Hi everyone,
Need a bit of good advice, please. I live permanently near Bordeaux, and have just been offered a position as editor-in-chief at a UK-based startup. I’ll be carrying out the work completely from home here, so I am liable for all taxes and contributions here in France, of course. The easiest way to proceed, which my (future) employer agrees with, is to work for them on a contractor basis and simply invoice them for the hours I work and figure out my own finances here. My question is therefore: how best to do that here? Is the best way to simply set up an auto-entrepreneurship and handle things that way? My salary won’t exceed the EUR70k/yr AE limit, so it would seem to be a sound option.
Hoping for a nice, clear answer, please 
I’ve been bouncing around advisors for two days now, and I’m none the wiser. My (future) employer is being quite patient with me so far, but I don’t know how long that will last for…
Many thanks in advance,
Stu
Hi Stu and welcome to SF
I’m sure someone with experience in this area will address your questions pretty soon but in the meantime, are you able to say whether you have a CdS-WA (or applied for one) from living here prior to the dreaded 31 December Brexit 2020 deadline since that will be very significant as to what hoops you may have to jump through.
Hi Graham,
Yes, luckily I arrived last year and got the paperwork in. Plus I have the paperwork to show that I was here in 2020, so all good.
Stu
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It’s a while since I stopped being self-employed here, but as I understood it then you couldn’t operate as an auto-entrepreneur if you only had one client. That was considered as being employed by that company.
Things may have changed so please don’t bank your future on my experience, but I think that your employer needs to follow this guidance:
Edit: just had a look on an AE portal and that still seems to be the case, considered as a disguised worker
Hi Stu,
I’m a fellow Bordeaux resident (well, living in the Medoc, to be precise) who works solely for a UK-based company, so may be able to help you out.
When my employer and I looked into this, we discovered that you’re not entitled to class yourself as a contractor if you’re only working for one company. There were some other restrictions too around how much autonomy you have which I can’t remember the exact details of, but essentially if you’re working for just one company then for tax reasons it’s considered to be a “employée déguisée”.
We ended up having to register my company with URSSAF (specifically on the TFE site) as a business with no place of business in France. This enables your employer to be allocated a so-called SIRET number, but without them having to pay corporation tax, etc… Your employer then registers your role, number of hours, salary, etc… with URSSAF. They’ll then determine what income tax is due, which can be paid to them directly, and how much you’re entitled to. They’ll also create French pay slips for you.
Incidentally, the taxes your employer is liable for over here are much higher than in the UK… this caught me and my employer out, and we had to have some interesting discussions when they realised how much extra it would cost them to keep me on my UK salary. Worth having that discussion with them now, rather than when URSSAF gives them their first tax bill.
Edited to add: The people at TFE were extremely helpful when we had some issues, especially bearing in mind that I moved over here during the early stages of the pandemic and their site wasn’t working for new registrations for a while. In case you’ve not already seen it, their website is: Home - tfe.urssaf.fr
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Working as a contractor has a couple of hidden drawbacks whether considered from the UK or French perspective.
Firstly you have to consider the UK’s IR35/Hidden employment rules (there are similar considerations here in France).
Fall foul of those and you will be considered an employee of the UK company. That isn’t totally bad news but you will then need to sort out with HMRC in the UK and the Impots here in France about your tax, and possibly, social security situation.
You need a tax advisor who can provide advice on a. the domicile of the employer you are working for, b. your personal domicile (tax and more generally) and the application of the UK/France tax treaty to your particular situation.
Finding somebody who is prepared to advise on both the UK and Frech aspects of this will probably be akin to finding hen’s teeth.
In all likelihood you will have to take advice from on the UK and the French situation and make an informed decision.
Don’t forget to talk to HMRC and the Impot here in France, both organisations are obliged to provide you with the best advice based on the information you provide them.
Thank you all for your help. Much appreciated 
Registering with URSSAF is what our company did. You should expect a lower salary because, as Gareth said, taxes are way higher on businesses than in the UK, but personal income tax is way lower in return, so you can’t really expect a UK salary in France. System’s completely different.
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Hi Gareth - i’ve been living in France, having relocated from London, for 18 years and somehow have only just discovered this website! I’m going to read through some of the posts as perhaps I can help others with things that i’ve worked out/ been through over the years. Meanwhile, a question to you on this thread - a UK company who’ve been one of my clients for years, now wants to hire me full time. I’m interested, which would mean closing my SAS business, retiring my other clients and then helping the UK company in question navigate the TFE / Ursaff piece. What I’m wondering is, do you have any insight into how to calculate the kind of salary request I should make, in the knowledge that the Uk company will have to pay much higher social charges here for me. I’m trying to pitch a number that is realistic upfront. Do you know what % social charges + any other charges the UK company would have to pay, via URSAFF? Or maybe put another way, what % drop did you have to accept, from your UK salary, to make the numbers work for your employer with you now living in France? TIA! (Same question to @Greg_Harvey and @Stuey79 )
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Hi @Gerti,
Firstly, welcome to the site 
I’ve since changed jobs and couldn’t remember the exact details so I just looked up my old payslips from back in 2020 / 2021. My gross salary was reduced by 17.5% once URSSAF had confirmed what my employer’s taxes were.
Hope that helps you with your conversation with your client.
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Google portage salaries - the bigger ones all have calculators for tax etc. You can put in gross “wages” and it will show you the breakdown.
For French businesses, depending on the kind of salaried work you would be doing, i.e. whether it is TAM (technicien, agent de maîtrise)/non-cadre, or cadre (usually employees with a higher technical/corporate/legal/engineering function), then the business will have to pay different contributions.
There is an estimator here for charges sociales, but note that this is for the general employment system in France, and their might be a special rate for foreign based businesses having no established entity in France and yet employing French resident salaried workers. I tried finding out what they might be, but it only led me to the part of the URSSAF website where you have to sign on, create an account and declare the employee as a foreign entity, so obviously not much help when you want to know in advance how much to factor in.