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

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

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

https://compagnons-du-devoir.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FRENCH INCOME TAX: TIME TO DECLARE IS NOW
Regarding the more mundane topic of income tax, I would like to remind everybody that the paper version of the 2018 income declaration must be filed in France by Wednesday, May 17th midnight. The declaration forms are available at www.impots.gouv.fr. You can file your declaration on this website, provided it is not your first time. To do so, you need your tax ID number and some access codes.

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

• départements 01 to 19 must file by midnight on May 22nd
• départements 20 to 49 by May 29 th
• départements 50 or higher by June 5th

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

You are a French fiscal resident if you:

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

Current government-sponsored advertising campaigns refer to paper forms as thing of the past. For now, declaring electronically gives you an extension of a few weeks.

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

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

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

The carte de résident requirements are much stricter: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MY SUMMER VACATION: THE OFFICE IS CLOSED from July 19th to August 19th
The office will be closed for one month starting Friday, July 19th, reopening on Monday, August 19th. As always, I will be reachable by email for emergencies and important matters. The service I offer of receiving mail for clients will continue while the office is closed.

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

Best regards,

QUESTION

PROBLEMS LINKED TO THE ABSENCE OF A BUILDING PERMIT

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

QUESTION

CHANGES TO AN APARTMENT WHILE IT IS BEING SOLD

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

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

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

From Wikipedia:
“Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” is a song by Bob Dylan, written for the soundtrack of the 1973 film Pat Garret and Billy the Kid.

I personally prefer the 1987 version by Guns N’ Roses.
From Wikipedia
In 1987, Guns N’ Roses started performing the song. A live version of the song was released on the maxi-single of “Welcome to the Jungle” the same year.

When going through a time of despair in a foreign country, people may often wish to find a door that would open the way to escaping the misery. Every immigrant goes through this phase at least once in their new country of residence. In many ways it has nothing to do with how difficult or easy it is to integrate into the new land. It comes from almost physically feeling the pain of being torn apart inside, the “old you” just wants to go back home. From this, the new country seems barbaric – nothing works, nothing feels safe, there are moments of paranoia. Nowadays it is easy to go to another country; you can fly for a few hours and reach a different continent. If you are well off, you can quickly secure a home and the basic necessities of life, and the immigration procedure can even feel like a breeze when you are properly assisted. But even wealthier people, once they choose to immerse themselves in the new country and to be part of a new community, go through such crises. Wishing you were “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” or climbing a “Stairway to Heaven,” is then a familiar desire.

I had other reasons as well for choosing this title.

THE IRAQ WAR KNOCKED ON MY DOOR
Most of the time, I spend my day at the office going through my daily routine. Clients come in and leave after an hour or two. This is called “making a living.” I have the privilege of my living being my passion. Some days it even feels like I was called to do this. Clearly, I love what I am doing after close to 22 years.

Then come precious moments that are the experience of a lifetime.

I wrote about the terrorist attack against the magazine Charlie Hebdo right after it happened:

FREEDOM OF SPEECH – THE ATTACK IN PARIS ON WEDNESDAY JANUARY 7th, 2015
I drafted this entire issue, including the title, before New Year’s Eve, so I thought I was done. But now, for weeks France has been faced with a powerful and traumatic crisis after the attack on the magazine Charlie Hebdo. A lot, maybe too much, has been said about this.

I did not know then that I would publish the following in my September 2016 issue:

Face to face with…
Indeed face to face with what?
The answer to this question makes all the difference in the world.
It can be good but most of the time it is bad.
Foreigners are faced with all kinds of difficult situations, with doubts, misunderstandings, and this list can go on for a very long time.
“In the face of death” – for most of us, it is just an expression, which, thankfully we just about always misuse. 

In this column, I describe my encounter with one of the victims of a recent terrorist attack that occurred in France. This person came to my office and I was face to face with a reality that shook me to the bone. 

Life is rarely a bed of roses; being an immigrant too often feels like being comfortable will never happen again. 

Meeting this young man, who had such a broken body, and sharing with him more silence than words for what happened to him, was chilling and made the impression of a lifetime on me.

Then came March 2019. Once again the news is about an outbreak of violence and it feels like only slight exaggeration to say that all countries now have to deal with dangerous aggression, often mass shootings.

Just a few days after the New Zealand mosque attacks, I had the usual type of meeting, discussing a project, a business plan, the outcome of the procedure with the prefecture. I have known this client for about nine months; she is tough and has a military backbone. I know from previous discussions that she did several tours of duty, mostly in Iraq. That day, we did not get any work done. There was a lack of focus; something was wrong. Finally, I asked her what has happened. All I got is, “He committed suicide.” So I asked, “Did he make it?” A painful look and she answered, “He is dead.” A brother-in-arms, very close to her, suffering from PTSD, had killed himself a few days before. She told me, in broken words, that he had fought at Fallujah and had done several tours of duty in Iraq.

Military personnel, regardless of which of the armed forces they belong to, can share and understand the bond that often exists, and the deeply disturbing effect of learning of the suicide of someone so close. I respectfully asked her if I could write about this. I would not have dared to write anything without her approval. Here is her unedited answer:

“I would not mind at all if you’d like to write about this. I think these kinds of things can be good for people to hear, even if they are a bit depressing. The problems of suicide and the struggle of veterans after the war are always kept very quiet in everyday life, but it is a subject that can always use some attention.”

This outrageous situation rarely makes the news. When it does, we see staggering statistics about how many veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have killed themselves, and how many suffer from extreme PTSD. Behind these numbers are situations similar to this one, brothers and sisters in arms weeping, and parents, spouse and children devastated.

One needs to realize that all combat personnel go through tough training to carry out missions in which they risk their lives every single time. The ability to be an excellent trained warrior comes with a cost. The human cost becomes staggering for those who undertake multiple combat deployments. Living with the daily presence of death takes a significant toll on a person.

At the end of this discussion, each of us in our own words was saying that no matter how tough we are on the outside, it does not help a bit with the struggle against the enemy that is inside the soul. I knew I could not even remotely compare her military experience with mine. It would have been offensive, considering how she served while I never left France and knew I would not be deployed anywhere.

We were both teary when she left. That is how the Iraq war came to my office on March 18th, 2019. I would have loved it if it had not, but it came anyway.

RAM, MANAGING HEALTH COVERAGE FOR THE SELF-EMPLOYED, HAS MOVED
There has been some serious reorganization at RAM, the public organization that deals with health coverage for self-employed workers. I do not know how long it will operate before being completely be taken over by Assurance Maladie, but for now it still serves the people it covers, i.e. those who registered as independent workers before the 1st of January 2019.

The most important development is that the branch almost next door to the Paris prefecture, at 28 bis boulevard de Sébastopol in the 4th arrondissement, closed on March 18. The one at 59 rue Cambronne in the 15th is still open to the public without appointment from 9am to 12:15pm and 1:15 to 5pm Monday through Friday. There is also a new office at 11 rue Beaurepaire in the 10th, with the same hours.
http://www.laram.fr/agences?dpt=191

ETIAS VERSUS ESTA – TIT FOR TAT BETWEEN THE USA AND EUROPE
Members of the American expat community have been concerned after hearing through the grapevine that as of January 2021 a new EU regulation will oblige Americans to get a visa just to visit Europe. This is totally fake news, but let’s look at what is actually going on.

Since January 12, 2009, any citizen of a country benefiting from the US visa waiver program has been required to go through the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) screening procedure, which the USA imposed unilaterally. The people concerned mostly shrugged, as this was one more measure by the USA to screen non-American legal aliens who wanted to come as tourists. For ten years, then, American citizens have had preferential treatment when visiting Europe, as they can just present their passport and enter, subject to a regulation that allows them to stay in the 26 countries of the Schengen area for up to 90 days within a given 180-day period.

Eventually, in an effort to unify EU security as a whole and enhance the security of the residents of EU countries, the European Union adopted the European Travel Information and Authorization System (ETIAS), which is simply a European replica of ESTA. The European Commission says the new system will be enforced, as an effort to upgrade international security, as of January 1, 2021.

This will have an immediate effect on the leniency of the French police regarding North Americans who stay in France past the Schengen limits. As I have repeatedly said here, that leniency is rapidly shrinking, and no one can count on it any longer. While the fines issued are low, rarely more than 30€ to 50€ for this violation alone, the bad news is that the police stamp a record of the fine in the passport. That makes strict compliance with the Schengen regulation an absolute must anywhere within the Schengen area to avoid hefty fines and maybe a ban from entering France and all the other countries enforcing the regulation.

Once there is a central data system that all European police can check when they swipe the passport, leniency becomes impossible. Every trip that involves facing a custom passport control officer will be recorded in this database. I am just speculating, but it is possible that airlines will be connected to the database for information gathering, without being able to change the information.

For American citizens who still live most of the time in France without immigration documents, this is a powerful wake-up call. We now know the deadline after which it will be impossible for them to continue, and I am sure the leniency will shrink even more as we get closer to the date.

Help fight the tall tale about visas by explaining that it is tit for tat – ETIAS against ESTA – and the obligation to comply with the law, which should be the normal thing to do.

A READER WRITES ABOUT BREXIT CONSEQUENCES AT PREFECTURES OUTSIDE PARIS 
Prefecture of Saint Brieuc in Brittany
I am a regular reader of your column and find it extremely interesting. Your piece on Brexit is correct except not all prefectures are coping with the influx of Britons applying for a carte de séjour. We live in Còtes d’Armor. The prefecture in St Brieuc has been so overwhelmed that they cancelled all carte de séjour appointments from 18th February. They have said that they cannot process the cartes until the results of Brexit are known, and those of us who applied earlier for them will have to change them if there is no deal. The rush for them has caused a problem for third-country citizens who have applied. My American grandson has been waiting since August for his. He has been here since he was 7 and is now 19, so should have his adult carte, but due to an error by the prefecture in 2006 he had the wrong carte and now his whole life is on hold until they have the time to sort it out.

The knock-on effect of Brexit is much more far reaching than was envisioned.

So please be tolerant of my inability to juggle social media outlets. Going through my website or sending an email directly is the best way to reach me, and lately just about the only way, as I have less and less opportunity to pick up the phone since I am usually in a meeting or outside the office.

Prefecture of Nanterre, Parisian suburb
FYI, I forwarded the March 2019 newsletter you sent us to a British expat friend who has lived in France for 25+ years. In that newsletter, you suggested that British expats make an appointment at the prefecture before a no-deal Brexit takes place to establish EU status for the carte de séjour. Our friend lives in Courbevoie and told me that the prefecture in Nanterre (which handles Courbevoie) will not schedule appointments for British citizens until it is known how the UK will be treating French citizens after Brexit. So, at least in Nanterre, your suggestion cannot be implemented.

Recall what I wrote last month about this: British people living in France should not be worried about their ability to obtain a carte de séjour. Even though they will be subject to the regulations for non-EU citizens, there are so many grounds on which to issue one that it is almost certain everyone will fit one of those cases.

I will keep you informed.

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

MY SUMMER VACATION: THE OFFICE IS CLOSED from July 19th to August 19th
The office will be closed for one month starting Friday, July 19th, reopening on Monday, August 19th. As always, I will be reachable by email for emergencies and important matters. The service I offer of receiving mail for clients will continue while the office is closed.

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

Best regards,

QUESTION

BILLING AS A SELF-EMPLOYED PERSON IN FRANCE

I am an American and after a couple of years living in France, I got the carte de séjour linked to my self-employed work as an auto-entrepreneur. I need to renew my immigration status, but I am panicking because I have had just about no French clients. Almost all my current clients are Americans and they pay me in my American bank account. I heard that I will lose my immigration status if I make less than 25,000€ in a year. In France I cannot account for more than 3,000€ but I am close to $50,000 in the USA. Am I really in danger of having my carte de séjour taken away in a couple of months when I go to the prefecture?

QUESTION

PARENTAL AUTHORITY AND THE RIGHT OF A MINOR TO TRAVEL OUT OF FRANCE

I have been a single mother for about 10 years. My son was born in France and the father disappeared shortly after the birth. We were never married and all I could ask for was some child support, which was awarded, but the father lives in Tunisia. This means I never get anything on a regular basis. It feels more like a spurt-of-the-moment thing, he remembers he has a son and I get a gift for him and some money for a couple of months.

My problem is that I often go home to the USA and my son does not have any French ID because his father has always refused to sign the French forms, or even to put in the initial court decision, issued when our son was 2, that he was allowed to leave France at all, even for vacation. Lately, entering the USA and France is becoming increasingly difficult, not to mention the hassles I get from the airline.

I got a lawyer and took the matter to court, and sued for the father to lose all his parental rights. I thought the lawyer went too far and there would be a violent court battle, since the father shows up only once in a while in the life of his son. I was stupefied to learn that he did not retain a French lawyer, and sent a whining letter to the judge saying that I was not an honest and modest enough mother and woman for his taste so that he could not be associated with me in any way, and that France has always made it difficult for him to get a visa to exercise his parental right of a visit during vacations, as the first court ruling described.

My lawyer said that under the circumstances, we will win the case. Great, but this does not answer my problem, which is how do I get the father to sign the French form for a document de circulation for my son so I can travel with him worry free?

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I would like to address three principal issues here:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SUMMER VACATION: PERIOD THE OFFICE IS CLOSED THIS SUMMER
The office will be closed for less than a month, starting Friday, July 23rd. It will reopen on Monday, August 20th. As always, I will be reachable by email for emergencies and important matters. The service I offer of receiving mail for clients will continue while the office is closed. Prefecture appointments already scheduled will not be affected – I will be there.

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

Best regards,

QUESTION

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

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

QUESTION

WHEN RENOVATIONS VOTED BY THE OWNERS’ COUNCIL GO WRONG

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

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

First of all, I would like to wish all of you a very happy and prosperous 2018! French custom dictates that New Year’s wishes can be expressed until the end of January, so I have managed it a few hours before the deadline.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AARO RECORDED MY 2 HOUR PRESENTATION ON DECEMBER 18

Here is AARO’s introduction to the video:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best regards,

QUESTION

WHAT RIGHT TO WORK DO FOREIGN STUDENTS HAVE IN FRANCE?

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

QUESTION

WHEN THE LANDLORD GIVES NOTICE FOR THE WRONG REASON

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

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

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

Do I have any recourse in this matter?

From Wikipedia
“Won’t Get Fooled Again” is a song by the English band The Who, written by Pete Townshend. It was released as a single in June 1971, reaching the top 10 in the UK, while the full eight-and-a-half-minute version appears as the final track on the band’s 1971 album Who’s Next, released that August.
This iconic song has swept a complete generation in the 70’s. Today its message can be interpreted in very many ways. The idea is that everybody lies and cheats; politicians, medias, the corporate world, bosses, spouses, … It has reached the point where it feels like that there is a conspiracy theory for just about everything.
At the same time, crooks have perfected their methods and phishing is only one ways in which their prowess is revealed. We are now living in a world where we need to be cautious just about all the time. This changes the way we live and many people become suspicious of everything, and expect the worst all the time.
This issue deals for the most part about not delivering what has been promised. A foreigner is always an easier prey. Since everything seems weird, it is very difficult to discriminate between cultural differences and being taken advantage of. It is easy to state “Won’t Get Fooled Again” when we get mad after finding out that we have taken for a ride. We blame ourselves for not having being vigilant enough.

RAPID CHANGE IN HOUSING IN THE PARIS REGION
I have heard very few people commenting about a phenomenon that is visible all around Paris. While Paris proper is slowly losing population, its suburbs continue to grow faster than the French population as a whole. This means many people working in or near Paris are living farther and farther away. I saw a similar situation firsthand in greater New York, where people work in Manhattan but live far away in New Jersey and Connecticut. The small town where I grew up in Paris’s southern suburbs, about 20 miles from the city, had an urban life disconnected from Paris, with its own active town center. There were large families living in big houses, including the one I grew up in, which was around 100 years old.
Today, most of those houses are condominiums. Each unit is a small studio or one-bedroom apartment. They were converted on the cheap, and the comfort level is really low. So many people are desperate to live in the Paris region that no matter how terrible an apartment is, it will be rented.
It is never too late to stop such destruction, but a lot of damage has already been done. A recent law upgrades the standards regulating what constitutes decent rental housing, and the government of the Ile de France region, which includes Paris, is determined to expropriate the remaining unspoiled properties and prosecute unscrupulous landlords.

http://www.lemonde.fr/logement/article/2017/09/05/l-ile-de-france-s-attaque-aux-marchands-de-sommeil_5181177_1653445.html/

AVOIDING CROOKS WHEN REGISTERING AS SELF-EMPLOYED
The registration form for self-employment, accessible through the CFE-URSSAF website, is offering a new option that is very useful. You can choose to have your information kept private during the registration procedure.

For a long time, INSEE’s policy was that such information should be fully public, with the idea that clients would check the company before doing business with it. However, this almost never happens. As far back as I can remember, there have been establishments offering their services to new businesses. Some of them are genuine, but most are what I consider to be crooks. In their letterhead, names and logos, they try to look like divisions of the French administration linked to business creation. But the “service” they offer is usually just a mention in a database that nobody checks, for which they charge between 200€ and 500€. It is often difficult to find the truly minuscule fine print at the bottom or on the back of their mailings, stating what the service is.

Now, by checking a box on the registration form, you can opt out of having your information become public, and thus avoid receiving these unwelcome solicitations. This does not mean everything you receive in the mail will be pertinent to your particular business, but at least everything is official, which makes the process a lot safer.

President Macron is going after an organization called the Régime Social des Indépendants (RSI), which was never well-organized but today has become just plain dysfunctional on so many levels that his efforts to get rid of it have made headlines in the French media. As a period of high uncertainty starts, I prefer to identify the services the French administration offers, noting that the names associated with some of these divisions may change.

1 – Health coverage is obtained on the day of registration. One of the organizations commonly chosen is RAM,

2 – A retirement account is opened when you sign for self-employed status. The organization in charge is usually CIPAV,

3 – The family subsidy collection agency is called URSSAF,

4 – The tax office’s business division is also informed of the creation of your business, and writes to inform you that it has opened a file for you,

5 – There are also several organizations sending mail about retirement accounts for any employees of the new business. You can set these aside, as they are irrelevant for many self-employed people, who usually have profession libérale status, at least at first.

Becoming self-employed used to entail many special procedures, but the number has decreased over the years.

President Macron is making a huge effort to unify everything in a single group of organizations for self-employed people – one for health, one for retirement and one for unemployment. This will not happen right away, but we know for sure that the RSI as it exists today, is nearly defunct. We just do not know yet what will happen after it is closed, or how the situation will be handled.

DOUBLING THE CEILING FOR MICRO-ENTREPRENEURS (FORMERLYAUTO-ENTREPRENEURS): PROMISES AND REALITY
President Macron is also making speeches about doubling the maximum income for the type of self-employment formerly known as auto-entrepreneur but now called micro-entrepreneur, and the government is working on carrying out his promises. There are so many aspects to this that I want to address just two, which I believe illustrate the complexity of the change.

1 – Immediate payment of social charges, monthly or quarterly
Being a micro-entrepreneur has this excellent feature: You declare your revenue either 12 times or four times a year, paying the related taxes at the same time, thus immediately freeing the business from tax debt. This is a wonderful change from the previous system, which delayed up to 18 months the payment of some of the social charges and should clearly be adopted for many other types of business, as it prevents people from spending tax money, and never paying their taxes.

2 – TVA
The sales tax called the value-added tax or TVA is the single largest provider of funds to the state coffers, so any change could have serious consequences on the budget deficit. Previously the auto-entrepreneur income ceiling was low enough that it did not have much effect on the amount of TVA collected. Doubling the ceiling and keeping the TVA exemption would have a very significant impact, however, and there is no way this will happen.

The current system is coherent and works well. This is one reason it is so popular. It has two excellent features, immediate social charge payment and no need to hold any accounting. There is just one standard deduction, which makes it impossible to claim expenses.

Should the income ceiling double for payment of social charges but remain the same for charging TVA, this status will lose one of its best features. No solution seems to have been decided thus far.

For your information:
The service providers’ annual revenue ceiling would go from 33,100 euros to 70,000 euros
The annual ceiling for sales activities would go from 82,800 euros to 170,000 euros

I will continue to follow this topic very closely, as it affects a lot of people.

http://business.lesechos.fr/entrepreneurs/auto-entrepreneur/030522905401-microentrepreneurs-le-regime-social-etendu-312662.php?BCarpDI3G0w4JAkD.99

CRACKING DOWN ON UNDOCUMENTED FOREIGNERS IN FRANCE
The French government has come up with an interesting twist on the control of undocumented foreigners. When the Schengen Agreement was signed, the idea was to improve efficiency by loosening border controls inside member countries and strengthening controls at the Schengen-area borders. The migrant and refugee crisis as well as the terrorist attacks shattered this goal and all member countries have tried to manipulate the existing legislation so they can check who is coming in.

Since country borders within the Schengen area no longer have custom offices, each police force has the right to freely check within 20 km from the border. The French government’s latest idea is that every international airport should also be considered a “border,” as they are a point of entry to the country. The point is completely true, although airports have ample police forces, and even when a person travels within the Schengen area, there is always the possibility of controls when suspicion warrants.

If the 20 km zones were applied on airports throughout France, it would put two-thirds of the French population within the zones.

Many nonprofits in France are fighting this new idea, since the true motive for such controls has nothing to do with fighting terrorism or monitoring the refugee crisis. The main reason is to catch as many undocumented foreigners as possible, since most of them live in the largest cities. Of course, this would contravene the Schengen guidelines and be stricken down by EU authorities. But using terrorism as the reason, it has a much better chance of being approved and seen as complying with the EU legislation.

http://abonnes.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2017/09/12/le-gouvernement-prepare-une-extension-massive-des-controles-d-identite-aux-frontieres_5184205_3224.html?xtmc=le_gouvernement_prepare_une_extension_massive_des_controles_d_identite_aux_frontieres&xtcr=1

MY HELPER HAS STARTED WORKING WITH MY CLIENTS
Sarah B., as my helper has called her business, started a tad later than we were hoping for. This is the kind of situations that happens all the time when one launches a new business. She is now addressing the needs of people earning less than 33,100€ in gross sales, with the micro BNC fiscal status. Such clients are exempt from doing full bookkeeping, but still have to file declarations of income to the tax office and to RSI for social charges. Managing payment of the social charges and understanding how it works can be quite complex. I do some of it when people initially register, because almost all these documents are needed to obtain the related immigration status. After that they should be autonomous, but in fact most of the time they are not.

I have been giving her name and information upon request. Her fees are between one-half and one-third of what I charge, depending on the level of services requested. Of course, she works under my supervision, so I guarantee the quality of the service, and she keeps her files in my office.

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

EDITORIAL FREEDOM OF AN AUTHOR

I have known about you for many years but have only just begun reading your newsletter and Q/A. This past newsletter made me so very sad for you: your despair at the world events and catastrophes, that you, like most of us, can only helplessly witness. While of course you can do nothing about hurricanes, floods, terrorism and death, you do prevent or alleviate much personal disaster and allow many people to make sense of a system that is difficult to navigate. And that with a combination of unfailing courtesy and clinical detachment; you rarely bite back when faced with entitlement, sarcasm or erudition. I love the way you accept that people ARE the center of their universe … anyway, all this is to say that you do so much for so many, and France is certainly a better place with you in it. I wish you comfort.

QUESTION

ACRONYMS IN FRANCE RELATED TO SMALL BUSINESSES

I have a few questions regarding my registration with URSSAF, which I wish to do online. What will my legal status be (my statut juridique)? EI, EI avec option EIRL, or EURL? I was very happy that the prefecture approved my project and I now need to register to start working by creating my business.

QUESTION

INTERNSHIPS IN PARIS

I am American and I have been offered two full-time stages in Paris for different periods: the first from October to December 2017, and the second from January to July 2018. Both are paid a stipend, and each is with a multinational corporation. I intended to enroll in French language courses in order to improve my French, as I will be studying to enter a French business school. The prep school can sign a convention de stage, and the French courses qualify me for a student visa. What is unclear to me is whether I can legally undertake two stages, and obtain two internship visas, and, if not, whether I can obtain a student visa for the first three months followed by an internship visa for the following six months.

QUESTION

GOING FROM STUDENT TO EMPLOYEE IMMIGRATION STATUS

I have been a foreign student in France for a few years and want to become an employee. I received a complete job offer a few days ago and just learned from them that the labor inspectors (inspection du travail) visited their office. They were told that they did not have the right to hire a foreign student on a fixed-term contract (CDD). The student immigration status allows only part-time work – 60% of full-time hours. The worst thing with this situation is that the prefecture advised this solution. Clearly the inspection du travail rules, as they are the cops. Can you explain this insanity?

Blue Öyster Cult was the first studio album by the American hard rock band of the same name, released in January 1972. The album included the songs “Cities on Flame with Rock ’n’ Roll,” “Stairway to the Stars” and “Then Came the Last Days of May.”.

I have been listening to this band since I began high school over 40 years ago and I still enjoy their music just as much today.

The French presidential election has two rounds of votes, two weeks apart. The first round was held on April 23rd and the second will be held on May 7th. When I started drafting this column before the first round, I was looking at the polls, which were so close it was impossible to know who would make the second round (only the top two winners advance). It was even more impossible to tell who will be elected. Rarely has a French election been so unpredictable. News agencies said that the four major candidates are neck and neck, all within a margin of error of just 2% or less. The leader of the far right party and the leader of a new centrist grouping were expected to advance to the second round, which is what happened.

Even though I avoid expressing political views and try very hard not to allow them into my writing, I must say that electing Marine Le Pen, the far right leader, would be a severe blow to France and its people. So, for me, the title of that Blue Öyster Cult song, which I consider to be one of their best, illustrates the worst-case scenario in which she is elected on May 7th and chaos follows, with hordes sweeping through the cities. Of course, this bleak image probably does not accurately depict what would happen, but it does a great job of expressing my vision of how devastating her election would be to France, the country I serve and cherish despite my descriptions for the past 22 years of its flaws and shortcomings.

Surprisingly, though, this issue has some good news for many people in most of its sections. Life continues in France. There are only three holidays in May this year – May 1st, May 8th and May 25th, as one holiday that usually occurs in May will be on June 5th this year.

DRINKING TURKISH COFFEE IN PARIS 30 YEARS AGO
During my last year of law school I bought a studio in Paris with the help of my parents. Hidden in a courtyard, it was large enough that it became a popular place for my friends to gather. For most of that year, 1984, I hung out with many Lebanese people. It felt like I was making Turkish coffee from dawn to dusk for a lively and sometimes boisterous crowd. Each newcomer showing up was a good reason to make a fresh pot.

From 1975 to 1978 the civil war in Lebanon had raged. The capital, Beirut, was split in two, and there was heavy fighting. The UN sent a peace force in 1978, but this did not solve anything. American and French forces left the country after suffering severe losses in massive terrorist attacks in 1983.

Day after day, for months, I was immersed in talk of the convoluted Middle East and its indescribable intricacies. One day, two young men joking around found out that they had been on opposing sides on the front line in Beirut, probably facing each other in combat. That day I realized I had learned enough to know I could not fully comprehend what was happening in that part of the world, which is the cradle of Western civilization. Thirty-some years later this conviction has grown stronger.

THE PARIS TAXE D’HABITATION SURTAX IS NOT FOR TENANTS
A reader wonders whether the taxe d’habitation surtax will apply to tenants who declare their Paris apartment as a secondary residence.

All the research I have done, while waiting for the final decision from the Paris City Hall, indicates that tenants of secondary residences will not see their taxes raised.

The main thing to remember is that this policy was designed to force owners to either rent out unoccupied apartments or actually live in them. Renting a secondary residence puts people in the category of tenants, so they are the good guys, as it were, since French law favors tenants over landlords. Thus, for now, renting out a place long term is the right thing for a landlord to do. Maybe down the road, the officials will realize that the tenant is renting a secondary residence and, by their logic, preventing a family from living in Paris. If this happens, City Hall might change its views. But, knowing how deep-rooted the concept of the tenant as the good person is, I am sure it will be months, if not years, before that happens.

MORE MULTIYEAR CARTES DE SEJOUR ARE BECOMING AVAILABLE
The prefecture is continuing to extend the multiyear carte de séjour concept to other types of status. As I explain below in the Q&A on the difference between RSI and CIPAV, being self-employed carries a strong stigma. Therefore, I have been waiting to see if two- to four-year cartes de séjour would be issued for foreigners running a business in France.

I admit that I was skeptical, as I assumed that French culture and tradition would win – that the idea that a business’s results could plunge from one year to the next would be considered a good reason to deny renewal of the card. I was wrong, however, and I have discussed this issue more than once with civil servants at the Paris Prefecture near Notre Dame. One of my clients got a four-year renewal as a self-employed person in the profession libérale category. I am not sure yet of all the requirements to obtain it, nor if the same thing would happen for people in the categories of merchant (commerçant) or craftsperson (artisan). I will continue to keep you posted about this.

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 2016 income declaration must be filed in France by Wednesday, May 18th and the second partial income tax payment (deuxième tiers) is to be paid by May 17th (midnight, in both cases). The forms are available at www.impots.gouv.fr. It is possible to file your declaration on this website, provided it is not your first time. To do so, you need your tax ID number and some access codes.

Note that if you file online, the deadline is later. The schedule depends on your postal code:
1. départements 01 to 19 must file by midnight on May 23rd
2. départements 20 to 49 by May 30st
3. départements 50 or higher by June 6th

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

I just receive a critical piece of information: URSSAF will not invoice the former CMU (now called PUMA) until the end of 2017. In many ways this is really bad news since it means that people insured under PUMA will have gone two years without paying into the system while being covered. I am afraid the French administration will issue some large bills once they get around to it. Indeed, given back charging for the two previous years plus the current year, I hope people have been saving money for this or they will have a rude awakening!

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

Current government-sponsored advertising campaigns call the paper form a thing of the past and say filing on paper is obsolete. For now, declaring electronically gives you an extension of a few weeks. I believe the next step will be additional fees for using the paper form, creating a financial incentive to go paperless.

OFFICE CLOSED JUST BEFORE SUMMER 
The office will be closed for less than two weeks starting Thursday, June 8th, reopening on Wednesday, June 21st. 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 be the only way to reach me in my absence.

Best regards,

QUESTION

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RSI AND CIPAV FOR THE SELF-EMPLOYED IN FRANCE

I have stumbled across some articles online that state that as a profession libérale, you either pay into RSI or CIPAV, but I have been paying both. Is this correct? It was my understanding that they are two separate entities: one for health and one for pension. Or is RAM covering me for health?
In any case, I paid something like 600€ to CIPAV last year and I just got a new bill from them demanding 2,400€ for 2017, four times as much as last year. Is this normal? How would they determine what I owe if I haven’t even declared my revenue yet? It just seems like quite a big jump and I have no idea what it is based on.

QUESTION

STUDENT IMMIGRATION STATUS – WHAT AM I ENTITLED TO?

I am planning on applying for a long-term student visa within the next month. As I understand, if I am granted the visa it will act as my residency permit and last for the three years of my bachelor’s degree.

My main concern has to do with my accommodation and opening a bank account. I have found a place close to the school, but they only rent it out for a maximum of one year. Do I have to find a new place to live every year? I am thinking of staying in a hotel for a while and then finding a place.

I have the funds to support myself, but I’m not sure how I would go about opening the bank account. Won’t they require some proof of residency on my part? How much cash am I allowed to bring with me? I suppose I could use online banking to pay for my hotel stay, but I still need cash to get around Paris. Also I was wondering if you had a list of things to avoid during the interview.

From Wikipedia
Blow Out is a 1981 American neo noir thriller film written and directed by Brian De Palma, The film stars John Travolta as Jack Terry, a movie sound effects technician from Philadelphia who, while recording sounds for a low-budget slasher film, serendipitously captures audio evidence of an assassination involving a presidential hopeful.
How can a 1981 movie, the year Ronald Regan got elected president, be pertinent today? I wonder. The movie is about the recording of a sound lasting a few seconds that becomes evidence with long lasting effects. That recording shows the truth of what happened against the evidence of the scene of the car accident. Many high officials in the film try to suppress this evidence, they deny the very existence of this recording. They endlessly repeat the official truth.
36 years later, is this saying something about what is happening today? Will 2017 see a blow-up?
At a complete different level, it is clear that foreigners living in France do blow-up more often than they would like. It is clear that frustration fueled by incomprehension of what is going on, frustration that is going on the right way.
Regarding the lodging issue that so many foreigners complain about, one can see that the French people face about the same problem. Again opening a bank account should be easy in France but everyone who does not have an employee job is being looked at twice before being accepted.
As for the maze of the French administration, French people get lost in it too. It just happens that it is less often with smaller consequences.
So we all blow-up in our live, being foreigners just considerably increases the chance of happening.
 
SELF-EMPLOYED AND FINDING LODGING IN PARIS
One side issue of the harsher law regarding renting an apartment in Paris is the ever growing difficult to convince a landlord or an agency to rent to self-employed people.
I read an article in Le Monde where a 27 year old, self-employed, professional, earning more than 3,000€ monthly, and is faced with a systematic NO from everyone. He keeps his official address in the countryside with his parents and his tax registration, but he lives in Paris, survives between couch surfing, friends and so on.
The landlords and the agencies heighten their requirements of earning significantly more than three times the rent is not enough. The hierarchy has always been this but it has become worse, the best status is being an employee with an open-ended contract called CDI, contrat à durée indéterminée, next is the long fixed term employee contracts, for about a year at a time, then the students since the parents have the right to be guarantor. A different type of rental is when the employer rents for the expat employee.
If you do not have one of those profiles, the traditional French residential lease is out of reach. Foreigners have easy access to the short-term rentals, especially when the rental starts as the person gets out of the plane. It is more expensive and the apartments are fully furnished, which is a good thing when one arrives.
Even these people, end up being in a crush. Sooner than later, many become French fiscal residents and the landlord terminates the lease, as the lease is then securing a primary residence. It is at that time that the tenant obtains the full protection from French law and before this protection is enforceable, the lease is terminated. One client was told that the apartment would be put for sale and she did not have the first right of refusal, about six months after having moved in. In the meantime, she registered as a self-employed person, which includes a registration with the tax office.
One could wonder if acquiring this professional status did not trigger the so-called desire to sell the place.
I often have the impression that I am repeating this several times a year. At the same time, I read stories like this so often that I can assure you, I do not report most of them.
En savoir plus sur http://www.lemonde.fr/francaises-francais/article/2017/01/24/travailleur-independant-cherche-logement-decent-desesperement_5067944_4999913.html#M9M9Q22bLdvdDTpc.99
 
CHANGING BANKS IN FRANCE SHOULD BE NOW MUCH EASIER
Banking in France is a weird experience for a lot of reasons.
The one and most important one is having a bank account is pretty much a legal obligation since there are so many situations that demand the use of a bank account that the truth is that it is impossible to be settled inside French society without a bank account. CPAM and CAF only wire money to a bank account. Any payment over 1,000€, all the salaries, must be paid through a bank account, and I could go on like this. It has reached the point that if a person is refused by all the banks to open an account, maybe because his existing bank threw him out, then the Banque de France, the French Federal reserve then assigns this client to a bank without the possibility of saying no. This said, the bank then opens a savings account coming with an ATM card. So this is a rarely known aspect of French banking.
At the opposite end, the Branch Manager of a bank in France is personally criminally liable for money laundry and tax cheating done in his branch. This means that this professional and his staff are scared crazy to accept a new client unless a reliable person introduces him. So the testimony I get from my clients is that they get drilled so much more at the bank than at the prefecture. At the end the latter one seems to be a piece of cake compare to the other one. Of course the latest American legislation called FATCA is not helping the French banks to welcome the American clients. Since the prefecture demands to see the bank account statements for a reason or another, the foreigner can easily be caught between the rock and a hard place and maybe should think of this Banque de France assigned risk client procedure.
For the longest time, it was very difficult to change banks and therefore the competition in the quality of services as well as regarding the cost was non-existent. Throughout the years more and more payments are made automatically from the bank account, often in a monthly installment. So, in theory, changing banks is easy except that one has to remember the 20 or more payments and reimbursements that happen automatically on the account. Missing one and it triggers a default of payment, which can have some serious consequences. The worst is “interdit bancaire” which is being banned from having a normal banking service and be forced to use the Banque de France assigned risk client procedure.
Call it laziness or being scared of screwing-up, the bottom line is that less than 5% of people change banks every year.
This time, the new legislation is helping right on the dot. It forces the “new banker,” once the contract is signed, to open the new account to transfer everything, i.e., all those payments and reimbursements, salary payments and so on. The main reason why people do not change banks is 1. I do not know much about other countries but it feels like in France everybody is complaining about their bank, its awful service, its high fees, and the absence of reliable employees.
So, once the French administration communicates on this legislation, something is going to change and I am sure it will shake up French banking.
UFC-Que Choisir the consumer advocate NGO states that the next step should be that the same regulation as for the cellular phone industry, one keeps the same account number so it facilitates the transition completely going from one bank to the next. Indeed this legislation does not apply to the mortgaged loans, which limits its efficiency. This said, many clients have two accounts and the family account often has all those payments, and is not linked to this said loan.
We will see how effective it is. I will keep you informed, as banking in France has become a serious problem for many.
http://abonnes.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2017/02/06/le-changement-de-banque-simplifie_5075175_3234.html?xtmc=le_changement_de_banque_simplifie&xtcr=1
 
SHARP INCREASE IN LOCAL TAXES FOR PARISIAN SECONDARY DOMICILE
On the 30TH of January the Parisian City Council approved an increase on local taxes between 20% and 60%. Last November the Parliament approved a provision that allowed the cities a much wider flexibility to decide the rate of taxation for “taxe d’habitation” paid by the tenant and “taxe foncière” paid by the owner.
About ten years ago, a new vacant tax “taxe sur les logements vacants” was created to heavily tax owners who did not rent those properties nor were using them and therefore were not paying the “taxe d’habitation.”
This is not enough since owners now prefer stating that they are there a week at a time as a secondary domicile and pay the “taxe d’habitation”, which does not increase every year as the punitive vacant tax. This is a response to an increase of 43% of those residences in Paris, partially if not primary motivated by the very short-term rental industry, which existed before AirB&B but expanded considerably with it. Paris City Hall states that 107,000 apartments are secondary residence, which makes 7.5% of the global number of apartments. The city is losing its residents and losing its blue-collar businesses. An official stated:
“Taxer davantage les résidences secondaires incitera leurs propriétaires à les vendre ou à les louer à l’année, ce qui augmentera l’offre locative. Notre objectif est que ces logements bénéficient en priorité aux Parisiens.”
Heavy taxes on secondary residences should push owners to either sell or rent long term, which should increase the lodging for renters. Our goal is that the Parisians first benefit from the increase of the offer of these lodgings.
Also, and probably this should not be underestimated, the city is hoping to get an excess of 43 million euros.
En savoir plus sur http://www.lemonde.fr/argent/article/2017/01/25/a-paris-la-surtaxe-sur-les-residences-secondaires-va-passer-de-20-a-60_5068843_1657007.html#2PQtqHpTkjQjdct0.99
 
PLURIANNUELLE CARTES DE SEJOUR
I mentioned these cards already two times, since they were first introduced for the foreign students preparing a doctorate. Starting in November 2016, holders of the carte de séjour mention salarié, i.e., employee immigration status, as well as the mentioned vie privée et familiale, personal and family status, are now issued almost systematically at the time of the first renewal. I am not certain exactly how the duration of the card is decided. Based on the information I am getting, the employee carte de sejour seems to be four years when the private life is only two. There is a lot of misunderstanding regarding the nature of these cards as people often mistake them with the carte de résident, which is the equivalent to the American Green Card. The key difference here is that a carte de séjour is issued on a specific ground, and therefore it creates a lot of limits for many of them, mainly in terms of “right to work.” During a couple of years, and maybe more, people will get those long lasting cards when they are able to ask for a carte de résident a year or two later . The real issue here is that more and more people have what I call diverse careers, and not just one employee job. So specifically, a carte de séjour mention salarié holder can be prevented to launch a side consulting, or teaching yoga for several years.
I have no idea as the regulation just came about in November 2016 if it will be possible to ask for this carte de résident while the card is still valid and for a few more years. I have already been confronted with this situation several times, making what appears to be wonderful news, just the opposite, for several.
I raised another issue regarding the profession libérale, commerçant, if and when these cards could also be issued for several years. The answer “it might be possible” being put in the French context of distrust of the self-employed in general, my guess is that this is not going to happen for quite a while. As an example, the profession libérale carte de séjour holder at the Parisian prefecture will now have this request being reviewed by the office in charge of merchant and craftsman. This is not a good sign.
 
REDESIGNING MY WEBSITE
My website is being redesigned, mainly so as to use more recent software to update and manage it. This means there may be a couple of days when the site will not be online. I am sorry for the inconvenience, but we will do everything we can to keep this outage as short as possible. Indeed it should evolve as I am taking over the full control of the back office and being able to update it regularly now chating is possible on all the issues.
 
OFFICE CLOSED JUST BEFORE SUMMER
The office will close for less than two weeks starting on Thursday June 8th, reopening on Wednesday June 21st. 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 then.
Best regards,

QUESTION

HOW TO PROVE FRENCH NATIONALITY?

I am a dual French-US citizen, born in the USA of a French father and an American mother. My father was born in France, and he and his parents were naturalized there in the 1920s. My wife and I have lived in the US and Costa Rica, and we will retire in France soon. I have my carte nationale d’identité and our livret de famille as proof of our marriage. My question is whether, for a normal existence in France, I need to apply for the certificat de nationalité française. If so, does submitting the request for verification entail a risk that I might lose my citizenship altogether?
I am concerned because the citizenship criteria have changed many times since the 1920s.Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aenean diam dolor, accumsan sed rutrum vel, dapibus et leo.

QUESTION

CONSEQUENCES OF ASKING FOR IMMIGRATION STATUS WHEN
RE-ENTERING FRANCE

As an American I benefited from the young professional program. These last months I have been working hard on putting together a business plan to start a tiny catering – cooking school that is run in people’s homes. This solution pretty much avoids all the sanitary and business regulations since private individuals visit another private individual’s residence.
Last week I learned the disastrous news that my right to work as an employee on this exchange program will stop short a week before my carte de séjour expires. The prefecture is making a huge deal about it and I have been yelled at twice now by civil servants and told I cannot work during those days or I could lose my right to come back to France forever.
The procedure at DIRECCTE is quite long to obtain the employee right to work. Therefore, I am not sure I can get it before I leave in late March. Does it truly jeopardize my right to come back to France?

I hope that the now-deceased Dr. Seuss doesn’t mind my using the title of one of his books, since it so accurately summarizes the feelings and dynamics related to the two issues I’m now going to expand on.

The first issue has to do with recent events related to the attempt to ratify the European constitution. On the one hand, one could argue that the EU was and is not a country. However, I personally believe that, as soon as a constitution is drafted and submitted to the people, directly or through Congress, one can argue that a country is either established or about to be. My perspective on this is, admittedly, fairly unique. I was born about the time the first European treaty was signed establishing free trade of coal and steel between EU member countries. Then, in 1973 (when I was fourteen), the second batch of member countries joined the EU, one of them being Denmark. My mother’s entire family is Danish, and on my father’s side, I also had uncles and aunts living in other member countries’England and Germany’so I grew up with the idea that at some time in the near future, certainly during my lifetime, all my family members and I would be citizens of the same country. For me, the concept of one European country was then and still is very concrete, since I could envision sharing the same ‘country’ with those who share my blood. Since that time, and for over twenty years, the trend has been toward the creation of just such a unified European country. With the launch of the euro currency, I believed that the last cornerstone in the steps to building a federal nation had been put in place. When a constitution was drafted, I was ecstatic, eager to endorse it and be done with it. My dream was coming true; I could almost touch it.

ABOUT THE E.U. CONSTITUTION
Then I read the document and saw that it was a scam because among many other things, it required a unanimous vote to pretty much change anything. This document therefore made it almost impossible to create a true federation–a United States of Europe along the same lines as the USA. Somewhere, somehow, someone stole the country I dreamed about for decades. As I said earlier, my cross-European family ties probably make my point of view pretty unusual. Be that as it may, I believe that one of the main reasons this constitution was rejected–and not only by France–is that people largely had the common sense to say « No » when presented with the question: “Do you endorse this proposed ‘constitution’, which prevents the creation of the federal country it is supposed to create?” The referendum simply made no sense. Should the proposed « constitution » have (1) defined the three fundamental powers and the balance of power between them as well as (2) defined the democratic process to elect a government and Congress and finally (3) defined the balance between state and federal prerogatives, it would have conceptually created a proper federation of states and everybody could then have clearly expressed an opinion by voting for or against the federation. Should the proposed document have been just one more international treaty (like the many Europe has adopted over the course of its modern creation) then it would not have been called a « Constitution » and this would have been clearly stated in the referendum. Because of the ambiguous nature of the document proposed to popular vote, I am convinced that even a YES vote would not have changed my position that my country has been stolen, nor would it have made the issue of the future of the EU any simpler. Just imagine Mr. Adams and Mr. Jefferson arguing about whether or not the USA should even exist as a country, rather than, in a spirit of mutual love for their country, the newborn USA, negotiating among other things, the role of the individual states. I long for outstanding European leadership that will carry this mission forward successfully, as the USA’s founding fathers did.

ABOUT THE USA
Concurrent to the unfolding of this EU situation, I was reflecting on one of my very long-term clients, who has recently undergone hardship. The coincidence of these two situations happening at the same time points out the message of “The Grinch Stole My Country” even more clearly. He is an American citizen who acquired French nationality a while ago and has lived in France for many years. He feels completely integrated in France and on occasion, calls me to get my opinion and specific advice. About my age, with a somewhat prestigious career in the multi-national corporate world, this is the profile of someone who should not encounter any problems in either country. With his permission, I would like to relate some recent events in his life. While driving through a national park in the USA, he saw a public restroom and decided to use it. The door was locked, but there was no ‘Out of Order’ sign. Nature called (!), so he discreetly went behind the restroom building, which was not in view of the parking lot or anyone, and took care of business. Unfortunately, a policeman saw him and charged him with disorderly conduct – obscene act, which is a misdemeanor. To make a long story short, this man recently served a five-day jail sentence in the USA plus a fine as well as one year of unsupervised probation for this offense. I am totally incompetent to question anything about this court decision. Therefore my assumption is that this decision complies with current American law, and I do not dispute it. That said and as an aside, I can remember a time when it would have been inconceivable that such a facility be closed, without a backup solution; I can also remember a time when nudity was some sort of political statement in the USA. But reviewing the positive or the negative changes the USA has gone through over the last thirty years does not interest me either. I would like to stay focused on how this man feels. He is so used to living in France that he had no warning signals in his mind saying, « Be careful, this is a big deal in the USA. » In France, while it is arguably distasteful, it is nonetheless quite common to witness men urinating in the streets, including in all neighborhoods in Paris. I am not here to give a legal opinion on the appropriateness of the sentence my client received relative to the deed he committed, nor do I want to criticize France for being too lenient regarding a widespread problem. My focus is simply on this American man who left his country quite some time ago and kept in his memory what his country was like at that time. The USA has really changed a lot since Ronald Reagan became president, so much so that, for this man, it felt as if someone had, indeed, stolen his country and replaced it with another one of which he does not feel part of. All the cross-cultural professionals state that the hardest thing is to move back to your own country, because being a citizen, you never get the benefit of the doubt that foreigners will get. Further, you feel like a complete alien in your own country. Even though you grew up there, it no longer feels like ‘home’. Time and ‘water under the bridge’ combined have « stolen » your country. For this client, as well as for me, it is less traumatic to think that « the Grinch » did it rather than looking objectively at the political choices over the last twenty years or so that have led to our current respective situations.

On a different level, professionals can help ease the process of settling in another country, whether for a short stay or for life. Learning the laws, customs and daily etiquette is always necessary in order to successfully adapt and stay out of trouble. But beyond these kinds of considerations, the reality is that human beings need to feel safe, to create a ‘home’ for themselves, and a home is much more than just a domicile, a place to live. In effect, these two stories in many ways deal with this concept of feeling ‘at home’, of belonging to some place that is called ‘home’.

OFFICE CLOSED FOR SUMMER VACATION
As usual there will be no August issue. So have a nice summer.

Best regards,

QUESTION

“DOING BUSINESS AS” D.B.A. IN FRANCE?

Is it possible to do a D.B.A. (« Doing Business As ») in France?

QUESTION

HOW TO OBTAIN A CARTE DE SÉJOUR AS A SELF-EMPLOYED PERSON

I would like to set up a legal guardianship for my daughter, if anything were to happen to my husband and myself. I am a New Zealander, married to a French national (my husband was born Iranian, and has had French nationality for ten years now). Our daughter was born here, and has both NZ and French nationality. We would like her to be brought up in New Zealand by my relatives if anything happened to us. Under French law, what should we do to ensure this happens?