

OWNING FRENCH REAL ESTATE THROUGH A CORPORATION

I am a partner in an American LLC, which purchased a village house in France in 2006 through the establishment of an SCI. For a while now, we have been receiving requests from the tax inspector for information about the value of the property, the identity and addresses of the partners in the SCI, and the financial conditions under which a transfer of shares would take place. We have provided this information but the requests keep coming. Also, we have no idea what the current market value is. Since the LLC is owner of the SCI, to what extent are the individual partners subject to taxation if/when they decide to sell a share?

QUESTION

CHOOSING FRENCH HEALTH COVERAGE BY WORKING IN FRANCE

My wife and I are American retirees who permanently moved to France this past summer. Our primary income comes from our pensions and my Social Security. We would like to sign up for French national healthcare but are concerned about how much it will cost us. We have health insurance coverage from our retirement and, although it is annoyingly difficult to obtain pre-authorization for medications – we have to pay first and file a claim, and French doctors and pharmacies are baffled by it all – the amount we pay for the insurance is far less than 8% of our gross income. And that’s factoring in the additional premium we have to pay for the “Schengen” insurance that is necessary for the visitor visa (even though our retirement health insurance covers up to 90% of our health insurance costs).

My wife has dual American and Hungarian citizenship and I am American only. Although I have no plans of becoming self-employed in France, my wife does. She has her master’s degree in English and plans to start a business teaching English as a second language.

From the internet, it appears that she could become a micro-entrepreneur and, in that capacity, obtain French national healthcare. What is not entirely clear is, assuming she could do this, whether I could also be covered as a family member. Also, if she pursues this course, we are not sure if our US pension and Social Security income would be factored into the amount we would pay in social charges. Another issue is the effect on the healthcare coverage if she either does not earn enough money to sustain the business or terminates the business.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FRENCH BANK CHECKS ON THEIR WAY OUT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best regards,

QUESTION

BUYING REAL ESTATE IN FRANCE WITH A RELATIVE

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