December 2023
“PEOPLE ARE STRANGE”
People are strange
When you’re a stranger
Faces look ugly
When you’re alone
Women seem wicked
When you’re unwanted
Streets are uneven
When you’re down
When you’re strange
Faces come out of the rain
When you’re strange
No one remembers your name
When you’re strange
When you’re strange
When you’re strange
People are strange
When you’re a stranger
Faces look ugly
When you’re alone
Women seem wicked
When you’re unwanted
Streets are uneven
When you’re down
When you’re strange
Faces come out of the rain
When you’re strange
No one remembers your name
When you’re strange
When you’re strange
When you’re strange
All right, yeah
When you’re strange
Faces come out of the rain
When you’re strange
No one remembers your name
When you’re strange
When you’re strange
When you’re strange
Christmas is around the corner and my office will be open for another two weeks or so before closing for the holidays.
I would like to wish you all happy holidays. We can hope that 2024 will bring what we wish for. The COVID crisis was supposed to be over but I still know of people getting infected. I hope we all can find a way to sincerely exchange best wishes with each other. There will always be worries and looming dangers here and there. With such a crucial election due late next year, we can expect to go through a wide range of emotions. That being said, I wish you all
A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR
WIKIPEDIA
“People Are Strange” is a song by the American rock band the Doors. It appears on the band’s second studio album, Strange Days, released in September 1967. The song was written by the Doors’ vocalist Jim Morrison and guitarist Robby Krieger, although all of the band are credited on the sleeve notes.
I know this should not be the title of a Christmas column. At the same time, I could not find much to rejoice in, looking forward to the various celebrations at the end of the year. It is easy to be caught up in everything that is bleak right now, and the media is good at dramatizing what is happening. My second choice was “Strange Days” by the same band.
For a very long time, the stranger was the foreigner, coming from “far away”. Today the stranger is the person who is different, who votes differently… I read the lyrics a couple of times with that focus in mind and they work well.
SANS PAPIERS – ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT – ASYLUM SEEKER
Over the last few months I have undertaken a project where I talk about the other side of immigration. This month’s column is the last issue. I would like to thank everyone who has helped me put it together and enabled me to carry it out for all these months. I have not decided whether I will do anything like this in 2024. Thanks also to those of my readers who have expressed their support, interest, and appreciation.
Illegal immigration is probably one of the top ten most hotly debated topics in many Western countries. A lot of people feel that it should not even be a topic, that the presence of such migrants is illegal and they should be deported. But as it happens, at least in France, there are two different types of situations to consider.
Several provisions in French law give some undocumented aliens the right to a legal stay in France. Such legislation has existed since 1997. Both conservative and liberal administrations have retained this legislation, making only small changes every couple of years or so. The legislation identifies family and employment conditions that confer this right. All prefectures have identified a way for qualified people to submit applications so the administration can review their merits. Thus it is wrong to consider them as criminals who should be deported, since the law allows them to secure a legal stay in France.
Some immigrants cannot fulfill the conditions that give them the right to stay in France. Normally, these people who should be deported. But in reality, they often cannot be sent back “home” because their country of citizenship refuses to receive them. Some countries of origin have a policy of refusing all returning citizens because they are just guilty of staying illegally in France.
Consequently, the apparently common-sense statement that “since they are in the country illegally, they should be deported back to their own country” does not reflect the reality because on many occasions the laws or diplomatic relationships do not allow this to happen.
The French parliament is working on a project to make it easier for undocumented aliens to obtain legal status by loosening the requirements, while at the same time imposing more severe punishment for those undocumented aliens caught by the police. This might seem crazy, as it appears to reward and punish the same people. But that would be incorrect. Once the law sets out the requirements, a foreigner complying with them can exercise that right – this is law school 101. A foreigner who does not comply has a different status and therefore a different outcome. Drunk driving laws, the drinking age, and voting rights – all those are about whether you comply with certain requirements. The very fact that French legislation defines, sometimes in great detail, what it takes to obtain legal status makes any comparison with the situation in the USA irrelevant.
For 30 years, I have assisted people wishing to stay in France legally. I do not really care about how they reached France or what motivated them to leave their country. They are in France and they want to exercise whatever rights they have, so my first job is to make sure they qualify for residency according to the law and how the prefecture applies those laws. Of course, the prefecture devotes as little staff as possible to working on this, so the delays are currently four to five months just to get an appointment, or often scheduled over a year in the case of the Paris prefecture, for my current cases.
My focal point is: now that they are here, do they have the right to stay? And if not, then how can they organize their life so they can stay? This means looking at their future starting with their present situation. The key difference is what support they have as soon as they arrive. It makes a world of difference if they have a place to stay and a family member to take care of them. Then it will take a relatively short time to get settled, possibly look for work, and so on. At the other extreme are people who end up on the street, where they meet other homeless refugees. It can take weeks or months to find out how to contact the French administration and start a refugee procedure. The first thing they need to even start the procedure is a cellular phone and an email address.
From there, it will take much more time to find ways to get food, obtain a place to stay, and, much later, look for work. The refugee procedure in France is long, despite political speeches promising to speed it up. The government hopes that if the procedure can be reduced to a few months, applicants will not be able to put down roots in France and therefore will be easier to deport. Since 2017, the official policy has been to limit it to a maximum of six months. But even though it is done by civil servants obeying the government, the time required for due process combined with the volume of cases makes this limit unrealistic. As of 2021, the official estimate for the complete procedure from first request to appeal was 18 months. The cases I have followed have taken closer to two years, sometimes longer. This is important because the regularization procedure starts with a documented presence of three years. Clearly the government is failing regarding the refugee procedure. Now the French parliament is reviewing new legislation that would facilitate regularization after three years.
The Filipina woman I interviewed for this month’s column came to France in early 2018 with a tourist visa and had been invited by a close relative. Hence, she was welcomed right away and taken in charge. Her first job was supposed to be as a nanny, but she was also the cleaning lady and much more. She ended up staying there three years. She lived in the employer’s maid’s room which was located in the same building as the employer’s apartment, and thus was available 24/7. Today she has her own place and a full-time job as a cleaning lady, plus a smaller job on the side. As she was determined to have a high chance of success at being regularized, she managed to get both employers to declare her and so she fully complies with the requirement of being paid at least French minimum wage (net taxable income of about 1,333 euros per month). Since she has been in France for more than five years, all she needs is to provide is eight pay slips within the last 12 months. Another person with a less secure set-up might have tried to regularize after three years in France – the requirement for this is 24 pay slips, making a successful application a lot more challenging. The main difficulty for immigrants without papers is to find work with employers who are willing to declare them and pay all related taxes. Unless immigrants in this situation can find such employers, the procedure after three years or even five has a 100% chance of failing.
Here is her statement:
“I was already in nursing school when I got married. Soon after came our first child. At about the same time, my husband lost his job. Our financial situation was going to worsen very quickly. He told me about his cousin being a nanny in Paris, financially supporting her entire family. He had already talked to her about me. So they had pretty much prepared for my trip there and found me a place to earn money like she does, which ended up being false! I was pressured by everybody, especially his family. So I gave in. I asked for a one-month tourist visa at the French consulate with the documents she sent me. I got it quickly. It was not a relief, it ended up being the lesser of two evils. It was a very long flight and on top of that I waited hours at that airport for the connecting flight to Paris.
“She was waiting for me at the airport and recognized me. She had a maid’s room and there was enough room for a mattress on the floor. Her employer owned it and did not know about me coming. So I needed to be careful and not be seen, so I always used the back staircase. Within months, she found me a job as a nanny being paid cash, but [in] reality it was also working as a cleaning lady. She gave me a crash course on how cleaning was done with French products, how to use the vacuum cleaner, and especially those fancy irons that make a lot of steam. I moved into a place as small as a walk-in closet, with a bed and a sink, owned by the employer. I did manage to stay there for over three years which was how long as I had this job and was undeclared.
“One thing led to another, I got good at public transportation, went to church, and got to know other Filipinas this way. My husband’s cousin has always been supportive and helpful. She regularly checked my paperwork to get the regularization as I was not staying with her anymore. There was always the excruciating pain of missing my son; I admit I missed him more than I missed my husband. Feeling safe at home made me feel safe traveling all over the place. I was not as scared of the police, which was probably reckless on my part looking back.
“About two years ago, I got a good job, a full-time position as a cleaning lady. My employer has a very large apartment and there are four children in the family. So there is a real need for a complete daily cleaning of the place. I am declared for the entire amount of my salary. I rent my own maid’s room, I pay the rent in cash and I do not have a lease or rent receipt. No utilities, nothing is in my name. Last March, I celebrated my five-year anniversary in France, and last September I had my two years of pay slips. The prefecture demands proof of address, which I cannot have. I truly thought of asking my husband’s cousin, who was my dear and sweet hostess at the beginning of my stay, but she moved to the countryside so far from Paris that it was impossible to use her address.
“This situation breaks my heart and some nights I cry for hours. I go through despair and anger that I can hardly control. I have not found the solution yet. Even though my husband’s cousin lives far away, she is trying to help me once more. We are now looking for someone who is willing to give me a complete affidavit of lodging that is solid and does not cost too much. On good days, I dream of that day, sitting in the waiting room of the prefecture waiting for my number to be called so that I can give them the file I have cherished all those years. I see myself beaming, walking out of there with a document from them telling me to wait until the carte de séjour is ready. Compared to the almost six years during which I have been trying to get legal, that wait, no matter how long it is, will feel like a breeze. In the middle of all this, I blame myself for being weak and crying about my situation. I thank God for giving me a good stable job, a decent place to live where I feel safe, and for being able to contribute enough to my family.”
In 2006, President George W. Bush signed the Secure Fence Act, authorizing 700 miles of double-layered, reinforced fencing. When he left office, more than 500 miles had been completed. I wrote about this issue under the title “How deep is your love? – How tall is the wall?” This fence could be considered an allegory showing that pressure to enter Western countries – in this instance, the USA – is always far greater than the fear of any measures a country takes to block people from coming. Back then, that was the way I illustrated how wrongly the endless debate about foreigners wanting to enter the USA at all costs was being addressed. I identified two different types of migration: economic and humanitarian.
Once one looks at the reality of the world, just the difference in salary offered for the same job throughout the world is a clear explanation for the influx of people into Western countries. Since I have been focusing on Filipino migrants, let us look at the Philippines, whose standard of living is far from being the world’s worst. The average Filipino minimum wage is PHP 12,398 a month, or EUR 210.77. That alone explains a lot why so many Filipinos want to live and work in a country where they can earn that much in a few days. Most of these people prepare for their journey, know who will take care of them when they arrive, and often have a tourist visa sponsored by a relative. That is what is called economic migration, which is similar to what the USA experienced in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The solution is to do what South Korea did, building an economy that offers enough wealth that there is no more incentive to be a cleaning lady in Paris than to be a nurse or middle school teacher in the home country.
In some countries, conditions are so bad that many people end up believing life there is not worth living. The reasons and circumstances that can lead to this belief are incredibly diverse. That is why I am somewhat skeptical about the international definition of refugees asking for asylum. I understand and respect the fact that the drafters of the Geneva Convention had to come up with a definition. At the time, they were describing people fleeing the USSR and its allies in Europe. But a growing number of professionals in this field say that this definition is increasingly outdated. My analysis involves a basic observation: if a person leaves home even though there is a more than a 50% chance of dying during the journey, this indicates that the person considers life at home to be worthless. For example, people in war zones often face nearly certain death if they remain, and thus fleeing is less dangerous.
At the entrance to my office on the left wall is a painting of a flying dove. It was given to me by a Moroccan woman who crossed the Spanish and French borders hidden in the back of a smuggler’s truck. Hosted by a distant relative, she spent several years doing almost nothing, seldom leaving the house. Once she decided to seek legal status in France, she met with me several times at a church in Belleville. I got involved because I knew her host, whose family wanted her to move out. I found her a position as a nanny that came with lodging. That changed her life, and shortly thereafter she offered me a magnific gift, this painting. It expresses the freedom felt, the revival she was going through, and her strong desire to live her life. I choose to close this topic with a tangible message of hope, a hope shared by those who manage to get through these trials and dangers all immigrants share. I have attached a picture of this painting to this issue.
OFFICE CLOSED FOR CHRISTMAS
The office will close for three weeks over the Christmas holidays, starting on Friday, December 15th in the evening and reopening on the morning of 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. Of course, Sarah or I will honor prefecture meetings already scheduled, as well as a couple of other engagements. I will be away from Paris between Christmas and New Year’s.
Reminder: there is no January issue.
Best regards,
QUESTION
EMPLOYER BULLYING AND EMPLOYEE SICK LEAVE
I started working at a firm three years ago. I lived in Italy for nine years and got my master’s there in 2011 before I got a work visa for France. I received the job offer with a relocation package, which included my visa, the apartment, opening the bank account, subscribing to all needed insurance policies, etc.
I have been running the Paris office by myself. Indeed, my boss works in the USA and was until recently on sick leave for about one year. Last June I went on a weeklong sick leave myself as I was exhausted. At that time, I demanded more staff and a bigger budget.
I came back full of energy. All I had asked for had been approved. A month later, my paycheck was reduced as they had made mistakes calculating the social charges. No new employees were taken on nor was there an increase in my budget. Instead, they increased the objectives. I am now constantly exhausted and working way too much. I immediately confronted my boss about all this but I got nothing. I want out of this job.
This said, I want to do it the right way. I want to propose a solution that works for both of us. My doctor has been pushing me to take another sick leave and this time for a longer period. The team has just started a new project so I do not feel good about leaving. I am very scared of going on sick leave. All my French friends tell me to do it. I am having some serious second thoughts even though I know I need it. I need help to understand a few scenarios:
– medical leave and how that would affect my visa, and whether it is possible to do a planned sick leave starting in September
– negotiating a rupture conventionnelle and how that would affect my visa
– whether there is any other type of negotiation that would be better.I trust my boss to help me with the situation and find the right solution for everybody. I care about the work and the team. I know that I must take care of myself. My boss is talking about recruiting my replacement and is forcing me to tell the team that I am leaving. I have not even given my formal resignation! If I follow the doctor’s advice, when do I send the “avis d’arrêt de travail,” and when do I notify my team? Should I write to the people involved? Is it possible to negotiate that leave at the end of the year?
ANSWER
You are struggling with difficulty in adapting to the French way of doing things. In the USA, the employer gives at best a few days of paid sick leave. It is in the employee’s best interest to use an absolute minimum of sick days just in case they are needed later. Also, culturally, the American work ethic is such that a medical condition must be really bad to call in sick, as the employer relies on the employee, who cannot disappoint the boss.
The French rules are different. If you adapt fast enough, you will secure both your financial security and your immigration status. But if you continue to operate with American values and guidelines, as you have done so far, the outcome will be bad. You will have no income and you will not be able to renew your immigration status.
Before addressing the sick leave issue, I would like to look at your key problem: securing your immigration status. When it comes time to renew it, either you have a job with the existing employer or a new one, or you are being compensated by Pôle Emploi, the French unemployment agency, if you were not able to stay in your current job and have not found a new job yet.
In France, you should only quit your job to get a new one, and the new labor contract should already have been signed. When you cannot stand a job anymore, you discretely look for a new one. As you will probably be less attentive and committed to your job, your performance may be of lower quality, and the atmosphere on the job might worsen. But do not quit! It is time-consuming and difficult to dismiss an employee, so you should be able to get a new job before you are fired. This should be your strategy. However, being fired means being guaranteed unemployment payments, and this carries zero stigma. So in many ways, it is an easy decision to make, as there is hardly any risk associated with it. So you do not need to fight being made redundant.
The Pôle Emploi guidelines are clear: if an employee is dismissed, regardless of the procedure used, unemployment payments are guaranteed, usually for over a year. If the employee quits, however, it is next to impossible to get unemployment pay. That is why French employees never quit without having their next job lined up.
Three situations can exist at the time of an employee carte de séjour renewal:
1 – If the employee has the same job, the documents required are an attestation of presence in the job, issued by the employer, and copies of the last three pay slips.
2 – If the foreigner is unemployed, the file needs to contain three documents from the last employer: a statement for Pôle Emploi, a receipt of final payment, and a statement and work certificate (l’attestation Pôle Emploi, le solde de tout compte, l’attestation de travail). In addition, it should include an initial statement from Pôle Emploi detailing the amount to be received and the duration of this payment.
3 – If the foreigner has a new job, the documents are the three mentioned above (l’attestation Pôle Emploi, le solde de tout compte, l’attestation de travail) plus the new employer’s attestation of presence in the job, copies of the last three pay slips, and work authorizations provided by the employer (l’autorisation de travail).
As you can see from this, the prefecture can handle a file more easily when the applicant is unemployed rather than when they hold a new job.
Now that you know this, it should be obvious that quitting is not an option, as it would be too risky. You are left with two choices: either get a new job or be dismissed one way or another.
Getting a new job is something you can do without my help. So the most urgent issue for you is how to handle the situation in your current job. The most obvious priority is your health. Listen to the doctor, who believes you need to be on sick leave for whatever duration he prescribes. Between the Assurance Maladie regulations and your mutuelle, you should receive about the same amount as your salary while you are on sick leave.
After you go back to work, I imagine you will try to do your best to be the good employee you want to be. I assume the work conditions will not change and you will not get the support you need, so your doctor at some point will put you on sick leave again. As long as you strictly comply with what the doctor orders, your boss will stop pushing you to resign and will propose that you two part ways. In other words, your employer will get fed up with your being off the job and will seek to dismiss you. The only way the employer can do this, given how strictly the dismissal procedure is regulated, is la rupture conventionnelle – an agreement you both sign acknowledging that prolonging your employment is no longer possible and you agree to be dismissed without cause. The key thing is that the employee cannot initiate this procedure; if you try, the employer’s obvious response will be that if you are not happy, you can quit. Since your employer has already pushed you to quit for a while, their position is unlikely to change; they will try to wear you down until your mental condition is such that you quit regardless of the awful consequences for you.
But as long as you are a good employee when you are not on sick leave, and you discuss the job and the missions you are given, you should be able to wear them down instead, so that eventually their best solution is to let you go.
My last comment: the law is strict about sick leave. Such a leave must mention the duration as well as the hours you must be home so that the employer can come to check on you or CPAM can send a doctor to make sure you are complying with the guidelines. But since you are not working for your current employer, you can take advantage of the rest of the time to look for another job. As long as you are not going to interviews in person, you should be fine.
To conclude this complex discussion, I would like to point out the following:
I – In France, there is no stigma to being dismissed or receiving unemployment.
II – You jeopardize your chances of finding another job in your profession if you depart from the norms.
III – Because dismissal in France is heavily regulated, your former employer cannot reveal the grounds for dismissal or negative details of your work. This does not prevent blacklisting but makes it a lot more difficult.
IV – French doctors are your allies in this situation; you can trust them.
V – The prefecture wants you either employed or unemployed to receive the related payments.
As I said at the beginning, your biggest challenge is to adapt to the French way of doing things.
QUESTION
WHY ARE FRENCH COMPANY TAXES SO HIGH?
I have been sharing my struggles as a small company owner on several Facebook forums. I am paying an insane amount of tax this year, even though my SASU company is making a very small amount of money. My accountant is fine with my paying twice in taxes the amount I am paying myself. They explain that it is the sum of the VAT, the company’s income tax, the social charges, my income tax, and the provisional payment for next year! This is crazy to start with and, on top of it, it still does not add up when I do my calculations. I believe that the VAT and the professional expenses must be deducted. I now distrust my accountants. Their calculation cannot be correct, and I don’t feel any motivation to keep going. All the money I make goes to pay taxes and expenses. I feel like a slave at this point. I am writing to you so you can explain why I find myself in this situation. Is profession libérale the same as auto-entreprise? I changed because my auto-entreprise did not allow me to deduct anything. I work with several contractors, and spend more than 50% of my income paying them. This is the reason why I opened up my SASU as I was told that it was the only solution. Maybe the truth is that there are other, better statuses.
ANSWER
Your question demands a great deal of explanation on many levels. I would like to answer initially with a few words and then get into the details.
The French system strictly separates the fiscal side, which covers taxes (the equivalent of the IRS in the USA) from the social side, which funds social benefits, with URSSAF as the collection agency for that.
1 – French income taxation, on average, is similar to that in the USA. But French social charges are high, far exceeding the amount of income tax owed.
2 – French businesses, incorporated or not – except those with micro status – pay income tax on profit, i.e., sales minus professional expenses. A good accountant helps you maximize the personal costs that can be defined as professional expenses while minimizing the pure business expenses. As the social charges are also calculated on the profit, it is even more critical to keep the taxable profit as low as possible.
3 – The reasons for operating a limited liability corporation in France can be either to benefit from the limited liability or to be able to be personally paid a much lower amount than what the business is making and therefore leave some money in the corporation. You should be in the latter situation.
4 – Profession libérale is one of three ways one can be self-employed in France. Auto-entrepreneur is one type of fiscal status defining how you pay your social charges to URSSAF.
A French corporation is legally a personne morale, or juridical person, as opposed to a personne physique, or human person.
American law makes a somewhat weaker distinction between the individuals who are the business owners and the businesses themselves. The basic rule worldwide is that assets, including money held by the corporation, cannot be taken out for personal use, as this is embezzlement.
In the 17th century, during the reign of Louis XIV, France faced the issue of how to structure the world of business. Craftsmanship had been organized through guilds since around the year 900. Guilds were made up of small businesses, usually just a family and a few apprentices. Colbert, the prime minister, came up with the legal concepts of personne physique and personne morale, defining the latter as an entity composed of two or more people that has its own existence, separate from the people who created it. Using that concept, it was possible to regulate corporations, non-profits, unions, associations, and foundations.
The personne morale is modeled on the human person in that it has:
1) – A birth date, declared to the authorities as soon as possible after its “birth” (i.e., when the bylaws were signed).
2) – A given name, which is protected and cannot be easily changed.
3) – An address, which must be anchored somewhere with a postal address mirroring the proof of address for the individuals
4) – An end of life, originally after 99 years, as in those days it was assumed that a human person never lived to be 100.
Any professional who helps create and register a corporation should explain to the client that under the French definition, the corporation will be its own legal person and the business owner will always act in two capacities – as a private individual with their own assets and debts, and as the director of a corporation with its own separate assets and debts.
Under the accountant’s strict supervision, several personal expenses can become partially or completely business expenses. Your accountant should have worked with you so you document all expenses that can be claimed by the corporation. Itemizing those expenses, in accordance with the ratio that tax law allows, would give you a much better understanding of this aspect of accounting. If nothing else, you would understand what fits in the definition of business expense and you might feel less burdened by the costs of operating a business, as well as being happy to see how lower your personal expenses are.
Much of the business expense total is what is called taxes in the USA. In France, taxes are exclusively what is paid to the tax office. They do not include social charges, which are very roughly equivalent to Social Security in the USA and are paid to URSSAF.
French social charges are high, about 40% of the manager’s gross compensation. The goal is to minimize the amount you receive as compensation for the work you do. This is offset by maximizing the personal expenses that can become business expenses.
I would like to expand on the specifics of the SASU:
1 – A Société Anonyme Simplifiée Unipersonnelle is a one-person commercial corporation. Even though you are alone, there are two sets of accounts, two income tax calculations, and hence two payments. Your activity needs to make enough sales to make this form of business worth it – at least 100,000 euros, generally, though there may be exceptions. Corporate income taxation is low compared to personal compensation.
2 – With a SASU you are paid as an employee, which means two things:
– Working as an employee is the most expensive way to be paid because of how social charges are calculated. Being self-employed instead would give you a cheaper way of calculating social charges. You should keep that in mind.
– An employee salary must comply with the labor contract and is difficult to change, including lowering the amount of the salary.
3 – For small and mid-size consulting activities, profession libérale is often the best status. In your case, it would have two definitive advantages:
– There is only one set of accounts, as there is no corporation.
– Although slightly fewer expenses are accepted, your social charges and income tax are calculated with lower ratios. Furthermore, there is no obligation to hire an accountant, although it is advisable.
In other words, creating and running a SASU is lucrative for accountants, who have a captive clientele. It is almost impossible for an individual to run a SASU without a qualified CPA (expert-comptable). The French pay slip alone is a nightmare to issue.
A few more definitions may be useful:
Auto-entrepreneur is a sub-sub-sub fiscal status that just defines how you pay your social charges to URSSAF. The other choice is classic status.
There are three legal/fiscal ways to be an independent:
a) Profession libérale, or consultant to keep it simple. The income tax type is BNC, for Bénéfices Non Commerciaux.
b) Artisan, or craftsperson. The income tax type is BIC (Bénéfices Industriels et Commerciaux).
c) Commerçant, or merchant. The income tax type is again BIC.
The legal and fiscal status of your activity was, profession libérale – BNC.
In addition, there are three ways to calculate income tax as an independent:
a) Micro means no accounts are needed and no TVA is owed. The difference between gross and net is a standard deduction, with 66% of the amount of sales being the taxable profit.
b) Réel simplifié, in which you must keep accounts, you can itemize your professional expenses, you must pay TVA, and the social charges must be paid with the classic procedure.
c) Réel normal, which is the same as the previous but with more accounting obligations.
Note that micro BNC makes it possible to choose auto-entrepreneur when it comes to paying URSSAF charges, so you declare and pay at the same time.
DISCLAIMER
Please forward this message to all those who would be interested in its contents. The information contained in this newsletter is intended only as general information. I strongly urge readers to seek professional guidance concerning the legal and tax matters mentioned. This newsletter is intended as a general guide and is not to be taken as professional advice.