Living in France, Geneva border

AFAIK, they get cancelled out by impot a la source in GVA.

Hello,
Given two options, 1400 chf rent for 1 bedroom near the airport, < 40m2, in GVA or 850 euro for 1 bedroom, also 39m2, in Annemasse, what would you prefer?

Both are close tram and same distance to work.

You are the one planning to move. The question is “what do you prefer” ? Living in Geneva or France, both options have pros and cons. They vary for each one of us.

Your professional activity (now or in the future) can have an impact. More employers make/can make the residency in Switzerland mandatory. If you rent, you could easily move back. If you own a flat and have to sell it, it adds complexities.

on income and capital gains from financial products only. Income tax rate will vary from 0% to 45%. However, the tax at source withheld in Switzerland will be used as a tax credit.

Sorry it was without context but i meant 30% is the French Withholding Tax on dividend and capital gain so it can impact your investment.
The good things in France is the increase of the saving rate due to the cost of living/ life style.

Hi, I work in a stable company for some years now and most are frontaliers, so they don’t mind. I should stay there for few more years for sure.
The think is that, I believe, if i don’t stay there, it will be easy to rent it out to other expat/students - instead of selling it.

This is scary. All my colleagues tell me that this tax credit from GVA is all they pay and no need to pay taxes in FR. Only dividends and other income.

EDIT:

CASE 2: Other employees taxed by Switzerland (example: canton of Geneva)

You are not considered a fiscal frontier.

You are taxed in Switzerland at source and you must declare this income in France, the state of your tax residence.

However, there will be no “double taxation”: it will be eliminated on the French side by applying the terms provided for by the Franco-Swiss tax treaty (art.25A): taxation accompanied by a tax credit.

=> No double taxation - How to declare my income from CASE 2

Thank you

Regardless of Covid curfew, there’s also the issue of schooling your kids.

The Geneva state/canton has recently issued new rules whereby the kids living in France cannot be in Geneva public school system unless they have already started there. Depending on your goals, you could plan ahead and move out of Geneva canton only after your kids have started school. Of course, this depends on your view of public school systems on either side of the border.

Apart from the obvious fact that economically it’s way more interest to be in France, if your plan is to stay in the region temporarily, I think it makes sense.

All other living costs are also lower, seems like a no-brainer from numbers perspective.

Personally I plan to stick around, so, some kind of sense of belonging is important plus not really great fan of FR politics.

Wouldn’t move to Gaillard/Annemasse if rent was for free, but that is me.

But I understand people that move, RE is stupidly expensive, and there are few real advantages of living here from a finance perspective.

The Lamal costs seem like a gift from GVA for cross-borders, don’t understand why they don’t get diluted with the rest of the resident population if they have the same benefits.

Another aspect, could be the dating possibility if you are single.
Will it be easier to find partner in France or Geneva?

I guess it can strike anywhere, even in the supermarket, not sure it’s a factor ahah

While GVA may seem like curfew in most of the places, by Plainpalais there is always some afterwork/University ambiance and quite a lot of bars if that is your thing. Laughable when compared to major cities but for sure much better than the (non-existent?) night-life in dormitory-towns across the border. Unless you go to Annecy, but then you have 1hx2 per day stuck in an iron box called car.

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:smiley: I have been reading more into it and the consensus is that Annemasse is horrible :smiley: There must be some other zones with nice neighbours or expats.

I’ll return to GVA if the kids decide to come back :smiley:

HI

I did the exact opposite.
Living in Versonnex (close to the border) in the country side, I decided to move to Meyrin.
First for school. It is night vs day. France: no teacher, no will to have the children sucess, teacher sick, bad food for lunch, problem for after hours childcare.
My child was about to enter 6ième (eqv 7th grade) and would have had to ride 45 minutes the bus to and back from school…
$I had 45 minutes drive to work and my wife, working in meyrin) at laeast 30.

Now :

  • children are 5 min walk from school
  • my wife is 4 min walk from work
  • we have the personnal numbers of the teacher that calls us in case of a problem
  • sick teacher are replaced so children always have school
  • children are very happy with school lunch and after school care

from a financial point of view… not sure it is better but we surely have a far greater quality of life (even during COVID)

in Meyrin :

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Moved to France a couple of years ago from GVA. I travel into Geneva three days a week, when there’s not a global pandemic on, and work from home for an extra day.

My house probably cost 30% of the cost in Geneva (maybe even less) and I really like the village I live in. I can get out into the mountains directly from my front door, which is important to me, and the community is friendly and open. Which didn’t seem to be the case in Geneva outside expat circles.

The way I see it if I can keep a swiss salary and French cost of living for a few years then I’ll have saved enough that I won’t need to worry about how much I’m getting paid after that. My next job after this will probably be a completely remote job in France. At this point I expect to be earning a lot less.

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Congrats that is working out for you. Would you share the neighborhood that you live in? Maybe close to Saleve? I’m looking for rents from 700 to 900, but most people tell me it is more like 1000+ euro

I’m much further away not far from St Gervais les Bains. The commute is a real hassle but if you love the mountains then there’s nowhere better.

I guess it all depends if you have a car, and if you would be happy to spend your time chilling in the village or at home. Or you do it just to save extra money?
I don’t know your situation but if you regularly save 40/50% of your salary, you can totally afford some extra comfort.

I moved from Saint-Genis Poully to Geneva, as paying extra 200-300 chf on rent (I am lucky at finding good rents in Geneva) and slightly more expensive grocery (I dont buy meat), was worth it.
I can go for a walk to the lake, choose in which bar to stop for a coffee, see friends without too much planning for bus/tram.
I gladly pay extra for my happiness.

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Commute? I would call that traveling (daily) :slight_smile:

Honestly, you are close to the mountains, but do you really have time to enjoy it during the week with a 2x1h+ of commute?

The way I see it it’s better to do 2x2x1h+ to do Geneva>> Mountains (assuming you go Saturday+Sunday) than do 5x2x1h+ Geneva>> Home, Monday-Friday to be able to have them next door on the weekend. Not to talk that you probably have traffic each way with the commute.

Just my opinion, you are free to do what you want of course.

Fair comment. Other life choices are available. I live where I do because it’s where I want to live the next couple of decades.

I have kids. It’s a lot easier to move me a few times a week than move the whole family. Not to mention having to own or rent two houses seems pretty impractical to me but I’m sure it can work.

I haven’t been to the office in a year so commuting is not much of a problem at the moment. If I had to go back to commuting three days a week I would probably get tired of it and maybe get a remote job or reduce my hours further. No pressure to do that any time soon and maybe never again.

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Rinch, you seem to have a nice life; it’s great that it works for you!
I am contemplating doing the same: moving to the french alps. But being Swiss, I have no idea of french taxes. How do you get taxed in France if you have little or no income (basically an early retiree)? Where can I find a tax calculator?

You can certainly do an advance simulation using this form.

However France is not really keen with FIRE movement.

  • You will also need include the 30% flat tax on dividend and capital gain.
  • Last but not list, you need to be aware of the Cotisation subsidiaire maladie named Protection Universelle Maladie or PUMa which is similar to LAMal. You will have to contribute to the national health care system if you have no activity at all (for Early Retiree) as it is taken out of your salary in France.

There are specific rules to not target everyone but only people that could.
If

  • you are not a retiree getting your pension or any unemployment benefits;
  • your revenu from your employment is less than 10% Plafond Annuel de la Sécurité Sociale (PASS). As it is updated every year in 2021, you will need a minimum of 4 113 euro generated from your activity for you and same for your partner so a total of 8 300 euros yearly for the whole family.
  • your Net Worth revenu are above 25% of the PASS. In 2021, it will be 10 300 euros.

This cotisation is collected by Urssaf at the end of November of the following year (y+1) and it is 6,5 % of your Net Worth revenu above 20 568 euros.
The tax is limited at 8 x the PASS or a total of 329 088 euros in 2021. So your maximal contribution will be 21 390 euros. Which is in addition for the Revenu tax or any other sociale contribution (CSG).
It is targeting about 45 000 french residents.

You can contest it but it is not an easy process for a French speaker.

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At the moment I’m a frontalier so I I pay income tax on my salary in Switzerland. I have a French accountant who does my French tax return. Given I have hardly any income in France I don’t have much to pay at the moment. This will clearly change when I eventually retire.

As a frontalier you can choose between LaMal in Switzerland or the french system. As a relatively high earner the swiss system works out cheaper. As a lower earner the french system would be cheaper as it is 6.5% of income not a flat rate. At the moment I have LaMal but this would change if I stopped working in Switzerland. You can use the French healthcare system even if you opt for LaMal.

It’s a very good point from FunnyDjo that the flip side of all the nice things about France are high taxes. You can reduce them to some extent using the Assurance Vie or the PEA (investment vehicles) but there is definitely none of this zero capital gains business, like in Switzerland.

I haven’t really worked out how to make it all work. I’m not sure if I would ever stop working even if I could afford it. This series of articles (in French) discusses some of the pros and cons of FIRE in France.

My personal take is that France is a difficult place to be rich but an easy place to avoid being poor. Once I want to move towards less work I would probably set up as a microentrepreneur. I know lots of people who work under this system for sporadic or seasonal work. As long as you earn more than about EUR4000 per year then healthcare is covered. something like Barista FIRE but ideally with a little bit of relatively well paid work.

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