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Created: 09 February 2016

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.

Our approach and solutions are tailored to our clients’ needs. We believe that our clients are unique and warrant distinctive service.

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

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Created: 18 July 2015

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.

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Created: 30 December 2014

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.

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Created: 18 April 2014

SELLING YOUR PROPERTY IN FRANCE - HOW THINGS HAVE CHANGED !

Lets bust some myths !

Vendors think that selling "privately" will secure them a buyer quicker, not true...

These days the "buyer" likes the security and protection of using an agent as well as the comfort of using a well known 'name'. Also 'private advertising' is expensive and which website should you choose? the cheapest is never a good option but the most expensive limits you to only one website! (NOTE: we advertise on multiple portals as well as our own website).

Vendors think their property will look more competitive without agency fees, not true...

We find that there is a "certain" section of the buying public that look privately, these are the people who want to drive the price down even further! People looking with Immobilier trust the advice of a good agent and then the negotiation on price is more even / level and the vendor often gets the best deal possible.

Vendors note: YOU are also cutting out approx. 95% of the UK and international overseas buying public who do not buy privately!

Magazine adverts are good, surely ?

Yes and No, as part of a 'brand advertising' package they work and as part of a on-line campaign BUT not really worthwhile for individual houses, think about it for a second, of all the thousands of properties for sale in France how successful is 1 private advert going to be? people these days want choice and a lot of it and this is why our 'targeted marketing' works well. 

Property Exhibitions have a targeted audience, true BUT...

We find that most people attending property exhibitions are at the start of their property hunting journey, this is good for them and good for the agent BUT not necessarily good for a seller, if you want to sell your property sooner rather than in 2 years time you need to think differently...

The Solution...

At Cle France we have several marketing options for sellers who want to maximise the exposure of their property, we advertise certain properties on multiple property portals for much less than the price it would cost you to advertise on just one! Simply mandating your property for sale with us is 100% free but we do offer enhanced marketing packages to those who want to get there property seen by a carefully targeted audience.

You may be selling your property in France to downsize, upgrade or move to the UK? whatever the reason "Cle France" is the place to be seen. We are the fastest growing property website featuring property for sale across France and have a successful formula for selling properties that others could not.

With a mixture of up to the minute technology, use of social media and good old fashioned customer service, we have helped as many people SELL their property as we have helped people buy their dream home.

After all, matching buyers to sellers is our goal ! visit our "selling ?" page to find out more and give us a call.

Take a look at some of the comments from sellers as well as buyers here....

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