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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best regards,

QUESTION

REGISTERING A SMALL BUSINESS – AUTO-ENTREPRENEUR

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

QUESTION

WHO PAYS THE PREMIUM FOR PUMA COVERAGE?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OFFICE CLOSED FOR CHRISTMAS
The office will close for three weeks for the Christmas holidays, starting on Friday December 21st evening reopening on Monday January 7th morning. As always, I will be reachable by email for emergencies and important matters. The service I offer of receiving mail for clients will continue while the office is closed. I did not take much of a summer vacation so I have decided to take some time off, close to the normal length of my vacation. Of course, I will honor the prefecture meetings already scheduled, as well as a couple of other engagements.

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

Best regards,

QUESTION

CHANGE OF IMMIGRATION STATUS WHEN THE MARRIAGE IS OVER

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

QUESTION

TEACHING ENGLISH IN FRANCE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best regards,

QUESTION

INSURANCE COVERAGE FOR FRENCH SMALL BUSINESSES

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

QUESTION

FRENCH HEALTH COVERAGE AND BREXIT

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

QUESTION

IS A STUDENT IN FRANCE A FRENCH FISCAL RESIDENT?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best regards,

QUESTION

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

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

QUESTION

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

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

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

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

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

QUESTION

DOES A SIX MONTH VISA GRANT IMMIGRATION STATUS?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is AARO’s introduction to the video:

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

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

Best regards,

QUESTION

WHAT DOES A PRENUP DO?

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

QUESTION

WHAT HAPPENS AT OFII DEPENDS ON IMMIGRATION STATUS

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

QUESTION

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

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

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.

From Wikipedia: “Déjà Vu is the second album by Crosby, Stills & Nash, and their first in the quartet configuration of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. It was released in March 1970.” This French expression is common enough in English that the band named one of their albums after it.

Many people see the Brexit “leave” vote and the election of President Trump as a series in which the French presidential election could be the next event to come, with populist views winning votes and, in the case of France, a far-right president adopting isolationist policies and severely limiting immigration.

We know that recent polls have been relatively inaccurate and polling agencies are now careful to explain that the margin of error is substantial so the result of the election cannot be predicted. I believe the pollsters are going from one extreme to the other, but maybe that is not such a bad idea. The presidential campaign is now running full blast, with a debate, polls and media coverage, and almost daily findings of illegal conduct by prominent politicians. Feels like déjà vu of the American campaign.

Foreigners too often repeat the same mistakes again and again, thinking they are doing the right thing since it is what they have always done back home. In this month’s column, a non-EU citizen asserts to the prefecture that she has rights and should not be treated in such an unfriendly way being required to,go back there again and again, when in reality she is an undocumented alien and the way she is being treated is in accordance with her illegal stay in France. Another is convinced that since she has not paid for certain services, she is not entitled to them and is outraged as a result, although as it happens the French administration makes it possible to retain the right to services without paying for them for a while – even a long while.

The title Déjà Vu is a reminder that if you feel like a problem is coming up repeatedly, you may be doing something wrong. As a foreigner you will often be wrong, at least at first and possibly for quite some time.

DETAILS ON HOW FRENCH AND US PENSIONS WORK TOGETHER

Another reader comments, regarding the Q&A in February’s column regarding the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP):

“The writer said: “I was, however, shocked to find out . . . my US benefits will be cut by 40% to 50% unless “vous est attribué dans le cadre de l’accord entre la France et les Etats-Unis” ’.

“The writer’s specific case may cause a reduction of 40% to 50% (or more), but the full story of the application and calculation of the WEP is more complicated. It is often misunderstood, but the TOTAL American Social Security benefit may NOT be reduced by a specific percentage. That is because while a French pension generally returns 50% of eligible earnings, the US calculation is ‘progressive.’

“After a person’s best 35 years of earnings are indexed for inflation, the lifetime average monthly wage is calculated. The pension paid on that figure is 90% of the first ‘bend point’/tranche, which in 2017 is $885. (So the pensioner gets 90% of $885 = $796.)

“To this is added 32% of the average lifetime monthly wage between $885 and $5336, and to this is added 15% of any amount above $5336. (There is a maximum pension because contributions are paid only up to a an earnings ceiling, just as in France.)

“This hints at the reason, sought by the writer, of why he is ‘penalized.’ The American calculation system is weighted toward people with a lifetime of low income so as to help assure they are not in poverty once they retire.

“If the worker has earnings unknown to Social Security, such as foreign employment, the calculation is distorted. The person may very well have had a high lifetime income, but the pension would be calculated as if he did not.

“The WEP therefore changes the percentage of return for the first bend point from 90% to 40%. In 2017, the return on the first bend point under the WEP would be $885 x 0.40 = $354 instead of $796. The maximum reduction is therefore $796 – $354 = $442. There is no reduction of amounts calculated for the 32% and 15 bend points.

“That’s the first thing. The second is that the WEP has a limit. The reduction cannot be more than 50% of the foreign pension. Again, this is to protect people with small pensions. So if your writer had a French pension equivalent to $700, the WEP reduction would be $350, not $442.

“The third condition says that anybody with 20 or more years of ‘substantial earnings’ (an amount defined annually) will have the WEP reduction lowered by 5% per year, such that a person with 30 years of substantial earnings in the US will have NO WEP reduction because of foreign earnings. This is not the case of your writer, who has 10 years.

“The fourth point is the most fun. The bilateral social security accords are called totalization agreements. They say that if a person does not have enough units to qualify for a pension in one country, he may use units from the other country. So if your writer had only nine years’ work in the US, where ten are required, he could ‘borrow’ four trimesters from his French employment and thus be eligible for a US pension. This is totalization.

“It is important that the foreign (e.g. French) credits add nothing to the AMOUNT of the US pension; they just make the person lacking units eligible for one.

“As for Americans, the agreement says that if totalization was needed to qualify for the French pension, then there will be no WEP reduction! THAT is probably the meaning of: ‘unless “[il] vous est attribué dans le cadre de l’accord entre la France et les Etats-Unis.” ’

“The agreement’s totalization provision must be invoked to avoid WEP. According to the CNAV, this will happen automatically if application for the French pension is made using the application (form SSA-2490) via the US Social Security website. To make certain of this, the issue should be discussed with the FBU officer at the US embassy.

“I know this has worked, although it doesn’t seem to make sense since only one quarter is needed to claim a French pension, but US Social Security explains: ‘Under French law, a worker can qualify for an old-age pension based on as little as one calendar quarter of contributions but the benefit amount is reduced for workers with less than 150-160 quarters (depending on year of birth). Under the agreement, France will compute an old-age pension based on French credits alone as well as a prorated benefit based on U.S. and French credits, and then pay whichever is greater.’

“On a related matter, Americans receiving US Social Security retirement benefits should know that their US or non-US spouse is usually entitled to his/her own retirement benefit, based upon the primary earner’s record, which is up to 50% of the primary worker’s benefit.

“This is also true for divorced spouse(s) for each marriage that lasted at least ten years and provided the spouse(s) has/have not remarried.

“The spouse(s) can also get a survivor benefit (réversion), which is 100% (unlike the French 54%) if the survivor waits until full retirement age, and is not means-tested. This applies to divorced spouses if the marriage lasted ten years. Unlike France, US Social Security does not pro-rate benefits among multiple spouses; each gets the survivor benefit.

“The WEP reduces a spouse benefit but does not reduce a survivor benefit!”

THERE IS A LIMIT TO A NOTAIRE’S PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY

I frequently find new precedents giving more responsibility to notaires and thus extending their professional responsibility and liability. However, a recent precedent puts a clear limit on how far a notaire needs to go to protect the interests of property buyers.

In 2008, a couple in the South of France bought a mazet or maset, a small rural building of a single room, in bonded masonry (which may or may not be covered with mortar) and roofed with tiles. Such structures are common in Languedoc, particularly in the departments of Gard, Ardèche and Hérault, where until the early 20^th century poor city dwellers used them as week-end houses.

During the course of the purchase procedure, the couple explained that they wanted to upgrade the mazet into a real house. Later they learned that the mazet was not considered a house to start with and therefore could not be used as a permanent dwelling, so their building permit request was denied. They sued both the seller and the notaire for not explaining that their plan was impossible to achieve.

The Cour de Cassation ruled against the couple, arguing in plain terms that you know what you are buying; for example, no one would buy a toolshed and decide to make it into a house. I am sure the notaire had told them that the property was zoned as farmland, which limited its usage. I can understand that foreigners who want to buy cute real estate on the Riviera end up being fooled since mazets look like tiny houses and are at least 100 years old.

For more information (in French), see http://sosconso.blog.lemonde.fr/2017/01/17/avant-dacheter-une-maison-pour-la-retaper-on-verifie-quon-en-aura-le-droit

BEING MARRIED AND CREATING A HOUSEHOLD FOR FISCAL PURPOSES

I have occasionally had to deal with cases where one spouse, often the wife, has settled in France and holds immigration status while the husband continues to work in the USA and lacks any immigration status in France. For the French resident spouse, obtaining a visa and later a carte de séjour is not much of a problem but getting a carte de résident is more complicated, since one must prove a minimum of integration and roots in France. Having a spouse who live outside of France without starting divorce proceedings indicates that ties with the USA are still strong, which can militate against the request. My last such client held a carte de séjour visiteur for ten years before she got the carte de résident.

On the fiscal side, the situation is even more interesting. Tax form 2042, which everybody fills out with their basic information, treats couples who live apart, without a legal separation, the same as divorced couples (although the husband can decide to become a French fiscal resident, since the rest of the family lives in France). When my client first told the French tax office that she was married and that her husband lived in the USA, the tax office considered her to be separated, which infuriated her since they are indeed married and are a strong couple. Nevertheless, she confirmed that her husband lived in the USA and had no ties with France except through her. Finally, she said, the tax office essentially gave up and accepted that she was happily married – but still taxed her as a single woman in France.

Some people do not care much how the administration labels them as long as it does not interfere with their life. I have had clients who pretty much stated, “They can decide what they want; it doesn’t bother me.” Others, like this woman, take the misrepresentation personally but do not want to change their situation. They are determined to set the record straight, even if it does not change anything in their life. I find it very interesting to see how different the reactions can be in this situation.

OFFICE TO BE CLOSED JUST BEFORE SUMMER

The office will close for less than two weeks starting on Thursday June 8^th, reopening on Wednesday June 21^st. 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. This time I am leaving France and email will truly be the only way to reach me while I am gone.

Best regards,

QUESTION

PROPER IMMIGRATION PROCEDURE FOR THE SPOUSE OF AN EU

I am an American citizen married to a Spanish citizen. We now live in Paris, where my husband is working. Although European law guarantees the right for me to stay with him and work here, I have experienced quite a lot of trouble with the local prefecture. I explained to the prefecture that Americans married to Europeans do not need visas to enter Europe. I even have letters from the UK and NY French embassies confirming this. It is also stated on the page of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (“Nationals exempt from the short-stay visa requirement under Council Regulation (EC) No 539/2001 of 15 March 2001 and holders of a residence permit for family members of Union citizens may travel to France without a visa and apply for a residence permit”), and on the page of the French Consulate in NYC (“Family members of a Union national who does not require a short-stay visa do not require an entry and stay visa, whatever the duration of their stay.”)
 
The Nanterre prefecture, however, gave me an appointment for my carte de séjour only for April 12th. This means that I will overrun the 90 days of my visa waiver stay. What should I do? Is it possible for me to go somewhere to extend it, or should I go in and out of the Schengen area (e.g. London)? I am afraid that it is much more difficult for me to go back and forth to the US.

QUESTION

I found this statement on a French administration website about the new rules for spouses of EU citizens. (The link is below.) I am interested to hear your interpretation of this:

“La demande de titre de séjour n’est obligatoire que si vous êtes ressortissant(e) d’un pays tiers à l’UE/EEE/Confédération suisse et que vous souhaitez exercer une activité professionnelle.

Si vous êtes membre de famille d’un(e) citoyen(ne) de l’UE/EEE/Confédération suisse, vous pourrez exercer toute activité professionnelle de votre choix, salariée ou non-salariée, sans avoir à demander de titre de séjour.

Si vous le demandez, vous pouvez recevoir un titre portant la mention « Carte de séjour de membre de la famille d’un citoyen de l’Union ».

http://accueil-etrangers.gouv.fr/demande-de-titre-de-sejour/vous-etes-ressortissant-e-de-l-ue/vous-etes-membre-de-famille-d-un/

QUESTION

IS IT NORMAL TO GET PUMA COVERAGE WITHOUT PAYING?

In your Dec-Jan newsletter you said you would be discussing the potential problem of URSSAF not billing holders of the titre mention visiteur for the premiums for PUMA in 2016 when they renew their titres at the prefecture. I have eagerly awaited your comments, but your Feb and March newsletters did not mention this.

We have been in the French health care system for several years and have been billed quarterly by URSSAF based on the income declared to CPAM. When the change was made from CMU to PUMA, CPAM indicated that our renewal (Sept 2015) was approved but they did not indicate what the premiums would be and they told me it was up to URSSAF to figure it out. URSSAF indicated that their procedures had not been worked out so they could not send a bill despite the fact that we declare our incomes and have an avis d’imposition. Articles have been written on how basically no premiums were charged in 2016 so the prefecture should be well aware that it was impossible to pay the premiums, as URSSAF could not bill. And the prefecture does not like people to not pay for assurance maladie.

Under PUMA you do not have to do any renewal paperwork; you stay enrolled until you tell them you no longer qualify, so we did not have to do any renewal paperwork in Sept 2016. We have had no problems using our cartes vitales and we have not received nor paid anything concerning premiums.

What has been your experience with this, and what problems, and answers, should we anticipate at the prefecture for our renewal?

The Other Side of Life is the twelfth album by The Moody Blues, released in 1986. I have listened to their albums since I was a teenager, and have always found both the music and the lyrics thought-provoking and uplifting.

I chose this album more for its title than any of the lyrics, as it reminds me that life would so much simpler if we could see the other side of an issue, know what the other party was thinking, understand another type of logic, such as French logic, which so many people see as a contradiction in terms. Most of the topics I address this month attempt to show the two sides of the issue and how important – but difficult – it can be to figure out “the other side,” whatever it may be. It is really not about who is right or wrong, just an illustration of how things can go wrong due to misunderstandings.

THE FIRST RENEWAL OF THE EMPLOYEE CARTE DE SÉJOUR

Obtaining the employee carte de séjour is a rather long and tedious procedure since it requires authorization from the Foreign Labor Office (Main d’Oeuvre Etrangère) of DIRECCTE, which is the regional business, competition, consumption, work and employment department. The MOE office has a veto right based on the unemployment ratio in the applicant’s profession. While reviewing files, MOE civil servants surf the web and check out a few things before making decisions. There are a lot of negative answers.

To inspectors, everything looks suspicious. The civil servants of DIRECCTE always assume that there is an underhanded scheme to discover. Therefore, when a foreigner asking for the first renewal of the carte de séjour has started working for a different employer, they immediately suspect fraud. Was the first employer bribed to sponsor the foreigner? Was the employee so bad that the he or she had to be dismissed after such a short time?

Article 5221-36 of the labor code (code du travail) states that renewal of the right to work can be refused if the foreigner changes employers during the first year, unless the change is involuntary on the part of the employee: Le premier renouvellement peut également être refusé lorsque le contrat de travail a été rompu dans les douze mois suivant l’embauche sauf en cas de privation involontaire d’emploi.

This means it is suspicious to leave your job for a better one, and the person can be punished for that, whereas it is understandable and therefore acceptable when the employee is laid off or fired – which looks very unfair to American eyes.

Such situations happen quite often, however. It is often difficult to find a job in France. It almost always takes a long time, several months, if not years, so foreign students often latch onto the first good offer received. This means they make sure that they submit the file requesting the change of status before the immigration card expires. Since such decisions need to be taken early, the students obviously cannot predict the results of their intensive job searches. Therefore it is extremely common that several months later these foreigners get interviews and possibly are offered better jobs. An agonizing dilemma starts right there: if a different request is then submitted to DIRECCTE, it can seem inconsistent, and the civil servants look at this change negatively. Foreigners can also wait to change jobs until the procedure with the first employer is finalized. Then and only then, they change jobs, i.e., after getting the immigration status. But choosing that option is contingent with taking a rather high risk of being denied the right to work as an employee because of this abovementioned legal provision. Until recently the student carte de séjour only lasted a year. Although its validity can now be up to four years, students still must deal with the quandary described above.

The reality is not as harsh as the above description. Usually taking what is obviously a better job, especially with better pay, secures the right to live in France rather than risking it. Nevertheless, I find this provision very French because a dismissal is seen as “one of those things” and has no negative implications for the employee, while taking a better job looks suspicious.

LIST OF COUNTRIES WHOSE CITIZENS NEED NO VISA TO ENTER FRANCE

Many Americans traveling to France think that entering the country without a visa is normal and that everybody is treated the same way. The truth is that France offers this privilege to the citizens of very few countries. Here is the list:

Albania,* Andorra, Antigua, Argentina, Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Barbuda, Bosnia, Brazil, Brunei Dar-es-Salam, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Croatia, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Herzegovina,* Vatican/Holy See, Honduras, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Macedonia,* Mauritius, Mexico, Monaco, Montenegro,* Nicaragua, New Zealand, Panama, Paraguay, Saint Kitts and Nevis, San Marino, Serbia,* Seychelles, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan (passport bearing number of the identity card), Uruguay, USA, Venezuela.

*holders of biometric passports only

As many of those countries are small Caribbean island nations the size of an American city or county, this right is granted to relatively few people. One consequence of the recent terrorism is that the list could shrink even more.

FRENCH MINORS NEED PARENTAL AUTHORIZATION TO LEAVE FRANCE

The National Assembly voted on October 8^th 2015 that a minor desiring to travel outside of France had to have authorization from his or her parents to leave the country. The new law was pushed through the Assemblée Nationale very quickly, though my research indicates that the measure has not yet gone into effect.

The necessity of such parental authorization was the norm for a very long time and it was abandoned in 2013, since it was considered at that time that traveling within the EU did not pose any dangers and EU law granted freedom to travel throughout EU territory.

What made the October vote urgent was not that EU countries have become more dangerous, but rather that the EU is facing a global risk. Enforcing this law in airports is expected to stop minors from traveling to Syria and enrolling in ISIS forces. On the other hand, because of regulations within the Schengen zone, it is possible that minors’ IDs will not be checked until they leave the European zone by car or train. Trips to Syria are much more difficult when they necessitate crossing Europe by train or car instead of taking direct flights to destinations outside of Europe like Turkey.

It does not seem that the legislative process is finished: this provision has not yet been implemented. So it would appear that what was considered urgent in October is no longer top priority, despite the recent terrorist attacks in Europe.

This measure applies to French children. Foreign children need to hold a French ID for minors called the document de circulation hors du territoire français or titre d’identité républicain, since as minors they cannot hold a titre de séjour. Both parents must submit written agreement to permit the issuance of such a card.

FRENCH INCOME TAX: TIME TO DECLARE AND PAY

Regarding the more mundane topic of income tax, I would like to remind everybody that the paper version of the 2015 income declaration must be filed in France before Wednesday May 18^thand the second partial income tax payment (deuxième tiers) is to be paid before May 15^th(midnight, in both cases). The forms are now available on the website www.impots.gouv.fr. It is now possible to file your declaration on this website, provided it is not your first time. To do so, you need your tax ID number and some access codes.

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 24^th
• départements 20 to 49 by May 31^st
• départements 50 or higher by June 7^th.

An important reminder: if you are a French fiscal resident (i.e. if you hold a carte de séjour or an immigration visa validated with an OFII stamp, and comply with the requirements), you must declare your worldwide income to the French authorities even if you have no income in France and do not have the right to work in France. There is no penalty for neglecting to file. However, not complying with this obligation is illegal and can have consequences. The second Q/A this month shows how critical filing will be for people insured under the CMU (now called PUMA)

The four situations that define a French fiscal resident are:

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

There are now government-sponsored advertising campaigns stating that the paper form is a “has been” and that filing on paper is obsolete. Right now, declaring electronically gives you an extension of a few weeks. I believe the next step will be that using the paper form will engender additional fees, thus creating a financial incentive to go paperless.

INCREASE OF MY FEES ON OCTOBER 1^st 2016

It has been about six years since my fees last increased. On October 1st, I will raise my initial retainer from 250€ to 270€ and the hourly rate from 100€ to 110€.

MY OFFICE WILL NOT CLOSE DURING THE SUMMER VACATION

Since my office situation has not been resolved and I do not anticipate being able to move before August or early September, I am not planning any vacation time and do not expect to go away for any length of time this summer. Depending on the outcome of my office search and how quickly it proceeds, this could change some – but not much, considering the fact that any changes would be last minute.

LOOKING FOR AN OFFICE

I have to move by September 15^th and have started looking for a new office. Here are the characteristics I have in mind:

• Very quiet, which means in the courtyard rather than on the street
• On the ground floor or one floor up, or in a building with an elevator
• Monthly rent no more than about 1,000€ TTC
• One room or, at most, two rooms, about 30m² to 50m²
• Completely independent entrance which is not shared with other offices
• No more than a five-minute walk from a major metro stop.

Best regards,

QUESTION

WHY CHANGE THE PICTURE IN THE CARTE DE SÉJOUR RENEWAL?

I am an American and at the end of December I went to the prefecture for the annual renewal of my carte de séjour. It was my 11^th time going through this process, and, for once, everything went smoothly. They called my number within 15 minutes of my scheduled time; the interview itself took less than a half hour. I found myself standing on the banks of the Seine at 10h.
 
Twelve weeks later, I went to pick up the card only to discover that they did not have a card for me. They needed another photo even though I had given them the required photos in December. No one would explain why a single new photo was now required. (C’est nécessaire, monsieur. C’est tout.) So I went into the hallway where there was a photo machine, paid my 5€, and handed the new photos over to them. They clipped out only one and returned the others to me along with a note saying I could pick up my new card in a month!
 
I was just wondering if you have heard of anyone else going through this sort of thing, and if, by chance, you know why the extra photo was required.

QUESTION

WHAT HAS CHANGED NOW THAT THE PUBLIC HEALTH COVERAGE CALLED CMU HAS BECOME PUMA?

I saw an article on french-property.com about British people retiring early in France and getting French health care coverage and how new legislation affects foreigners. There is no longer Couverture Médicale Universelle (CMU), which has been changed to Protection Universelle Maladie (PUMA). What interested me was the mandatory wait before signing on to this new program. This would seem to cover my case, though the article does not go into details about the French government wanting 8% of my total worldwide income as a health insurance premium. I will be 70 years old in April 2016, and as an American I would certainly not be one of the “early retirees” that the British-oriented newsletter is worried about.