Earning Money from Your French Home
Jo Taylor
Earning Money From Your French Home is essential reading for anyone planning to invest in property in France and the most up-to-date source of practical information available. It is packed with vital information and tips on running property-related businesses, including bed & breakfast (chambres d’hôte), gîtes, long-term letting (including buy-to-let), leaseback and running a business from home. Earning Money From Your French Home is the most comprehensive book available for property owners wishing to profit from their home in France and contains priceless tips from other foreigners who already earn an income from their French homes.
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Other guides for France
Extracts from the book…
Ways of Earning Money
There are essentially three ways of earning money from a property (in France or elsewhere), detailed below.
Capital Growth
The property is purchased as an investment, as you believe that you will make more money by tying up capital in a property and re-selling it in a number of years’ time than by saving or investing it elsewhere. In recent years, many people have invested in property to provide an income in their retirement. For information about buying purely for investment, see page 21. You may want to earn an income from your investment property by letting it long term. Chapter 4 deals with long-term letting.
Holiday Home
If you want a holiday home in France, but cannot afford for it simply to be left empty when you aren’t using it (i.e. for most of the year), you could let it as self-catering accommodation to earn income to pay the mortgage or, if you’re fortunate enough to have been able to buy it outright, to cover the running costs and/or provide ‘pocket money’. Chapter 2 deals with letting property as self-catering holiday accommodation.
Business Premises
If you want to live permanently in France, but cannot or don’t want to get a job there and therefore must make money from your principal home, you may make your home your business premises, by starting a business and operating as self-employed (see Chapter 5), by using spare bedrooms for bed and breakfast (B&B) accommodation (see Chapter 3), or by converting a building or two to self-catering accommodation (see Chapter 2) in order to pay the mortgage, cover running costs, etc.
Accountants
French accountants (experts comptable) vary greatly in their expertise, helpfulness and cost. Like notaires, they tend to view their profession as one designed to enforce the letter of the law, rather than to assist their clients.
For example, there are very few (if any) accountants in private practice who do ‘write-up’ work for clients (i.e. where the client puts all his receipts and invoices in a shoebox and takes them to the accountant every fortnight or so for the accountant to transcribe into the relevant books). In France, you risk being charged by the invoice if you ask your accountant to do this sort of bookkeeping work for you!
You shouldn’t expect much in the way of tax saving or tax planning assistance from an expert comptable. This is due, in part, to the fact that changes are often made to the current year’s tax law as late as October or November in the year, which makes advance tax planning almost impossible. Bear in mind also that, if your accountant makes a mistake, e.g. in calculating your tax, you must pay the correct amount and he’s under no obligation to compensate you for his error.
Many small businessmen complain bitterly about how expensive their accountants are, and especially how much they charge for miscellaneous tasks, such as determining which account an invoice should be charged to. (The standard joke is that they charge €60 to tell you which account a €20 invoice should go to – and you must still book the entry yourself!) The chances are an accountant won’t save you money on a day-to-day basis, but they can save you hassle with the tax authorities – if only by having the forms correctly filled out. It can also be an advantage to have accountant prepared financial statements if you must obtain a bank loan or credit of any kind.
French accountants are an excellent source of information on the technicalities of the law, especially tax and accounting law. They may be more knowledgeable than many lawyers when it comes to knowing the various forms of business that are possible, and can advise you about the various social security regimes.
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PRICE: £11.95
PUBLICATION: December 2005
EDITION: 1st
PAGES: 320
BINDING: paperback
SIZE: A5 (210mm x 148mm)
COLOUR PHOTOS: 20
