frencharmoire

I just don't know what to say to Americans who don't seem to understand how difficult the American government has made it to transfer money around the world post 9/11, or who don't understand the interest of European governments in discouraging asset hiding and (in some countries), protecting national property from foreign ownership, plus discouraging immigration, in particular immigration from people past working age. Every 4 years, I watch the American press report about people who say they are going to "move to Canada" if their political candidate doesn't win the presidency, with no discussion of the fact that Canada does not accept US immigrants as a general rule. People seem unaware that in some parts of Europe non-natives cannot buy property (or wil face rafts of local laws discouraging it). I wouldn't recommend telling people they are at no risk of facing financial hurdles trying to move to France, because France wants Americans.

France has its own rules, but it also has a state of emergency that has even closed what once were its open borders. The politics are not going in the direction of greater openness in France. Just the opposite. The could change direction yet again, but you'd need to keep up with the news to get a grip on that if you are planning to move to France. It's not your mother's or grandmother's France anymore.

This is from yesterday's Wall Street Journal. Yet another article about how a Marine Le Pen presidency would move toward taking France out of the eurozone and out of the EU:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/marine-l...one-1484735580

MmePerdu

"I wouldn't recommend telling people they are at no risk of facing financial hurdles trying to move to France, because France wants Americans."

I'm not sure what the message is here. Did anyone say there would be no hurdles or that France was longing for Americans? What exactly is the point being made? Maybe simply that "People seem unaware...", apparently Americans in particular.

WoinParis

Armoire, are you campaigning for Marine ?

I don't know the specific sitution for US investors in France, but OP has Italian citizenship, and I suppose the rules for Italy are the same as for Belgium.

I have a bankaccount in France, had no problem opening it. Only drawback is that since I have NO regular revenues going onto this bankaccount I could not get below zero. Now after some years I can.

Regarding taxes, I pay taxes for my residence in France, directly from my bank account (it is called a 'domiciliation' : I put money on the account and Taxes take out what they want), as EDF also does.

I declare the existence of my bank account on my belgian tax record and Belgium can probably ask France how much money I have or may even be informed of big amount on foreign back account- I am not in that situation so never bothered to check.

Open borders are not closed. Far from it. I know of sporadic checks on the highway from Belgium (Mons) to Paris which causes big traffic jams. There was (still is? ) also a check in Strasbourg on the bridge linking with Germany.

Last I went to Paris, I left the highway, took some secondary roads and don't know when I crossed the border.
When I take the Thalsy I am sometimes controlled.
When I take the A31 towards Metz there are no controls.

Closed borders ??? You lack credibility or believe too much the gross exxagerations foreign news say about France.

Please read french newspapers. I do. I don't see this kind of stuff. Or on page 35, just before the 'rubrique des chiens écrasé'.

Tulips

I haven't seen any border checks on the roads for a while - immediately after the Paris attacks, yes - but not for months. And I've used a few different roads between Belgium/Luxemburg/France the past year.

sparkchaser

You should apply to be on A Place in the Sun: https://www.aplaceinthesun.com/tv-sh...on-the-tv-show

frencharmoire

Again, I just don't know what to say to people. There seems to be no interest in dealing with actualities, in favor of making a lot of baseless assumptons. Rules for banking in Italy are peculiar to Italy. One's experience of Belgium or France is irrelevant. An attempt to alert people to the possibility of France leaving the Eurozone by sharing articles from the Wall Street Journal is discredited for reasons I cannot fathom. Severely tightened passport control at French airports and on borders shared with Italy and much of Spain are now expected by most European travelers.

I note that the original poster has stated they are alert to possibile hazards of investing in Europe, and will act accordingly. She was the only person I was interested in influencing, and I hope any lurkers who got this far in the thread will take the point to follow credible news organizations if they are contemplating investing in Europe.

StCirq

I have two accounts in the USA from which I can easily transfer money to my French bank. No problem at all. It usually takes 2 business days. I only do that when there is a large sum involved, even though my principal bank (credit union) in the USA charges me only UD$10 to do so. Otherwise, I go to the ATM, take out euros, and deposit the cash in my French bank. I had no problem opening a French bank account. I have to file the FATCA forms once a year. My French bank mails them to me. Takes about 20 minutes to fill them out and mail them. We pay our taxes foncières online. All our utilities are paid by prélèvement.

IME, French banks are one of the easiest things to deal with in this country.

kerouac

People like frencharmoire do not seem to realize that one of the greatest successes of the European Union has been to simplfy banking and reduce or eliminate fees on international operations. I remember in the first days of the euro currency, some of the banks were still scheming about taking commission on operations in other countries of the eurozone ("We used to take 3%; I guess we can reduce it to 1% and keep it 3% with non-eurozone countries."). The EU put its foot down and told the banks in all of the eurozone countries that they could not charge any additional fees on eurozone operations than what is charged for domestic operations. So I can use ATMs with no fees in any eurozone country, make free bank transfers on line and have no fees on my credit/debit card use.

bvlenci

Americans with foreign bank accounts of under $50,000 overseas are exempt from the FATCA reporting rules. If your primary residence is in the US, you shouldn't need an big bank account to pay your bills in France. I can't imagine why anyone would park large amounts of money in European banks, because interest rates are close to zero, and taxes in Europe are higher.

As others have said, you do need a bank account to pay bills. It's been like that in Europe for a long time. When I lived in the Netherlands, in the mid 80s, I had to pay bills by bank transfer. However, these days most banks (at least in Italy, and I imagine also in France) have online banking, and you can pay bills online from the US. I've never done that, but my husband has when we're visiting relatives in the US.

My pension and Social Security are deposited into a US account, and I have to transfer money to pay my Italian taxes, and to pay bills here in Italy. I've found that a direct transfer from my US bank (a credit union) is cumbersome and expensive. I always ended up having to telephone the bank for some reason, and they rarely knew what they were doing. Now I use xoom.com, which is very quick and costs a good deal less. You can't use them to pay bills directly, but I just transfer a regular amount to my Italian bank and pay my bills from there. I think XE and other services mentioned may offer direct bill paying, but it might be more economical, if you have regular bills in France, to just transfer a lump sum to the French account and pay the bills using online banking. I keep my Italian account close to the minimum level required for my needs here.

bvlenci

I think Xoom has been bought by Paypal.

WoinParis

One's experience in Belgium or france is irrelevant.

That speaks volume.
Ever heard of the European community actually represents except to say Marine wants to leave it ?

Ever checked what she would have to do to achieve it ?

When is the last time you were in Europe Armoire ? Ever traveled before Schengen, after Schengen and after the attacks ?
I did and I travel intra EUROPE on a weekly basis.
The borders are OPEN ! Like in o Pen (Marine)

Your info is just wrong outdated or sensionalist.
You are the perfect client of Foxnews.

sparkchaser

frencharmoire

I would have thought that one of the most famous things about the eurozone was that it has no banking union. The banking laws are different in each country. I will take you at your word that you live in Europe, but I haven't the faintest idea why you are posting what you are posting. Fox News? I am a Bernie Sanders supporter.

As I am typing, the Netherlands is conducting talks about tightening border security between it and France. I have read several posts recently on this message board about people expressing shock that they were caught in long passport lines in France. There are reasons for this.

Just dont know what to say. Looks like there is a group of people here who back each other up to keep their fantasies going in the face of changing times. Things might change for the better. Things might change for the worse. But things are changing. Shooting messengers for your psychological protection is -- well, immature. So putting up smiley faces to reinforce insults against someone who offered sound advice to a potential homebuyer in Europe. Immature. Or alcoholic? I've wondered about that here too. Several times.

annhig

I would have thought that one of the most famous things about the eurozone was that it has no banking union. The banking laws are different in each country>>

Not entirely true. Since the SEPA was introduced in 2012 citizens of the countries in the eurozone can transfer money from accounts in one eurozone country to another as if it were the same country. It also applies to EU countries outside the eurozone but because of currency conversions, the transfer may not be so fast.

I know this works - our german guests take advantage of this all the time to pay their accommodation costs to us. Easy and cheap:

http://ec.europa.eu/finance/payments...q/index_en.htm

MmePerdu

Thanks to all the (messenger-shooting-immature-smiley-faced-insulting-alcoholic) voices of reason above. I feel better and will simply disregard the talking armoire (always) in future. I knew it couldn't be so dire.

Tulips

Transferring money between EU countries is easy.

Opening an account in Europe as an American is not so easy these days.

You need a French bank account when you own property - we own property in France, and I know that another European bank account is not always acceptable for paying your standard bills.

On travel to France I have not seen any noticable border checks for 6 months at least. This can change when there is an incident. I have travelled to France several times by plane, train and car in this period, so do know what I'm talking about. I travelled to France by car 2 days after the Nice attack and there was no border control.

I wish the OP good luck on her house-hunting. I'm sure they can make it work, but it may be more difficult and time-consuming than they realise at this stage.

bvlenci

In Europe, in general, online payments (or checks) are guaranteed. If you overdraw your account, the bank honors the transaction and gets the money (with interest) back from you. For this reason, European banks are a bit picky about their clients. You have to prove you have some sort of steady income and stable address. If you are not a resident of France, there is a sort of non-resident account offered by some banks. (This is also true in Italy.) If you have some sort of visa (even a temporary one) that allows you to reside in France, you can open a regular account.

There is still the problem of the FATCA reporting, but, as I said above, that shouldn't be an issue unless the account balance is over $50,000, which is the level at which the US requires reporting.

By the way, I've seen this FATCA described as an imposition of the heavy-handed USA, but, in fact, it's a reciprocal agreement, where the countries who have agreed to impose this reporting on their banks get equivalent reports of the US accounts of their citizens. All in the name of collecting taxes, of course.

Tulips

You're right as far as FATCA is concerned, bvlenci. European countries have something similar, the Common Reporting Standard, whereby a bank will inform the other country's authorities if their citizens hold an account with them.

But I'm not a US citizen and still have to fill out a form for the US tax authorities. If I buy US securities then these are taxed by the US if I die. There's a minimum amount of holdings; if it's under 60.000 USD, you are not taxed. You still have to fill out the form, though. So say I bought a large share in facebook or Google 10 years ago, which sadly I did not, the IRS would claim inheritance tax on this.

Not all Europeans are taxed on their US investments, only those that do not have a tax treaty with the US regarding this. IE Belgium.

Cathinjoetown

Almost all this advice is anecdotal and valid only at the time it happened to the person posting. In my case, we were fiscal residents of France so my experiences aren't necessarily relevant to the OP who is thinking about buying a holiday home.

Some good things, for example, are that Social Security payments and pensions, if direct deposited, are not subject to any charges from the in-coming bank. We also found the SS and private pension direct deposits to give a very good exchange rate. But we were living there full time so wanted access to a large portion of our income.

We kept a US savings and checking account current, as well as an investment account, sometimes doing ATM withdrawals in the same way anyone would on vacation. For the U.S. accounts we had to have U.S. addresses, we used my brother's address. The large transfers for buying and selling our house were fairly easy, we shopped around and locked in an exchange rate we felt was as favorable as it was going to be, a semi-educated crap shoot.

It would be virtually impossible to be a fiscal resident without a French bank account. For someone owning a holiday home, they could use a property management firm or similar but it's easy enough to manage yourself, particularly in the OP's case with husband being fluent in French.

isplumm1

Hi

We own a gite about 20 miles north of Saumur in the Loire Valley ... we live in the UK ...

We find the Loire Valley has a lot to offer - winter can be cold - summer is normally very warm - so if I was looking for buy, I would be looking for somewhere south of Le Mans, maybe within 20-30 miles of Saumur ... it is very easy to get here from the northern French ports or fly into Paris ...

I would just make sure that where ever you buy is within 30 minutes of a toll road - roads are fine, but it can take a while to drive on the non-toll roads.

It is a buyers market at the moment, as a lot of Brits are either looking to move back to the UK or somewhere like Portugal.

Mark