cheska15

kerounac. The tax treaties only apply to income tax.
Doesn't France have the wealth tax where you have to pay tax on your world wide assets? If France doesn't have the wealth tax maybe I will have to move there instead of Italy which does have the wealth tax.

StCirq

https://www.french-property.com/guid...alth-tax/rate/

kerouac

New president and new government next week. The wealth tax rates (if it still exists) will be changing again.

If Macron is elected as expected, he only plans to impose wealth tax on property and not investments.

scrb11

That link is interesting, though they say 5-year exemption for residents and no foreign assets for non-residents other than "fixed property assets."

So if you have properties in the US and France and retirement savings and other savings, it could be well into 5-figures a year?

Is this wealth tax from what Hollande had run on? Supposedly there was a migration of high net-worth people from France as a result?


I knew several EU countries offered retirement visas for those who could demonstrate they had means to support themselves. But it also is a way to shore up their treasuries apparently.

Cathinjoetown

An interesting service in France, the tax people, equivalent of IRS, will take an appointment to go over your forms with you and help you fill them out. We did that the first year we lived there, then filled them out online. Based on info in this thread, doing them ourselves may not have been such a good idea!

About the wealth tax, I remember bringing this up at the trésorie. and we were asked if we had extensive real property outside France. I said no only IRAs, some investments and a recent inheritance. At that time, any inherited funds weren't taxable in the first few years of residence. Madame, who had the onerous task of dealing with ex-pats, didn't ask for details. I'm guessing she took one look at us and realized we weren't in the big leagues.

You are required to list all bank accounts you hold worldwide, I assume partly due to money-laundering concerns and possibly for audits should they choose to run one.

oforparis

Two years has gone by since I posted the original question- are we crazy to move to Paris for a year? Well, thanks to much of the information from Fodorites included in the original post, we have made our dream a reality. We retired in January, rented out our house, sent too much stuff to storage and moved to Paris four months ago. We love it!! Thank you all who gave encouragement and helpful tips and for helping me plan many years of previous vacations.

Belinda

suze

Two success stories!! What fantastic posts to read. Thank you both. And outstandingly well done. Inspiring.

scrb11

What kind of visa did you guys get?

Renting or owning?

Sassafrass

KTtravel

When you have a chance, would you mind posting how you went about this as the posts here make it seem like quite a difficult process. Congratulations and enjoy your year in Paris!

walkinaround

Yes, I agree that some here make it out to be like a mission to mars and specialise in pointing out all the reasons why it can't be done by people other than them.

Sarastro

Excellent Oforparis. We should set a date aside and have another meet-and-greet.

I am not so sure I agree completely with Belinda. No one has written that moving to Paris can't be done, there is plenty of evidence already posted within this thread that it can, but you must really want to do it.

There are a lot of steps and you start by contacting your nearest French consulate or embassy.

cheska15

Alec

I hope it won't be as arduous as that for us Brits who are currently EU citizens. Nobody knows for sure what is going to happen post Brexit (if it ever happens). If we leave with a deal, we are likely to have an implementation period of just over a year during which the current rules will continue to apply (i.e. we can stay in France as long as we like without a visa, but will have to register first as residents free of charge). If we leave with no deal, and following the implementation period with a deal, we are likely to be regarded as third country nationals and similar requirements as US and Australian citizens will apply, unless we come to an agreement with EU over concessions. As many EU citizens currently live in UK, and many will continue to want to move to UK, it's in the interest of both sides to come to a mutually-beneficial immigration arrangement.

Sarastro

After 6 months, you generally are required to report to the OFII (office français de l'immigration et de l'intégration) for an interview and the medical which is basically a chest Xray. The interview generally consists of resubmitting the same paperwork you previously gave to the consulate (US citizens must be present for their original consulate interview in the US).

You can travel anywhere in the Schengen zone during this period but you will need to return to your base address or city for OFII processing. After 6 months, you enter under the jurisdiction of the local Préfecture and it is here where your titre de séjour is re-issued each year.

There has been some changes or modifications to the basic procedure for Americans to allow for 6 month, study visas. I believe that Australians have always had this option.

Anyone interested in applying for a long stay visa should really contact their nearest consulate for up to date information.

cheska15

Sarastro yes people should contact their nearest consulate for updated and relevant information and it is important to remember that visas are granted on a case by case basis. Even the consulate gives different information. I have an email stating that we will not have to do a medical, as Australia is considered a safe country, and we don’t enforce that French Nationals coming to Australia have to undergo a medical. However, that is not the case and we will probably have to go through that process.

Our view is prepare for anything and everything upon upon arrival and deal with what comes up. There is supposed to be a streamlined approach to Aussies getting long stay visitor visas, but. I don’t think France has caught onto this yet.

kerouac

The whole world has become rather ridiculous about some of the requirements.

I know that in France many extra things are often required from totally (dare I say?) reputable countries simply to avoid accusations of discrimination from the other countries.

oforparis

As mentioned, I think the procedures change frequently and it seems to be a bit different depending where you apply. We applied for a one year visa, with the option to renew in France (at least I think that is what we have, we are going to confirm this shortly).

I will illustrate some frustrations- very minor, but it is not a cakewalk to deal with the bureaucracy in either the US or France.
We had similar requirements in San Francisco as Cheska 15, although we only had to provide proof of accommodation in France for 3 months. We did not need proof of police clearance. The funny thing about our Dec 2018 visa appointment in SF- it had just changed from the consulate to VSF Global. We went for our appointment on the 90th day before we were to travel to give plenty of time in case of a glitch. They went through all of our paperwork and then determined that we were a day too early, we had to be 'within' 90 days, not on the 90th day! We had to make another appointment (and pay for it) for the following week. Jeez.

When we received our passports back with the visa, there was a tiny slip of paper included that told us to go to the OFii office within 3 months of our arrival. We arrived in Paris and tried to figure out where the OFii office was, there seemed to be more than one location. We were at a loss how to reach them and decided to just go to one of the two offices we found to ask what to do. When we got to the office, there were no other people there- that seemed very odd to us. We were allowed in and spoke to a very nice woman who spoke to us in very rapid French, which we understood about two words ( we had been taking French lessons since we decided to move, we are not remotely fluent and probably never will be), she then highlighted a website on the paper she gave us. So, from the time we received our visa in January until the time we arrived in April, the OFii requirement was automated, all we had to do was log on to the website!

We paid our fee online and waited to be contacted for the medical appointment. Three months passed. We finally received an email with our appointment date and with instructions to go to one of the suburbs for the medical appointment. It was a piece of cake- it did take about 3 hours to do something that should take 30 minutes, but everyone was very pleasant and kind. The only part that was bad was getting hopelessly lost in the suburbs before our appointment, we were used to Paris street names on every block and there were none in the area we were in. A very nice stranger that we met walked us to the medical building. We then thought we would have another meeting to do a language assessment, culture test, etc. but that is not the case. We were done and are good to stay for the year.

We are planning to renew for year 2, that apparently has many more requirements, but again, the procedures seem to be changing to accommodate the digital world, so we will see what needs to be done when the time comes.

I can also go on and on about the 3 plus months and hours and documents needed to open a French bank account- we did it and were able to get a phone plan because of our bank account, but it was a long road. In retrospect, I would have brought our birth and marriage certificates with us. We have had to spend a lot of time and money getting copies from the US, but we had no idea they would be required.

The hardest part moving here has been the language. We get by and many Parisians help by speaking English to us when we come to the limit of our French, but I urge anyone who wants to move to Paris to learn the language to the best of your ability! In the countryside, I would expect it to be even more difficult to get by without speaking French.

We probably did things the hard way once we got here, there was just the two of us, but we managed to get these things done. I admire greatly anyone that moves here alone! The Parisians have been delightful, friendly, helpful and to see peoples faces light up with wonderful smiles really makes living here a joy. We love it. Now back to travel planning!

kerouac

I admire your determination.

Being told that 90 days in advance is too much and you must be "within" 90 days is perhaps the thing that would have annoyed me the most. My parents moved to France in 1972 and already had to jump through hoops back then although the medical visit took place in California. I don't know what has changed about that. But back then you could get a 10-year carte de séjour, so basically it was a piece of cake compared to now. They left France in 1981 due to extreme currency fluctuations (which were totally resolved 6 months later, but there was no way to know that).

What is strange is that my mother was French but thought that she had lost her nationality when she became American in 1959. If she had known that she was still a French citizen, 95% of the complications would have been eliminated. When my father died in 2005 and I had to bring my mother to France since she had Alzheimer's, it was really quite simple to get all of her papers, social security, etc. So I will never bitch about French bureaucracy. There are always complications, but there are reasons for them.