When it comes to French inheritance taxes, French property owners forget too often that they can limit the fiscal cost of the transmission of their French assets over their loved ones by careful estate planning.

Since 2006

A donor can gratify in a shared gift descendants of different degrees, for example his/her children and grandchildren.

With the agreement of the children, it is possible to transmit a French property to the grandchildren or to transmit the life interest of the property to the children and the bare ownership to the grandchildren.

This operation of transmitting a property or other assets over two generations will increase the number of Inheritance tax allowances applicable for the calculation of the gift taxes.

Example

Indeed, a parent can give to each of his/her children €100,000.00 and €31,865.00 to his/her grandchildren tax free.

For example, a couple with 2 children and 4 grandchildren can transmit tax free €654,920.00: (€100,000 X 2 children) + (€31,865 X 4 grandchildren) X 2 parents.

In the case of French property, this estate planning operation can be advantageous if the property was purchased by a suitable holding company such as an SCI (“Société Civile immobilière”). The SCI enables its members to transfer gradually their shares to their children or grandchildren. The French SCI is commonly used by families as a vehicle to organise the transmission of assets between members of a family. An additional benefit will be that each parent can transfer every 15 years some of his/her shares to his/her children and to his/her grandchildren with the same tax allowances mentioned above.

Furthermore because of the difficulty to sell the shares of an SCI to another person or a shareholder of an SCI, the shares of an SCI can be devalued by 10-20% justified by the insertion of an approval clause (“clause d’agrément”) in the “statuts” of the company. The value of the shares would be 10-20 % less than the value of the property reported in the number of shares.

Please note that this transgenerational inter vivos gift may also involve assets which have already been donated to children. It is then possible for the children to pass their assets to their own children in favourable tax conditions.

This article was written by Loic Raboteau, French Legal Advisor and director of French Legal Consulting.

Francophile legal Consulting can assist you with international property matters. For more information on this topic, please do not hesitate to contact Loic Raboteau, managing director by completing the form below. 

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A little more about FRANCOphile Legal Consulting Ltd.

The company was created in response to the need of legal experts for international private clients and businesses. People are no longer confined within their own country boundaries to work, create a business or purchase assets. National, international laws and new technology have enabled people and businesses to move and expand internationally, creating a demand to resolve cross-border issues.

We are a London-based legal consultancy company dedicated to addressing our clients’ international needs. Whether you are a private individual moving or investing in a foreign country, an entrepreneur, or a business willing to expand internationally, FRANCOphile Legal Consulting Ltd will cater your specific requirements and will look after your interests in the short and long term.

Benefiting from an extensive network of international lawyers, solicitors, accountants and financial advisors based in London and in several jurisdictions, FRANCOphile Legal Consulting Ltd is able to handle your interests in different countries around the world.

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Our international coverage includes France, London, Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt and Mauritius. If you would like to know more about us then fill out the contact form above and we will be right back to you.

For everything you need to know about French property visit www.clefrance.co.uk

Accents are essential to correctly using the French language, but for those of us who aren’t familiar to writing with accents, they can be very tricky indeed.

In French, the pronunciation and meaning of a word can change with or without an accent. Sometimes, accents aren’t included when the French type online, but that’s another story. In regular writing, it’s important to use accents correctly.

The French language uses five different kinds of accents. They are as follows:

- l’accent aigu (the acute accent, literally the “high” accent). This accent is only used as: é

- l’accent grave (the grave accent, literally the “low” accent). The grave accent can be used with the following three letters: à, è, ù

- l’accent circonflexe (the circumflex). This accent can be used with the following letters: â, ê,  î, ô, û

- le tréma (the umlaut). This accent can be used with ë, ï, ü

- la cédille (the cedilla). This accent is only used as: ç

The accent aigu is the most common accent used in French because it is used for the past tense form of many verbs. This makes the “e” sound higher–think of your voice following the accent up from the left to the right–é. For example the past participle of the verb donner (to give) is donné. The accent aigu on the last letter here makes it sound just like the infinitive verb form (don-ay).

With the letter “e,” the accent grave is the opposite of the accent aigu. Picture your voice going lower by following the accent from left to right–è. It is used for the pronunciation of the letter “e,” but with the letters “a” and “u” the pronunciation does not change and it is only used to distinguish one word from another. For example, ou means “or” but où means “where.” These two words are pronounced exactly the same.

La cédille is used to make a hard “c” sound softer. In fact, the ç sounds exactly like the English “s.” For example, façade is pronounced with a soft c or s sound.

The trema is used only when two vowels are next to each other and both need to be pronounced. Think of the two dots of the trema as both vowels next to one another. Thus, mäis is pronounced mah-ez.

If you know the use of these accents, you can spell any word that you hear correctly (accents and all!) based on its pronunciation.

Blog submitted by: David at The French Property Network - Cle France.

This blog was originally posted on The French Language Blog pages.

Getting Technical in French

It can be frustrating when your computer won't do want you tell it to do! dealing with computer problems in your own language is bad enough so imagine trying to deal with it in French!

A client of our posed this problem...

Last week mon ordinateur était en panne (my computer was broken) and I had to go to le magasin d’informatique (the computer store). I was worried that mon vocabulaire d’informatique (my computer vocabulary) wasn’t good enough and that I wouldn’t be able to explain the problem. On top of that, with la canicule, it was so hot I just didn’t want to do anything!

 Here is some basic vocabulaire, which should be enough to help you to be able to say what you need.

Par exemple (for example), how to say:

There seems to be a problem with the boot sector, and I’m afraid the hard drive has failed.

Il me semble qu’il y a un problème avec le secteur boot et j’ai peur que le disque dur ait échoué.

He understood! Although I quickly learned boot sector is le secteur d’intialisation and not le secteur boot. However his prognosis made my feelings of success short lived.

Ça va prendre cinq jours au moins et si c’est le disque dur, ça va couter 500 € (cinq cents euros) pour le remplacer et l’installer, plus le coût de main d’œuvre.

It will take five days and if it’s the hard drive, it will cost €500 to replace it and install it, plus labor costs.

I wasn’t prepared to pay €500, so I asked:

Est-ce que je peux le faire moi-même ?

En fait, si vous voulez, utilisez une live DVD Linux et voir si les données sont toujours là. Alors vous allez savoir si le disque dur est en panne ou non.

C’est une bonne idée !

Can I do it myself?

In fact, if you want to, use a Linux live DVD and see if the data is still there. Then you will know if the hard-drive is broken or not.

That’s a good idea!

I bought un DVD and une fois à la maison (once I was home), his idea worked! I could sauvegarder (backup, save) all my files and nothing was lost!

Voici une liste de mots d’informatique :

La batterie/la pile battery

Le bug, l’erreur glitch, bug (computer problem)

Le clavier keyboard

Le Disque Dur Hard Drive

Les données data

L’écran (m) screen

Effacer, supprimer to delete

Le fichier file

L’imprimante (f) printer

Imprimer to print

L’informatique (f) Computing, computer science, programming

Installer to install

Le lecteur CDROM CDROM player

Le logiciel program (software)

Le lien link

Le matériel hardware

La mémoire memory

La mise-a-jour update

Mettre à jour to update

Le moniteur monitor

L’octet (m) byte

L’ordinateur (m) computer

Le plantage crash

Le réseau network

Le site web website

La touche key (of a keyboard)

Le serveur server

Le son sound

La souris mouse

Le système d’exploitation Operating system

La Toile The Web

La sauvegarde backup, save.

Blog submitted by: Alex at The French Property Network - Cle France.

This blog was originally posted on The French Language Blog pages.

The tax you have read about is at this stage merely a proposal and for most people buyiung in rural France it does not concern you anyway, but if you are looking to buy in an urban area there are some things to note.

According to a report in a French daily newspaper Les Echos, second homes that are located in areas where there is a housing shortage could face an increase of 20% on their Taxe d'Habitation.

This measure is being considered by the government and could apply in 28 urban agglomerations in France, known as zones tendues, where a tax on vacant homes is already in place.

These areas are: Ajaccio, Annecy, Arles, Bastia, Bayonne, Beauvais, Bordeaux, Draguignan, Fréjus, Genève – Annemasse, Grenoble, La Rochelle, La Teste-de-Buch – Arcachon, Lille, Lyon, Marseille – Aix-en-Provence, Meaux, Menton – Monaco, Montpellier, Nantes, Nice, Paris, Saint-Nazaire, Sète, Strasbourg, Thonon-les-Bains, Toulon, and Toulouse.

Most international home owners with country / rural properties in France will not therefore be affected, although holiday homes in some popular coastal resorts will face a tax hike. But unless you are buying in one of these areas you will be unaffected.

That said it is difficult to give you a 'typical' scenario because taxes vary from commune to commune, and of course utilities vary so much according to usage.

Other charges by comparison: Electric and water etc. are about the same as the UK, and people generally find annual Taxe Fonçière and Taxe d'Habitation compare very favourably indeed, these are in general 5,6,7+ times less than in the UK.

Blog submitted by: Sharon at The French Property Network - Cle France.

In honour of this Cyber Monday and recent Black Friday, here are some important facts and terms to make your shopping trip in France a pleasure, easy and stress-free.

5 Things you Need to Know About Shopping in France

Unlike in the UK an other countries, sales in France are state-run. That means that companies don’t regulate their own storewide sales to get rid of old inventory before the new shipments come in, but that each store must follow a state-run schedule.

There are two of these sale periods in France – called la periode des soldes — that run once in mid-summer and once before the winter holidays. These sales normally last five to six weeks each and only get better as the weeks go on. Sometimes you can find 70-80% discounts on nice items in the last week or so of les soldes.

In general, shops do not open on Sundays, although there have been some recent changes to this traditional French law. However, shops are allowed to open on Sundays during the Christmas holidays and some supermarkets, or supermarchés are allowed to open on Sunday mornings so that people can buy needed food items. In 2009, a controversial bill passed the French parliament stating that shops located in main tourist areas in large French cities were allowed to stay open on Sundays.

While there are almost no stores that are open 24/7 even in Paris (unlike in London) there are always 24-hour pharmacies open in large French towns. These pharmacies are called pharmacies de garde and will show that they are open by the traditional lit green cross. Unlike in the UK, you cannot buy any medicine (whether Tylenol, called paracetamol or doliprane, or prescribed antibiotics) outside of the pharmacy. Pharmacists are well-trained and even have a large selection of homeopathic medicines available for only several Euros each.

One of the best ways to shop in France is in the traditional markets. Each village and district usually hosts at least one market, or marché, per week where you can buy fresh fruits and vegetables, meats and fish, and even prepared food, toys, and clothes. These markets run throughout the year and savvy French consumers will buy all their produce and fresh meats, cheeses, and fish there for the whole week, because it is so cheap. There are also covered markets, or les marchés couverts, which take place in permanent structures dedicated to market trade. These are also called les halles and, in Paris, the section called Les Halles is the central market place in the capital that traditionally dates from about 1183 AD.

Of course, you can’t shop effectively in France without knowing some important vocabulary. Here are some terms you will likely need to know during your shopping trip:

épicerie – grocery store

boulangerie – bakery

patisserie – pastry shop

boucherie – butcher shop

un tabac – tobacco shop, normally part of a bar where you can also buy lottery tickets, phone recharges, and metro cards

Librarie – book store

friperie (slang) – second-hand clothes shop

Je cherche… — I’m looking for…

Je aimerais/je voudrais… — I would like…

Ça coute combine? – How much does it cost?

Je vais le prendre – I’ll take it

J’aimerais payer par carte… — I’d like to pay by card

J’aimerais payer en éspeces… — I’d like to pay in cash

Est-ce que je peux l’essayer s’il vous plait… — Could I try it on, please?

Do you dream of shopping in France? Arrange a viewing trip with Cle France to find your perfect French house for sale and ensure you leave enough time for some shopping!

What would you buy? Are there any other French shopping terms you would like to learn?

Happy shopping! Faites des bons achats!

Blog submitted by: Alex at The French Property Network - Cle France.

This blog was originally posted on The French Language Blog pages.