Expat Community > France

fsutrill
Joined 2002
Posts: 62

conflicting info on what constitutes 'foreign income' in France.

10 years ago

Hi,
We've live in France for almost 12 years (married with 3 kids, one of whom just turned 19). Throughout this time, my husband's salary has come strictly from the US, direct deposited into a US bank account. We file taxes in the US and in France.

When we went to fill out our first tax forms in France, we were told that ALL of our income needed to be first put on the pink form (revenues encaisse a l'etranger) and then that number entered also into the regular box for 'salaires'.

NOW (last year), we are told (by people in a similar situation who go to different accountants) that is not correct- that we can't declare all of our income as 'encaisse a l'etranger', only income we earn while we are physically IN the US- like the 4-5 weeks we may be there on a vacation or something- THAT is the ONLY income we can enter on the 'foreign income' form in France.

So we're getting different answers from different accountants in France- which is pretty normal for here, lol.

But what is the answer? As a result, we aren't imposeable here (we do pay the tax d'habitation, taxe fonciere- as homeowners, etc). In my mind (and this may be faulty logic), 'encaisse a l'etranger' means the place where the money went into the bank... (for me, if it were direct depoisited into a French account, that may not be the case...), but American company into American account = 'encaisse a l'etranger' (to me).

Our US income is such (as in pretty darn low, lol) that when we fill out our taxes THERE, we are under the ceiling for Foreign income (which we don't *try* to claim, we use TurboTax or Taxact which each ask a series of questions and the program determines what you are eligible for).

So we have people who are telling us that we should be paying taxes somewhere (which should be true, I think), but why aren't we taxed in the US? I NEED ANSWERS TO THESE QUESTIONS FIRST, bc It gets more complicated (there is more to the story)... :-)

(a suivre)

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SJB Global

SJB Global is a top-rated financial advisory firm specializing in expat financial advice worldwide, offering retirement planning & tax-efficient solutions with a regressive fee model.
Learn More

SJB Global

SJB Global is a top-rated financial advisory firm specializing in expat financial advice worldwide, offering retirement planning & tax-efficient solutions with a regressive fee model.
Learn More

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conflicting info on what constitutes 'foreign income' in France.

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