Cold, late night so long ago,
When I was not so strong you know, 
A pretty man came to me. 
I never seen eyes so blue. 
You know, I could not run away it seemed
We’d seen each other in a dream. 
Seemed like he knew me, he looked right through me, yeah. 
“Come on home, girl” he said with a smile. 
“You don’t have to love me yet, let’s get high awhile. 
But try to understand, try to understand
Try, try, try to understand, I’m a magic man.” 
Winter nights we sang in tune, 
Played inside the months of moon
“Never think of never let this spell last forever.” 
Well, summer lover passed to fall, 
Tried to realize it all. 
Mama says she’s worried, growing up in a hurry, 
“Come on home, girl,” Mama cried on the phone. 
“Too soon to lose my baby yet, my girl should be at home.” 
“Try, try, try to understand, he’s a magic man, Mama, ah, 
He’s a magic man.”

Wikipedia:
“Magic Man” is a song by the American rock band Heart released as a single off their debut album, Dreamboat Annie. Written and composed by Ann and Nancy Wilson, the song is sung from the viewpoint of a young girl who is being seduced by an older man (referred to as a Magic Man), much to the chagrin of her mother, who calls and begs the girl to come home. In an interview, Ann Wilson revealed that the “Magic Man” was her then boyfriend, band manager Michael Fisher, and that part of the song was an autobiographical tale of the beginnings of their relationship.

I saw this band in the summer of 1981 at Radio City Music Hall in New York, and I believe I own just about all their albums. As I was going through the biography of the band recently – which in effect means the lives of these two sisters – I realized how autobiographical and intimate the lyrics were.

Nevertheless, the lyrics are timeless, describing a situation that must have occurred time and again ever since the origin of the human race.

The choice of “Magic Man” as a title has nothing to do with romantic love. Rather, I am following with great interest the way former President Trump is still seen as a magic man. The American tradition has been that the former president disappears from the media and starts a new chapter of life as a private citizen. Both Mr. Trump’s decision to stay in political public life and the idolatry I see with many Trump followers are unusual departures from the past. Note this statement made on March 14th 2021 by Dr. Anthony Fauci on the “Fox News Sunday” program. Asked whether vaccination numbers among Republicans would increase were Trump to encourage inoculation, Dr. Fauci said: “I think it would make all the difference in the world. Trump is a such a strongly popular person … it would be very helpful for the effort for that to happen.”

Since the March issue, titled “Lean on Me (Tonight),” I have continued to be interested by the evolution of politics in the USA, France and several other countries: Policies, long-term visions for the country, political stands – in short, what used to fuel the political debate – seem to be declining. Today, way too often, I hear world leaders saying things like, “Trust me, I know what I am doing and I am taking care of you, I am protecting you.”

Considering how low the ratings of politicians and journalists are, it is clear that public trust is at an all-time low. Many believe this is a direct effect of the Covid-19 pandemic. Although it is true the pandemic has greatly corroded people’s confidence in their representatives and politicians in general, I think the problem has existed for a long time.

People should not believe in a magic man – or magic woman, for that matter. The only exception might be teenaged hearts beating with romantic love for the first time: young people are entitled to live this kind of love at least once in their life. That is why I find Heart’s lyrics so vividly depict that reality.

THE PARIS PREFECTURE IS REFUSING THE PUMA CPAM STATEMENT
The issue regarding PUMA and CPAM has never been properly solved. It stems from what was clearly an error in drafting the law. The basic rule is that people insured under PUMA currently pay a premium of 6.5% of worldwide income. But for some reason the law excludes foreign retirement income. The system does not charge anything if the declared income is less than 9,032€.

The very popular visiteur immigration status requires proof of either income or assets equal to at least minimum wage, which is 14,772€. So it would follow logically that all foreigners with visiteur status should pay something toward their health coverage. However, almost all of them are retired people receiving pensions and Social Security as the majority of their income, and those sources of revenue are excluded from the calculation, sometimes with the addition of royalties, rents, trust funds and the like. As a result, the income from earned income rarely exceeds the 9,032€ limit, even though the global income is considerably over this limit. So the system puts them in the same category as indigent people and both groups pay nothing for health coverage.

The prefecture requires proof of payment of the related health coverage premium to be submitted in the file. In normal circumstances this is a totally legitimate request. As I have explained above, if the foreign retirement income were included in the calculation, there would be no problem.

Since PUMA has existed, the Paris prefecture has vacillated between accepting and refusing the Assurance Maladie coverage issued by CPAM. The visiteur immigration status is issued when the applicant complies with the legal requirements, providing proof of sufficient means as described above, plus the address of the primary residence in France and comprehensive health coverage valid in France. When it is impossible to prove that the applicant is paying for such coverage, the request is refused.

That is what is happening at the moment. Concerned applicants then have to purchase a private policy duplicating the coverage they already have. Since most are retired and hence usually over 65, the premiums of such policies are expensive by French standards and few insurance companies issue them. Furthermore, what the prefecture is asking applicants to do is illegal: once a person is covered by Assurance Maladie, French law forbids their being covered by a private policy. It is also illegal to terminate public coverage in order to take out a private policy.

A few times over the years, the prefecture has demanded proof of termination of Assurance Maladie coverage, which impossible unless one moves away from France permanently and therefore loses the French immigration status.

For the time being, there is no good solution; the best thing is to purchase a private policy and make sure it can be cancelled once the carte de séjour is retrieved. In the past, the prefecture’s refusal to grant visiteur status in such cases has seldom lasted for long. Thus, when it is time to renew the card a year later, chances are that the policy have once again been reversed. I saw this latest change occurring in September 2020. I have no idea what triggered it.

THE LATEST ON BREXIT’S CONSEQUENCES AT THE PREFECTURE
Both common sense and a communication from the prefecture held that it was better to request French immigration status before the end of 2020, when the UK was still in the European Union, than in 2021. Last year after the prefecture reopened, I accompanied British citizens and helped them submit files showing whether they had been in France for more than five years or less. This was sometimes difficult to establish, as many people went back and forth, never really securing the status of France as their primary residence.

Since January 2021, the procedure has radically changed. The prefecture asks for the usual identification, proof of address and proof of means. There is no longer any question of proving seniority in France. Before, the issue was whether the carte de séjour would be valid for one or five years, but today everybody gets a minimum of five years. Furthermore, the carte de séjour is issued free of charge, as if the British citizens were still in the EU. That being the case, the card is sent in the mail by registered letter.

What surprises me the most is how easy the procedure has become. One reason is that now, to get an appointment at the Paris prefecture, the applicant sends the basic documents by email, so when the appointment is given, the documents are put in the file the prefecture prepares. Still, there is often a need for an update, so it is critical to bring all the documents requested just in case. I have no idea what will happen on July 1st 2021 when the current six-month transition period is over.

FRENCH INCOME TAX: IT IS ALMOST TIME TO DECLARE!
Regarding the more mundane topic of income tax, I would like to remind everybody that paper versions of the 2020 income declaration must be filed in France by 20th 2021midnight. The declaration forms are available at www.impots.gouv.fr on April 8th. That is also the day you can start filing your declaration on the same website. To do so, you need your tax ID number (numéro fiscal) and some access codes.

First-time income declarations to the French tax office should be prepared using the paper form, and the “first time” box on the CERFA #2042 form where it says Vous déposez une déclaration pour la première fois cochez” must be checked. It is possible to obtain the needed information from the tax office to declare for the first time electronically, but I tend to advise against this, because it is a lot easier to see and hence understand how the system works if the filer is looking at paper documents.

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 26th.
• départements 20 to 49 by J by June 1st.
• départements 50 or higher by June 8th.

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: 

• stay in France 183 days in a calendar year, whether you have legal immigration status or not
• have immediate family members (spouse and/or minor children) living in France
• have a French employer
• run a French business, even something like tutoring schoolchildren in English.

Reminder: if you are self-employed in France, the quarterly declarations sent to URSSAF do not constitute income tax declarations, which must be sent to the tax office. Many foreigners are convinced that the quarterly declarations are their only fiscal obligation.

Now that income tax is deducted at the source, the amount owed is often low, sometimes even zero. But a problem may arise because the prefecture wants to see the income tax bill from the tax office, the avis d’imposition sur le revenu, before issuing almost any immigration status.

Unfortunately, the tax office is slow to send the avis, mainly because :
1 – The page dedicated to the declaration on the website is not open all year long, so very late declarations must be done on paper, slowing down the process.
2 – Once tax season has ended, if no tax is owed, there is no incentive to prepare the avis quickly.

WHAT IS A FRENCH BANK?
Until recently the answer to this question had a very easy answer. A French bank corporation was registered in France with headquarters in France; was a member of the Association des Banques de France; had physical locations where clients could go; had an International Bank Account Number (IBAN) starting with FR; and so on. Then two things happened.

SEPA
The first was that all EU countries became members of the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) on February 1st 2016.

Wikipedia: The aim of SEPA is to improve the efficiency of cross-border payments and turn the previously fragmented national markets for euro payments into a single domestic one. SEPA enables customers to make cashless euro payments to any account located anywhere in the area, using a single bank account and a single set of payment instruments. People who have a bank account in a eurozone country can use it to receive salaries and make payments all over the eurozone, for example when they take a job in a new country.

In other words, there is now a European banking system using the same currency, the euro, which allows transactions, mainly automatic payments and wires, to occur throughout the system automatically, without banking fees. This involved French utilities in 2016, asking clients to sign new SEPA-compatible forms to enable automatic payments to continue.

Internet banking
The first online bank, the Dutch bank ING Direct, was established in France in 2000. Over the years, more and more online banks have opened. Some are subsidiaries of traditional banks, but not all. They give French residents access to full online banking services from non-French banks. They are all in the private sector, with healthy competition regarding service quality and costs.

The IBAN of an account is linked to where the banking corporation is registered. It starts with the country code – FR for France, DE for Germany, and so on. The French administration was not ready for that, and it has created a serious problem whenever the administration needs to make a payment to the bank account of an individual living in France. Their system is so antiquated that it blocks all payments to any accounts that do not have IBANs starting with FR.

With online accounts having become so popular, the consequences are catastrophic, especially for those unfortunates who are dependent on their regular payments from the Caisse d’Allocation Familiales. The administration is doing its best to fix this situation but is having trouble because the requirement of French residency prevails. With all European countries in the SEPA system, an IBAN not starting with FR is seen as an indication that the account holder lives in a different country, even if the entire file shows French residency and a French physical presence. Unlocking the system after verification could be possible.

The position of the prefecture
By definition, the prefecture is concerned about where an applicant lives. As everybody knows, virtually the first document asked for is proof of address dated less than three months back. So the issue of non-French online banks is again a problem. For many types of immigration status, applicants have to show bank statements. For visiteur status, for instance, the applicant must prove that he/she spends at least the amount of minimum wage in France, and this sum has to be deposited in the French account from a foreign source. A similar requirement holds for all types of immigration status based on self-employed activity registered in France. Payments received must match amounts invoiced, and the prefecture asks for the transactions to be highlighted on a copy of the statement, submitted in the file, to make them easier to identify. For a profession libérale status the applicant must show a minimum of 23,000€ in annual billing, of which 65% is taxable: 23,000 x 0.65 = 14,950€. (The minimum wage is 14,772€, so 23,000€ is an easy target to keep in mind.)

All this is easy to demonstrate as long as it is shown in a French bank account, which brings us back to the same problem. I have never asked the Paris prefecture which banks are accepted and which are not, although I recently found out that TransferWise, now called Wise is not considered a French bank for theprofession libérale immigration status. The current rules significantly narrow the choice of banks for opening a professional account since it will be scrutinized by the prefecture. Sooner or later I will have to ask the prefecture for a list of acceptable internet banks, given the problems this issue causes!

GUIDELINES ON LOCKDOWN AND INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL
I wish the available information on lockdown and international travel would remain valid long enough for me to give my readers reliable advice. We are living through challenging times, and almost all Western countries are prone to rapidly changing their policies order to better fight the Covid-19 pandemic. On March 18th, the French government announced a strict lockdown, with complex rules on what activities gave inhabitants the right to be outside. This policy was pretty much abandoned on March 20th, the day after it went into effect. The restrictions no longer constitute a lockdown, since there is no limitation on travel within a radius of 10 km (6.2 miles). The government announcement on March 18th envisioned these restrictions stopping on April 20th if the infection rate was under control by then. But in the current situation, reaching that goal seems unlikely in the Paris region and several other areas.

International travel has also been severely affected. The official governmental position is that the borders are sealed unless you can show exceptional and truly compelling reasons to leave or enter. But I know of large numbers of non-French people who have been leaving or returning to France, none of whom had problems at the airport, so I question how well this policy is enforced. I am aware of just one case, in which a 20-year-old Tunisian national and Italian legal resident, coming to France to visit his father for spring break, was denied entry. The reason was that he had no proof of means, i.e., he was traveling with hardly any money. He did not have valid proof of the address where he planned to stay and could not prove that it was his father’s residence. In short, it had nothing to with to do with the restrictions imposed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Under normal circumstances, any EU resident (which he was) has an automatic, undisputed right to travel to another EU country. Travel within the Schengen zone is supposed to be equivalent to domestic travel.

So, please take the following information with a grain of salt:

Guidelines issued on March 12th:
1 – It will no longer be necessary to have a compelling reason to travel to or from Australia, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea or the United Kingdom.

For travel to and from those countries, other restrictions on movement remain in force: among other things, it is still necessary to present a negative PCR test result done less than 72 hours before departure.

2 – The list of compelling personal reasons has been extended to include all family relationships and add new situations linked to family separation for:

• married couples and couples in civil partnerships (PACS), where one member lives abroad for professional reasons.
• minors attending school in France whose family home is abroad.
• separated couples with children where adult lives in France and the other abroad.
• students taking competitive examinations and those returning to their main residence in France.

Templates for exceptional international travel declarations will be updated at 

www.interieur.gouv.fr/Actualites/L-actu-du-Ministere/Attestation-de-deplacement-et-de-voyagewww.interieur.gouv.fr/Actualites/L-actu-du-Ministere/Attestation-de-deplacement-et-de-voyage

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 should no doubt benefit her sooner than later.

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.

Best regards,

QUESTION

COMING BACK TO FRANCE LEGALLY WITH A VISITEUR VISA

I am an American and I have always intended to get some kind of long-term permission to stay/reside in France. Sadly, I procrastinated… and I am now kicking myself.

I want to apply for a carte de séjour. Have you heard anything about the border opening to allow Americans to travel to France in the near future? Pre-Covid, I traveled to France 3-4 times a year to stay in my Parisian apartment, but since I never overstayed the 90-day limit visitor, I didn’t concern myself with getting a visa.

If it seems that France is ready to open her borders to Americans, I might take a chance and book a ticket soon, knowing I might have to cancel it. Or should I wait until you feel it is time to go over everything I need to do to prepare for my arrival? For example, friends have told me in the past that they had to register as much as six months in advance for their in-person appointment to apply for the carte de séjour. I would like to secure an appointment by August or September at the prefecture after my arrival on the ground in Paris.

Would it be worth trying to get an appointment before I travel? Or would I be able to make an appointment only after I arrive in Paris?

Also, I would like to know what the difference is between a long-term visitor visa and a carte de séjour. And what is the difference between a carte de séjour visiteur and a carte de séjour residence? These are the questions that are causing me to hesitate.

1. Do any of these residency or visitor status change the holder’s right to travel into and out of France?

2. Fiscal residence – does the carte de séjour residence make one an automatic fiscal resident? And for the visiteur

3. Is the carte de sejour visiteur a prerequisite to applying later for the normal carte de sejour residence?

4. Applying for visiteur: is it likely that France would open to tourists before the consulate started accepting applications for the visiteur visa? Or would it be automatic that they would occur at the same time? If the consulate is not accepting visa applications, and France opens its borders to US citizens (I am now 65 and fully vaccinated) would I then just travel on my US passport and hope that I can apply for the visiteur status when I am on site in France?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best regards,

QUESTION

INSURANCE COVERAGE FOR FRENCH SMALL BUSINESSES

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

QUESTION

FRENCH HEALTH COVERAGE AND BREXIT

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

QUESTION

IS A STUDENT IN FRANCE A FRENCH FISCAL RESIDENT?

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

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

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

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