Chronicle of departure: D-286
Two weeks have already passed! It’s hard not to be overwhelmed by the small issues of the everyday life. July 2017 seems so far but I know deep inside that this will happen very quickly. Yet French school holidays (from October 19th to November 2nd) took me much of my time last week since my kids were at home.
But this week they are enrolled in Holiday Camps so I can pick up the thread of my activities.
Current issues
During the past two weeks, we have somehow conducted some tasks related to our scheduled departure:
– Banking and financial issues
On the occasion of our “Banking fees” issue (explained in a previous article and not yet resolved otherwise) we finally met our account manager. He drew our attention to the regulation about “banking products”. Indeed in addition to our current account, we have some other bank accounts such as “Livret A” and life insurance. Nothing extravagant or very profitable! Rather very common products that hold many people in France. But during our discussions and since we decided to inform people about our departure when the opportunity arises, the account manager told us that a lot of banking products can’t be hold when somebody leaves France for an indefinite period.
He indeed told us that the tax treaty between France and the United States restricts many opportunities for people in our situation, and even if some banks play on ambiguities and claim that the flexibility is great, it’s not true.
It is therefore absolutely necessary that we visit our local Tax Office to ask questions. And there is a second issue: what will be the rule for our income tax in 2017? We’ll spend nearly half the year in France and half in the US. But taxes in France are calculated on the basis of the previous year (ie 2016, and this still for a year before the law changes) while in the US, as far as I know, tax withholding is already the law.
A visit to the Tax Office is therefore required, although like many people I feel that when you visit the Administrations, they manage to prove that you owe them more than what you thought! I am not thrilled with this perspective!
– School
I recently met a teacher of my oldest son (6thgrade) for a particular issue and at the end of the interview, since she referenced a lot to the following years programs (7th grade, 9thgrade, etc.), I told her that in fact my son will not be in this middle school next year.
I hadn’t talked about it before because I didn’t want to “pollute” my son’s school year with this perspective. Indeed my fear was that my son and his teachers anticipate too much the announced departure, while he has enough to do during his 6th grade school year, without projecting himself in to the future.
But the teacher asked me if I had talked to the “head teacher” (who makes the link between teachers and families) and asked me to do it as soon as possible! School announced recently that there will be a Parents-Teachers meeting soon in November. So I’m about to announce this “news” during the talks.
Our state of mind today
The departure seems far and I fear that the end of the year concerns (organization of holidays, children’s shows at their schools and extracurricular activities usually very time-consuming, etc.) delay even more our necessary attention from this dead line. I hope the blog will help me to remember that date regularly so that we don’t lose time before our preparations.
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