I have just received my annual tax statement from the French tax authorities, this is always issued in August of each year and relates to tax due on income up to the 31st December of the previous year.
This is the second return that I've made since we moved here and I am pretty pleased that once again I have managed to complete the 8 or so pages in French and had them accepted by the authorities.

I think with even very limited French anyone moving here should with a bit of common sense be able to fill these out plus I have put together some notes on my Living in Brittany website which although fairly basic ie: relating to others in similar positions to ourselves being on old age pensions plus some private pensions and some income from investments should give anyone a good reference to start with.

The tax return is important to us as by proving our income to be below a certain level, and this is the only proof that is accepted, means that we get out Tax D'habitation reduced to zero and a hundred euro reduction on our Tax Fonciere. Tax D'habitation and Tax Fonciere together are the equivalent of  house council tax or rates in the UK.

By doing some reading up on the rules I was also able to reclaim nearly 300 euros of tax that I had paid on a wood burner that we had installed last year, It is worth noting though that this has to be installed by a professional  with a copy of the original paid invoice to enable this. This would also be reclaimable on other eco friendly installations such as cavity or roof insulation, double glazing etc. 

Two year anniversary

Unbelievable, but we have now been here living in brittany for just over two years. The time just seems to have flown by and we are feeling very settled here and made a wide range of good friends since we arrived.
I really do have to keep an online calendar as there is never a week where we are not doing something with someone or another and dread the thought of double booking!

This last few weeks has been a very busy time for us as a group of friends from an online forum I have been on for years came over to France to our house for the Annual BBQ we had every bedroom full and the rest stayed in a B&B close by, the weather was a bit spotty with rain that day but certainly didn't take anything away from the proceedings.

We then had my brother Roger and his wife Margaret arrive for a holiday with us, I think they would agree we had a very social time indeed while they were here with many BBQs at home, dinners out and vistis and meals with many of our friends here.

These are just a few of the photos I took whilst with friends over the last three weeks so a big thanks to

Steve, Majella, Andy, Carole, John, Sandra, Bob, Blanca, Roger, Lorrie, Roger, Margaret, Ron, Ethal, Roger, Anne, John, Sue, Alec, Dave, Jane, Malcolm, Maureen, Donnie, Rosie, Michel, Els, Richard, Katrina and others who I am sure I have missed out