Two very meaningful moments last week…

• We again hired Inimex to help us with Year 2 – that’s the French agency that helped us apply for and receive our first French visas.
• This time it was easy! Paperwork was relatively simple, and Carcassonne is our Préfecture (or “county seat,”) so we were able to just walk from home to our Préfecture building (administration building in the center of Carcassonne) to bring in our paperwork.*
• It was just a formality – as long as you have the right paperwork, the Préfecture employee types all of the information into a computer, and we walked away with our temporary permit, which allows us to stay here and travel until we receive our one-year residency cards (visas) (about a month from now.)
  • We’ll receive a text when our residency cards/visas are ready. No appointment needed to go pick them up – we’ll just bring our temporary permits and pay €269 for each visa.
• Now that we know the process, we’ll do it on our own next year. But it was very very nice to have Inimex’s help for our first-time renewal.
• An Inimex representative attended the appointment with us, and Jeff asked her if people get rejected. She commented that, for our type of visa, as long as applicants submit the correct paperwork, and can show that they have the required amount of money, no one gets rejected.
• She also said that it’s much more difficult for people who want to work here to get visas.
• *In October 2018 we had to go to Nice to finalize our Year 1 visa paperwork. I’ll explain why in another email/post. Nice is a 6-hour train ride from here, and we stayed two nights and made a mini getaway out of it, which was very enjoyable. But truly, it’s so much nicer to be able to walk 15 minutes from home to renew our visas!
• Below the tax information, I’ve shared info and maps about France’s Regions and Departments.

Filing our First Year French Taxes

• I picked up our tax forms from our tax office in April (our tax office is a 10-minute walk from our house, at the foot of Pont Vieux, our 700-year-old pedestrian bridge.)
• Taxes were due May 16
• My friend Emma (she’s British, and speaks perfect French) and I spent time together translating the forms, and I think I could have filled them out and filed them myself.
• But, wanting to make sure we did it perfectly, I hired Rachel Thomas-Bonnet for €150 to fill out and file our forms. (She was recommended by friends.) She made it very easy. She asked some questions, I answered in email, we didn’t need to provide any backup paperwork, and she filed our forms for us.
• We’ll hear in August if we owe anything but we shouldn’t because:
  • All of our income last year came from the United States
  • The U.S. and France have a reciprocal tax agreement, which means that we don’t get double taxed on income earned in either country.
• If we do get a tax bill from France (which will be a mistake), Rachel will deal with it and make sure we don’t have to pay taxes.
• Next year, we’ll have to pay taxes in France on any income that we earn from the rental apartments we’re building in our home here in Carcassonne.
• French taxes filed – another huge relief!

About France’s Regions and Departments.
Continental France is made up of 12 Regions (13 when you include Corsica.) I think of our Regions as the equivalent of states in the United States. Check out the map #1 below. We live in Occitanie, and the arrow shows approximately where Carcassonne is (the arrow’s not exact, but close.). Keep reading to learn a little bit about our departments (counties), and why we were able walk to our visa appointment.

Map #1 below – France’s regions