French Life-expat France

Starting a business in France is something that has troubled me before, but this time…we’ve actually done it! OK we haven’t received our SIRET number (company registration number) yet - the application has to wind its way through French bureaucracy for a week or two first - but we’re on our way.

Mrs B insisted on being a ‘collabarative conjoint’ so her name gets included on the form. Just so she could tell people she is a collabarative conjoint I imagine, since it sounds important.

We have opted for ‘Entreprise Individuelle’ as our corporate set-up. This means our business matters and private matters are all mixed together, so if the ‘company’ incurs a debt, we can’t claim that the company can’t pay the bill - we have to pay it. In technical terms there is no ‘limited liability’.

This seems fine, because the business isn’t about to start borrowing zillions of euros, or incurring enormous liabilities. Just me and my computer sat in the corner shouldn’t present too many financial hazards. Apparently this ‘entreprise individuelle’ setup is used by 53% of businesses in France, so if it’s the wrong choice at least we are in good company.

Rumour is that President Sarkozy is going to reduce the level of social contributions payable from 47% of net profit to 14%. That sounds good to me, and would almost make running a business in France a practical proposition, instead of the financial nightmare it is at the moment.

Currently a large number of businesses in France go into failure in their third year. This is because during the first two years the level of ‘contributions’ is based on an estimated level of income, then in the third year it is recalculated based on real income. It seems that the actual bill is always much larger than expected, no one can afford to pay, and the business goes into failure. I can hardly wait.

It was a bit tricky explaining that we would be selling ‘advertising space’. The stern lady in the Chamber of Commerce wanted to know exactly what we were really selling. I tried to explain by using eBay as an example.

“But eBay sell lots of things” she insisted.

“No, advertisers pay to sell their own things on eBay. eBay themselves are just selling advertising space”.

“So you are going to start a company like eBay?”

“Well no, but the general principle is the same”… and so it continued, while she looked ever more suspicious of my abilities to start a multi-billion dollar corporation from the corner of the kitchen.

I’ll keep you informed but I’m expecting a bit of a deluge of paperwork this week - the Chamber of Commerce gave us a list of the seven organisations that would each be sent a copy of our application, and I have no doubt that each of them will have their own forms to fill in…