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The importance of tax and financial planning in France

If you are a British expatriate living in France, or planning to move there, you require highly personalised and specialist financial advice on avoiding French tax and investing in France, to ensure your assets are structured as tax efficiently as possible and your investment strategy is tailor-made for you.

Tax in France
   

In our experience, many UK nationals find that they are saving tax by moving to France, but you need expert expatriate tax advice to achieve the full tax benefits, especially with all the French tax rises over recent years.

The tax burden has increased, particularly for wealthier residents and investors. Besides income tax and capital gains tax, social charges are levied on top, and France also imposes an annual wealth tax on your worldwide assets.

All this makes it more important than ever to take professional advice on your tax planning in France. This also applies if you are buying or selling property in France, or selling a UK property as part of your move to France. It is still possible to take advantage of tax compliant opportunities to protect your assets from the various French taxes. With our guidance, our clients enjoy extremely favourable tax treatment on their capital investments and assets.

Estate planning issues 

French succession tax works quite differently from UK inheritance tax and the impact on your heirs depends on their relationship to you. You also need to understand French succession law (which restricts how you can divide up your estate) and the new European Certificate of Succession regulation, commonly known as Brussels IV.

Assurance Vie

If used correctly and with specialist advice an Assurance Vie can provide considerable tax advantages in France, as well as being useful for estate planning purposes. However, although Assurance Vie is a possible solution, there are significant differences between them. You need to look at how they work and the jurisdiction they are based in and consider how all this affects you.

Investment advice

Blevins Franks obtains an objective assessment of your risk profile and recommends portfolios designed around your personal situation and objectives. 

Pensions planning

We review all your options under the new UK pension freedom, including QROPS and QNUPS, advising on the pros and cons of each one and the tax implications in France, so you can make a fully informed decision on the best solution for you. 

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At Blevins Franks we specialise in providing integrated and detailed international tax and wealth management advice to wealthy expatriates in France, and would be delighted to explore how we could help you.