| Pages in topic: [1 2] > | Tax residence certificate for 2022 Thread poster: bewley
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bewley 
Local time: 15:45
French to English
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I keep being asked for a tax residence certificate for 2022 by a French client. I’ve already given them a certificate for 2021. Can HMRC actually issue certificates for future periods though as 2022 isn’t over yet? Also, is anyone else having problems with HMRC taking forever to send certificates? I’d be grateful for any input as the client is threatening to not pay me
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I suppose you’re talking about a French group which some years ago kept asking me for tax residence certificates. Once I gave them the certificates, I was asked to deliver certificates even for years I did not work with them (???). So, after a few email exchanges without any valid explanation as to why they needed those, I decided to stop working with them.
As far as I know you can apply for this certificate on the 1st day of the tax year for which you need the certificate. At th... See more I suppose you’re talking about a French group which some years ago kept asking me for tax residence certificates. Once I gave them the certificates, I was asked to deliver certificates even for years I did not work with them (???). So, after a few email exchanges without any valid explanation as to why they needed those, I decided to stop working with them.
As far as I know you can apply for this certificate on the 1st day of the tax year for which you need the certificate. At that point, you can only estimate the income you will earn which is rather difficult for a freelancer. You should be as careful as possible with this estimate, as it is then cross-checked with your tax return (at least in my country). ▲ Collapse
| | | | Monica RW
Local time: 16:45
Member (2015)
English to Polish
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| Tax residence certificate | Aug 23, 2022 |
The tax residence certificate does not show your income but it confirms that you are registered for tax purposes in the given country for the given year. That's it. And for instance, in Spain, you take it online in less than 1 minute without any problems. Ask your accountant about it. Monika
| | | | | That agency-eating agency and French tax law | Aug 23, 2022 |
Teresa Borges wrote:
I suppose you’re talking about a French group which some years ago kept asking me for tax residence certificates. Once I gave them the certificates, I was asked to deliver certificates even for years I did not work with them (???). So, after a few email exchanges without any valid explanation as to why they needed those, I decided to stop working with them.
Last year, that agency started asking for such tax certificates while at the same time reducing the fuzzy-match percentages to an unacceptable level. I asked them for the legal basis for that tax certificate. They referred me to Article 182 B of the Code général des impôts, which stipulates that tax withholding in our case concerns 'Les sommes versées en rémunération d'une activité déployée en France dans l'exercice de l'une des professions mentionnées à l'article 92' (amounts paid as remuneration for an activity carried out in France in the exercise of one of the professions mentioned in Article 92).
The tax bulletin BOI-IR-DOMIC-10-20-20-50 explains how to apply Article 182 B:
'en ce qui concerne les sommes versées dans le cadre de l'une des professions mentionnées à l'article 92 du CGI, l'activité doit toujours être déployée en France. Ainsi, la retenue n'a pas à être opérée sur les commissions versées à des représentants à l'étranger qui se bornent à recueillir des commandes dans les pays de leur résidence. Bien entendu, les dispositions précédentes s'appliquent sous réserve des conventions internationales destinées à éviter les doubles impositions. L'incidence de ces accords au regard des conditions d'application de la retenue à la source est examinée au BOI-INT-CVB'
(with regard to sums paid in the context of one of the professions mentioned in Article 92 of the CGI, the activity must always be carried out in France. Thus, the withholding tax does not have to be applied to commissions paid to representatives abroad who merely take orders in their country of residence. Of course, the above provisions apply subject to international agreements for the avoidance of double taxation. The impact of these agreements on the conditions for the application of the withholding tax is discussed in BOI-INT-CVB.)
So we are not concerned by this tax withholding and requirement for tax certificates unless the work is carried out in France. Furthermore, France cannot withhold tax in the cases where a double-tax agreement stipulates otherwise.
This tax disposition only applies to entities that are not domiciled in France, so a tax certificate doesn't prove anything useful, as a foreign entity could still be subject to withholding tax in France if it carried out activities in France.
I put this to the agency in question, but they just returned some haughty blather, seemingly quite offended that I dared to contest their French bureaucracy, which many people like to gold-plate. In any case, as their fuzzy grid had become unacceptable, it wasn't worth the trouble insisting on the tax certificate matter.
[Edited at 2022-08-23 08:52 GMT]
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| Are your invoices addressed to a UK subsidiary? | Aug 23, 2022 |
I think I know which group we're talking about here. Last year, its HQ pestered me repeatedly to provide tax certificates going back several years and warned me that if I didn't submit them by a deadline and thus failed to prove I wasn't tax-resident in France (like there's any chance I would be, living in the UK!), it would start withholding French tax from payments to me. It claimed this policy was due to a new French law.
Reluctantly, I tried - unsuccessfully - to get certificat... See more I think I know which group we're talking about here. Last year, its HQ pestered me repeatedly to provide tax certificates going back several years and warned me that if I didn't submit them by a deadline and thus failed to prove I wasn't tax-resident in France (like there's any chance I would be, living in the UK!), it would start withholding French tax from payments to me. It claimed this policy was due to a new French law.
Reluctantly, I tried - unsuccessfully - to get certificates from HMRC. I didn't receive them because, I was told, I had applied for the wrong type of certificate, even though I had done exactly as the group had asked; it had even provided a link to what turned out to be the wrong application page. I didn't try again as I felt it wasn't worth the hassle, the process of applying was very time-consuming (HMRC even wanted to know how many days I had spent outside the country in each year!), and this wasn't exactly one of my favourite or most important clients anyway. Some time after the deadline for submitting the certificates to the group had passed, a PM contacted me about a new job and I told her I would put up my rate to make up for the French tax the group was going to deduct. She balked at this and, if I remember rightly, decided not to assign the job to me.
But then something dawned on me. Whenever I had worked for this group, I had been contacted by (usually Canada-based) PMs working for a French (Paris-based) company that the group had acquired in the autumn of 2020, but when it came to payments, both before and after the takeover, I had addressed my invoices - as instructed - to a UK-based subsidiary of the Paris company. It seemed odd to me that I was being asked to provide tax certificates to prove I didn't have to pay French tax when, in fact, I was being paid by a UK company which shouldn't be subject to any French tax laws.
I queried this and said I didn't understand why I had to provide the certificates. A man in the group's office in India confirmed to me I had indeed been working for a UK company, but he still wanted certificates for the previous year because, he said, a couple of my invoices dated that year had been addressed to the Paris company. He even told me the amounts of these supposed invoices in EUR, but didn't give me the dates or reference numbers. I was immediately sceptical, checked my invoices and found that he was mistaken (or lying). I hadn't addressed any invoices to the French company in that year, or even in the 5-6 years preceding that. All of my invoices had been in GBP and had been addressed to the UK company. I told him that and challenged him to send me the invoices I had supposedly billed to the Paris company. I got no reply for a while, but eventually he got back to me and accepted that I was right and didn't need to provide any certificates. So all the palaver over tax certificates had been for nothing!
The upshot of this complicated tale is this: have your invoices been addressed to a French company or a UK subsidiary? If the latter, then I don't think you should have to provide any certificates. If we're talking about the same Parisian company within the same group, then I believe all UK translators are supposed to invoice the UK subsidiary, and not the Parisian company directly.
[Edited at 2022-08-24 09:39 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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I’m sure we are talking about the same French group as my story is similar to yours (a man in the group's office in India). I always worked with the same French company that the group had acquired some time ago and was required to invoice two different addresses: Paris and Croissy sur Seine.
| | | | | Another hallmark | Aug 23, 2022 |
Teresa Borges wrote:
I’m sure we are talking about the same French group as my story is similar to yours (a man in the group's office in India). I always worked with the same French company that the group had acquired some time ago and was required to invoice two different addresses: Paris and Croissy sur Seine.
Interesting... I know the invoicing procedures vary according to which country you're in because they once sent me a complicated mass email with a list of addresses for invoicing purposes. The address you had to put depended on the PO reference. I don't think this company's staff know what they're doing as they appeared not to have known that if a UK-based translator invoices a UK company, the translator doesn't need to supply a tax residence certificate for the French authorities. And they bombarded me with warnings about the whole tax certificate thing for months before conceding it didn't apply to me.
One other thing: did this company ever adopt a policy of haggling really hard over the price of every job? Because prior to the takeover of the Parisian company I mentioned above, it had never tried to renegotiate prices, but within just days of the takeover by the mammoth group in 2020, its PMs suddenly started making ridiculous overtures such as "I can offer you 50%/70% of your rate" for enormous documents needed urgently for a court case. I turned that down flat, and what happened? It turned out they could pay me 100% of my rate. The words "amateurish" and "cheeky" don't even come close! And this company surely doesn't deserve any accolades for professionalism...
[Edited at 2022-08-23 16:25 GMT]
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The work I did for them was always editing. At first in 2018 I was paid correctly (my usual rate per hour), but over the years things changed and I had to negotiate the rate proposed for the last job I did for them in 2020. Then started the tax certificate “dance” and I promptly said “au revoir sans bisou ni accolade”…
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[Edited at 2022-08-24 04:44 GMT]
| | | | Lieven Malaise
Belgium
Local time: 16:45
Member (2020)
French to Dutch
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| I don't think this is a problem. | Aug 24, 2022 |
Last year or so I was asked by three different, long-standing French clients to deliver those certificates, around the same period. Those clients were and still are very trustworthy. There must have been some French legislation change that justifies those requests. Or they have been audited and perhaps been pointed out that they needed to provide those certificates. It didn't and still doesn't seem fishy to me.
| | | | bewley
Local time: 15:45
French to English
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TOPIC STARTER | Tax residence certificate for future periods? | Aug 24, 2022 |
I think you all guessed the agency correctly and I think they are just asking for these certificates due to a change in tax law in France. My main issue is them asking for a certificate for 2022. Can they be issued for future periods given that 2022 isn't over yet and I could leave the country next month. I thought they were issued for previous periods because the tax authority has proof that I was a UK resident in 2021 but has no idea what my plans are for the rest of 2022.
| | | | | Current year | Aug 24, 2022 |
bewley wrote:
My main issue is them asking for a certificate for 2022. Can they be issued for future periods given that 2022 isn't over yet and I could leave the country next month. I thought they were issued for previous periods because the tax authority has proof that I was a UK resident in 2021 but has no idea what my plans are for the rest of 2022.
I remember looking into this last year. My vague recollection is that it is possible to get one for the current (unfinished) tax year. I think I remember being given the option to apply for a certificate covering the current year to date at some point during the online application process. If you make an application, you'll find out one way or the other.
My understanding is that if you've already spent at least 90 consecutive days in the UK since the beginning of the current tax year, then you should automatically be considered tax-resident in the UK for this year, wherever you spend the rest of the year. It's possible to be tax-resident in more than one country in a given tax year.
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| French agencies and tax residence certificate | Aug 25, 2022 |
I have been working for a long time with several French agencies and so far none has required my annual tax residence certificate (but the one mentioned before). Over the years, I was asked only twice to produce this certificate: 1. by a Portuguese media group (when I was still living in Belgium) and 2. by a Greek translation agency after I moved to Portugal (interesting enough they were my clients before that)…
| | | | | Certificates | Aug 25, 2022 |
Whenever someone asks me for such certificates, I ask them to justify which law or regulation they base their request on. Every time I have checked, it has turned out that the agency is misreading the requirements and that such certificates are not required. I think some agencies don't examine it properly and then just pushes the administrative burden onto us just to be sure.
When I lived in France, I noticed that public bodies frequently exaggerated the documentation required and i... See more Whenever someone asks me for such certificates, I ask them to justify which law or regulation they base their request on. Every time I have checked, it has turned out that the agency is misreading the requirements and that such certificates are not required. I think some agencies don't examine it properly and then just pushes the administrative burden onto us just to be sure.
When I lived in France, I noticed that public bodies frequently exaggerated the documentation required and invented their own rules that were stricter than those in the law, and that administrative staff typically only understood the most common cases and didn't bother to check the rules for more complex or unusual ones, choosing instead to reject the request based on their personal sentiments instead of consulting with more experienced staff. It resulted in endless complaints being necessary. Through the 15 years I spent there, it increasingly drove me up the wall, and I finally left the country to be able to focus on my work instead of administration.
This bureaucracy culture makes things in France very difficult to handle. ▲ Collapse
| | | | bewley
Local time: 15:45
French to English
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TOPIC STARTER | Issue finally resolved | Aug 25, 2022 |
I spoke to HRMC about it, after waiting on hold for a very long time, and they confirmed that they don't issue certificates for future periods. I told the agency this and they've finally accepted it. I've wasted a lot of time on this
| | | | | Pages in topic: [1 2] > | To report site rules violations or get help, contact a site moderator: You can also contact site staff by submitting a support request » Tax residence certificate for 2022 | Trados Business Manager Lite | Create customer quotes and invoices from within Trados Studio
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