Starting a business anywhere is a daunting thought.
Starting a business in France, where you may or may not master the language or are conversant with the many laws that govern businesses can be a complete nightmare.
I started a business in France 5 years ago.
After having worked as a consultant for a training company for over 11 years, I one day decided to leave and fly by my own steam.
I had dragged myself through a grueling assault-course of change over a period of 7 or so years – I studies a degree and a Masters through distance learning with the Open University and finally went through a business coaching certification course to be a coach in France at L’école Supérieur de Commerce at Toulouse so the actual thought of change was not something I was that worried about.
I was finally made redundant (through mutual agreement) in November and started preparing all of the officialdom for a start up of the company in the following January.
The amount of paperwork needed was a nightmare, further exacerbated by the fact that the laws and formalities for the setting up of a company changed on 1st January of that year – I was due to register my company on January 3.
With this in mind I was very careful to have ALL the paperwork that was required post January 1st – just in case I encountered a ‘jobs’worth’ French civil servant, who was not happy to restart their job after the Christmas break.
I can say that I was more than pleasantly surprised by the help I obtained from the various authorities and also to the pragmatic nature of the civil servant I met at the office that deals with company registration.
The man just took the bale of paperwork that I had diligently amassed for the formalities of company registration and took out the one and only sheet he needed.
I was out of his office within 15 minutes clutching the much needed, rubber-stamped paper I needed to get through the next step – “La center de formalités pour les entreprises” – there I waited 20 minutes to be seen by another very efficient person and left within 10 minutes with all the registration numbers and documents I needed to start working as a company.
In fact I should stress here, that I started as a sole trader “travailleur Indépendante” as I was aiming to work at the outset as an independent consultant – which I did for a year.
My first year was fantastic in terms of business, which I more than paid for in terms of income taxes and it was with great urgency in January 2008 that I changed my status from Sole trader (travailleur indépendante) to Limited company (EURL) – the reason being that I was taxed on the total turnover that I generated as if I had taken it as a salary, even though I left a large proportion of it in the company.
(This has now passed smoothly) I am now into the year that all French small businesses dread – the 3rd Year of activity, the year when all of the social charged in France really pile on.
It’s true that France has an excellent social security system, child benefits, sickness etc.
Hospital queues are almost non existent and the quality of life in general is on a pretty high standard – that said, these things need to be paid for, and a lot of the contributions appear to be levied directly on businesses.
It seems that there are new taxes invented on a monthly basis:
There is the RAM – social security chargesURSSAF for employees – which hovers at around 85% of the salary paid to each employee Sickness Retirement Invalidity / death Then there is company tax, income tax, rent of premises along with charges, Accountants fees etc. etc. the list goes on.
In the next post we will look at some tips for starting a business in France and how to avoid some of the pitfalls that can occur along the way.
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