Top Tips for a Business in France

Case Study: A Classic Rat Race Escape by Nicholas Hayward

I used to work a job in the city and my friends and I would regularly escape to the French alps for a ski holiday. Of course when got back to our desks on a Monday morning we would always feel a little bit sad for having left such a wonderful place behind. So as a group of friends we clubbed together to purchase a chalet, thinking it’d be nice to have our own personal mountain retreat.

However, on impulse we bought a beautiful chalet that was much larger than we intended to buy and decided we had to run it as a business. We quit our jobs the next day and leaving the stress of the city behind started living our dream amidst the stunning alps.

The best tips I can give to anyone thinking about setting up a business at the moment is to thoroughly read around the tax changes from this year. That, and to know that any business you set up over here is not a short term thing. It’s not something you fix up and sell on, you will need to be prepared to commit for the long haul (at least ten years).

Also make sure you go to your local Mayor’s office with a fluent French speaker and investigate all the regulations around running a business in your region. This can save you a lot of hassle in the long run.

I also have have a UK based account that my British clientele pay money into. I then use moneycorp to transfer over lump-sums to cover the business costs. This is both easier for them and has saved me a lot of money over the years.

‘The exchange rates I get for my international payments are considerably preferable to the ones that even my “premium” UK bank account offers. On my most recent transfer moneycorp offered me euros at 1.17 whereas my bank was offering only 1.13. This meant I saved about £600 overall on the transfer by using moneycorp.

This combined with their easy to use online system means that using moneycorp has been one of the most pleasant and simplest things about setting up a business in France.

•With thanks to Nicholas Hayward
Brought to you courtesy of moneycorp
moneycorp is a foreign exchange specialist with over 30 years of experience, handling over 2.4 million transactions a year.

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