Homeschool in Paris France??

[NatureMomma]

We may have the opportunity to move to Paris for the next several years.

We've only been there one time and loved it, but really don't know much of anything about life there, homeschooling community and laws, etc.

 

We also don't know what a expat salary is there, since the cost of living is so much higher, and tax info is different than the states. Trying to pull up info in that has not pulled up much.

 

Has anyone ever lived there and homeschooled? How strict are the laws and are there many homeschoolers there? i tried looking up info and it didnt pull up much. We have a 12 year old, always homeschooled, don't speak French! And if we did move we would probably do the bare minimum and visit museums and different places around Erurope while hubby's working.

 

We probably would want to live in the city.... Or 20 minutes on the outskirts if it has more green spaces, etc.

What is shopping like there? We eat all organic- is this possible?

We will know know more next week if hubby's got the job for sure, but right now it looks likely.

 

If we did move.... What should we bring?

Thank you for any feedback and help.

We loved Paris as visitors, and have always wanted to live in Europe. We have no ties to where we are currently at, and really would like a change, so when this came up we were floored.

[NatureMomma]

Also, a couple more questions.

My daughter has some medical issues and is currently getting diagnosed for Asbergers.

What is the healthcare like in France and how do they approach ASD? This might not be an issue if she is homeschooled, but I couldn't find any info online about Autism and France, so is it something they don't see much of?

[Audrey]

Homeschooling is not illegal in France, but is very uncommon and not encouraged -- perhaps even actively discouraged.  You have to register with the local mairie and the local school inspector.  You will be subject to an annual inspection for any children of required school age (which I believe is up to 16, but I don't know the minimum age). Because registration is local, you will get varying degrees of receptivity.  You may even engage a hostile local administration.  This may be somewhat alleviated by the fact that you are not French and don't speak French, though.  

[meena]

Not to discourage but so you are aware: If you are a US citizen, definitely check into foreign earned income tax laws. DH has been looking into overseas positions, and the tax laws are not favorable (i.e. you will be double taxed) on the amount you make over the exclusion amount ($97,600 for 2013). There are other complications for us due to the nature of DH's work that made these tax laws pretty much a dealbreaker for overseas work unless he gets an offer that pays a lot more than the norm for his industry. I've also heard that the IRS is auditing a lot of returns with FEI, so if you before (and after, should it work that way) you decide to move it would be best to consult a tax professional that specializes in this area.

 

While you are pondering and researching, I suggest reading The Sweet Life in Paris by David Lebovitz. I read it after we visited Paris. It was interesting to hear the cultural aspects of trying to live in Paris as an expat vs. just visiting.

[Angie in VA]

No help, just jealousy. 

 

Thou shall not covet. Thou shall not covet! THOU SHALL NOT COVET!!!

 

I hope the legalities get worked out, you find support for the things you mentioned, and that you eat great foods, see gorgeous art and architecture daily, and become fluent in French.

 

#vivrelerêve

 

 

[Audrey]

On healthcare... if you will only technically be a visitor while there, you will need to carry travel insurance.  If your husband is employed and you will all be on visas, you can access the system that way.  It is a national system, open to all and the quality of care is very highly ranked in worldwide comparison charts. 

 

The French have a very different philosophy regarding autism and ASD, though.  You may want to check out expatforum.com and see what others have to say about it.  That site can also help you answer whatever other questions may come up for you. 

[idnib]

Sigh...

 

I read the title and thought you were offering.

 

:tongue_smilie:

[NatureMomma]

Thanks for all the replies... That's kind of what I was thinking about the tax issues :/

Hmmm that's why I was trying to gather more information on what a good salary is.

Would it change if we were long term residents of a country as far as them double taxing?

We plan on a few years, but honestly I don't know if we'd back. We love Europe and probably would stay.

 

So basically the first $97,000 is not double taxes and after that, any amount is?

Does anyone know what French tax laws are like?

 

What do the French think of ASD? I'm curious because I couldn't pull anything up.

Thank you for the book suggestion, I will look into it!

I also got Culture Shock! Paris, and have been reading that.

 

Any more advice?

[City Mouse]

I have no first hand experience, but I had a student (in public school in Texas) whose parents were recent immigrants from France. Their son had some special needs (not AU but lower IQ, limited verbal skills, and motor skills issues). The mom mentioned that they would probably never be able to return home because this child would not have been able to attend school. According to this mom, kids with severe special needs are treated as a medical issue with good medical care, but there is not the same kind of educational system for them.

 

I don't know if this is true, or just her perception of the system.

[meena]

My understanding is that as long as you are a US citizen you will be double taxed on the amount outside of the exclusion--doesn't matter how long you are an expat just that you are still a citizen. Check out this page on Expat Focus for French taxation amounts. It looks to be pretty high (30%) once you pass 26K Euros per year, which you would probably need to be making more than to live there. That doesn't take into account deductions or other ways their laws may help offset your income, so once again you'd want to see someone who is familiar with the laws here and there to find the best ways to make it work in your favor.

[Annie]

We lived there for a bit two years ago, and there's a fair chance we'll be there all of 2015.  I've researched homeschooling there a bit since my DH's industry doing better there than it is here, and you never know what what's going to happen going forward.  I don't speak/read French, but from what I can piece together, it seems like homeschooling there can be quite difficult.  It seems to depend on the attitude of the local officials, and you never know when those attitudes or officials might change.  ;-)  Technically, I think you're supposed to be providing your children the same sort of education they would be receiving in a French school.  So, they're supposed to be taking French language, history, and literature and be on track to pass the French graduation exams.  I'm not sure what type of progress the person coming to check in on you would expect from a 12 year old with no exposure to French, but I suppose nobody knows except for that one particular examiner, and that's part of the problem.  If you go through with it, I think I would definitely try to find a bilingual local to help you navigate the system and be present for inspections.  My understanding is that there's a two year window to, "turn your homeschool around" before they try to make you send your kid to school, but like I said, this is all information that I've pieced together from around the Internet.  I've heard that in many cases (but not always) they are much more lenient with foreigners who are not expecting to live there long term, but if you're going to be there until your child graduates, you're going to have to figure something out.

 

Thankfully, my husband's employer handled all of our tax issues, but my understanding is that it isn't much fun.  I'm actually staring at a nice little packet from the, "Ministere de L'Economie et des Finances" that's sitting on my desk.  They continue to send us blank tax forms to fill out every year just in case we had happened to go back and forgotten to pay.  ;-)

 

I would say that eating organic is slightly more difficult there than it is in a good size US city.  We lived in a very nice neighborhood, like the kind we could never afford if we were the ones that had to pay for it nice, and the local grocery stores had a fair organic selection. I'm not sure what the selection is like in other areas. Food is more expensive there, and I bought more things conventional there than I do here. One good thing is that they don't do GMOs, so I felt better about buying things like delicious, but certainly not organic, bakery bread.  I saw a couple health food type stores in trendy areas of Paris, but I'm not sure how prevalent they are because I didn't really seek them out.

[Laura Corin]

My understanding is that as long as you are a US citizen you will be double taxed on the amount outside of the exclusion--doesn't matter how long you are an expat just that you are still a citizen. Check out this page on Expat Focus for French taxation amounts. It looks to be pretty high (30%) once you pass 26K Euros per year, which you would probably need to be making more than to live there. That doesn't take into account deductions or other ways their laws may help offset your income, so once again you'd want to see someone who is familiar with the laws here and there to find the best ways to make it work in your favor.

 

I'm not recognising 'double taxation' as an issue.  Husband is an American citizen and declares US taxes every year.  Everything above the Foreign Earned Income limit is taxable in the US, but the UK (and I would imagine France) has a tax treaty which gives a foreign tax credit.  This means that  any tax paid in the UK is deducted from any tax due in the US.  So you don't end up being double taxed.  The details are here:

 

http://www.taxesforexpats.com/articles/expat-tax-rules/foreign-tax-credit-american-expats.html

 

L

[meena]

I'm not recognising 'double taxation' as an issue.  Husband is an American citizen and declares US taxes every year.  Everything above the Foreign Earned Income limit is taxable in the US, but the UK (and I would imagine France) has a tax treaty which gives a foreign tax credit.  This means that  any tax paid in the UK is deducted from any tax due in the US.  So you don't end up being double taxed.  The details are here:

 

http://www.taxesforexpats.com/articles/expat-tax-rules/foreign-tax-credit-american-expats.html

 

L

 

Thank you for that information! I didn't realize you could take the FTC as a direct credit to tax liability. I thought it was only a deduction to offset income.

[NatureMomma]

I'm so confused... I know virtually nothing about taxes as my hubby handles this. So does this mean that say the taxes are 30 percent in Frnace and 30 in the US that potentially we could be paying 60 percent taxes???

 

Annie,thank you for all the personal experience. what part of France will you be in and where did you live before?

Did you homeschool there? Any other tips in general I should know about life there? Would it be better to look for something on the outskirts?

 

Also, we are having a hard time knowing what to ask salary wise, because cost of living is so much higher, and we don't really know what everything costs, and what we would need there etc.

we are afraid that he might ask for too little and because of the cost of living, euro conversion, tax rate, etc. it won't be enough. I'm trying to do look up some suggestions and its not helping.

Any advice on this? What does a typical family spend on groceries. We eat all whole foods, but all organic, and what about housing?

 

Is it easy to shop? And are fridges usually half size so people shope several times a week or what?

What should we bring with us if moving?

[NatureMomma]

Oops! Sorry for the typos. On my phone and stupid autocorrect likes to mess with me! :)

[Laura Corin]

I'm so confused... I know virtually nothing about taxes as my hubby handles this. So does this mean that say the taxes are 30 percent in Frnace and 30 in the US that potentially we could be paying 60 percent taxes???

 

 

No - there's some confusion along those lines earlier in the thread, but this is not the case.  If US taxes owed are USD30,000 and you have already paid USD30,000 to the French authorities, then you pay zero.  If you owe more in the US then you pay the difference.  

 

So, for example.  When we lived in Hong Kong, the HK tax rate is low, so we paid HK taxes on all salary and paid extra to the US in order to bring tax due over and above the tax-free allowance up to the US level.  Now that we live in the UK, when Husband was fully employed, we pay UK taxes (which are relatively high as they include health care costs) and then no more to the US government, because we have already paid more here than we would in the US.

 

Don't worry about the tax....  We've lived this for over two decades.

 

L

[wintermom]

No - there's some confusion along those lines earlier in the thread, but this is not the case.  If US taxes owed are USD30,000 and you have already paid USD30,000 to the French authorities, then you pay zero.  If you owe more in the US then you pay the difference.  

 

So, for example.  When we lived in Hong Kong, the HK tax rate is low, so we paid HK taxes on all salary and paid extra to the US in order to bring tax due over and above the tax-free allowance up to the US level.  Now that we live in the UK, when Husband was fully employed, we pay UK taxes (which are relatively high as they include health care costs) and then no more to the US government, because we have already paid more here than we would in the US.

 

Don't worry about the tax....  We've lived this for over two decades.

 

L

 

In addition to taxable income, the US can have very different taxation rules for savings accounts. Some countries allow a certain amount of money to be placed in non-taxable savings accounts, and the US can claim taxes on these amounts in some circumstances. Probably not an issue for a shorter-term stay, but might be an issue for Laura Corin's husband. I don't know how the UK registered savings work, but in Canada this has recently become an issue for many US citizens living in Canada.

 

[Laura Corin]

In addition to taxable income, the US can have very different taxation rules for savings accounts. Some countries allow a certain amount of money to be placed in non-taxable savings accounts, and the US can claim taxes on these amounts in some circumstances. Probably not an issue for a shorter-term stay, but might be an issue for Laura Corin's husband. I don't know how the UK registered savings work, but in Canada this has recently become an issue for many US citizens living in Canada.

 

 

Yes - there can be some issues about savings accounts.  Another issue (not insurmountable but irritating) is different tax years - the UK's is April to April - so declaring taxes in both jurisdictions can be irritating.

 

It's only US citizens that have to deal with this (maybe Cubans too?).  Most countries don't tax (or expect declarations from) their citizens when they are living and earning overseas.  As a Brit, when we were living abroad I didn't have to declare to the UK government any overseas earnings I had.

 

L

[umsami]

You should be credited for any foreign taxes paid.

 

French healthcare is wonderful.  Care is on par with good US care.

 

I have heard that there can be issues for American opening up bank accounts abroad lately…but I'm not sure how valid that is.  I had no issues opening up an account at BNP in Paris when I lived there.

As for eating organic (bio)… IMHO, the quality of food in France is so much better than here, that you might not feel the need to be 100% bio.  Here's some shops in Paris http://www.yelp.com/search?find_desc=Organic+Food+Shops&find_loc=Paris

 

I can't speak for the homeschooling community, but for me, we'd seriously consider regular schooling if only for the immersion language aspect.  If you will be homeschooling, I would negotiate with the employer for at least some sort of French program for the kids…as it will be cheaper than any of the International schools.  I seem to remember that the local marie/mayor's office or something similar had French lessons as well.

[saw]

We lived in France as US citizens for a couple of years two years ago and had big problems with the tax. The issue was that not all of the tax we paid to the French government on the income was eligible for the credit under the double tax treaty. This is because, according to our accountant,the tax paid/credited needs to be the same type of tax -- we had a low-ish income tax in France but high social taxes (social taxes are based more on income, income tax on number of family members). We could not therefore take advantage of the double tax treaty for all the tax paid as we weren't paying social taxes to the US. Basically the taxes have to "matched" before they can be set off. In any event, the double tax treaty will only help you so much, as you will just pay the amount of the bigger of the two tax bills. We paid 75 per cent of our income in taxes when all was said and done. We had checked the tax situation with the tax department of dh's firm, who gave us incorrect information on which we based our decision to move (we could have sued but dh refused to ask for compensation). You need to get an excellent accountant who can give you a detailed explaination of what will happen in your individual case. PM me if you want the name of an American accountant working in France who helped us out. In our case it was a financial disaster as we went from two good incomes in a tax-friendly jurisdiction to one income in a tax-unfriendly jurisdiction and lost tons of money.

 

Homeschooling, however, was easy, although recently I saw that the government is actively taking steps to restrict/forbid it. I'm not sure where that process is right now. I went to the local government office, asked where I should register as a homeschooler and was told that we didn't need to do anything. After I explained a bit about homeschooiing and what we did, I got a positive reaction. Never had any trouble.

 

Our experience with the healthcare itself was good, but we had a terrible time getting government coverage for our youngest, who is adopted from China. The government refused to accept his papers as he was born in China and insisted on getting information such as the name of the hospital he was born in. We aren't the only ones to have had this trouble. I was not born in the US, although I have US citizenship, and I was also given a hard time and asked to prove my various citizenships (and no, a passport wasn't enough). If you have anything "weird" like this you may run into trouble.

 

What I wish we had had from the beginning is a good relocation service that could have dealt with these issues for us. We did finally end up with relo help (after I told dh's firm that they could either offer relo assistance or I would leave France with the kids and not return).

 

We rented a house that was quite nice, in the suburbs. We had to buy some of the major appliances as most rentals don't come with them. That's pretty easy, just go to Carrefour or similar. It does of course add to the expense. You'll want to check into your driving license situation as you may or may not be able to transfer your US license into a French license.

 

PM me if you want more info. I can put you in touch with a great French teacher who also does some relo help now, a pay-for message board for expats (Message Paris) that's great and a piano teacher who is fab.

[Laura Corin]

We lived in France as US citizens for a couple of years two years ago and had big problems with the tax. The issue was that not all of the tax we paid to the French government on the income was eligible for the credit under the double tax treaty. This is because, according to our accountant,the tax paid/credited needs to be the same type of tax -- we had a low-ish income tax in France but high social taxes (social taxes are based more on income, income tax on number of family members). We could not therefore take advantage of the double tax treaty for all the tax paid as we weren't paying social taxes to the US. Basically the taxes have to "matched" before they can be set off. 

 

That's really interesting.  Thanks for setting me right.  Tax in the UK (and in Hong Kong and China where we lived before) is just tax - it is not separated out like that.  So it's a straight offset of one amount of tax paid in the UK against another paid in the US.

 

L

[jpanik]

We are expats living in Australia.  We have now been here 14 years and obviously are settled in well!  The company we originally came with (it was a corporate move) handled all the tax issues.  Every country is different and there are various ways the big corporations pay.  Now that my husband is no longer working for a US corporation, we found a good tax guy here who specialises in US tax stuff for expats.  He's great.  There are firms around the world who specialise in expat tax issues.

 

Homeschooling was a breeze for us because basically no one cared.  We weren't Australian citizens, the kids weren't Australian citizens and had never been in an Australian school.  I used US curriculum, which was my stock answer if anyone asked.  Lots of expats enrol the kids in a US based program which seems to make everyone happy.  No one in the  US cares because you are not in the US so you aren't anyone's problem.

 

Maybe in France they come looking for you, but that was never the case here.  I would have happily conformed to whatever rules we needed to, if it came to that, but like I said, no one really cared about a family who was here on a foreign posting for a few years. 

 

Totally agree about getting a good relocation service.  Ours was invaluable when we first came.

 

My daughter and I are headed to France next month on a holiday!  I am SO excited as I have never been to Europe before.  Paris for a week, then Normandy for the World Equestrian Games.