# Working for a Canadian Company in France



## KMGF

Hello, 

I am planning to move to France with my French husband and I am a Canadian who also has an Italian passport. If I continue to work an online job for a Canadian online College, are there any tax implications? Will I have to be a 'contractor' for my Canadian company and create an AE in France? 

Thanks!


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## Bevdeforges

Where your employer is located (or incorporated) and where and how you are paid (in what currency and paid into what bank) has little to no bearing on your tax obligations. You are considered to be working in whatever country you are physically located in whilst doing the work for which you are being paid. So basically, you will pay your taxes to France and you will have to be enrolled in the French social insurances ("cotisations"). 

Becoming a "contractor" via a French AE is one of the more popular ways to deal with this sort of situation, but there are other options. 

Your Canadian employer could apply to URSSAF to register as a "French employer with no presence in France" - whereby they would pay you, deducting and paying the employer share of the usual round of French cotisations and tax withholdings directly to the French government (via URSSAF). This one is pretty hard to pull off, since the employer portion of the French social insurances is considerably higher than those in Canada (or other countries) and most foreign employers aren't willing to spring for the extra charges.

If your employer has a French branch or office with a regular French payroll, they could pay you from that office - again, paying all the usual French withholdings and employer contributions for you. 

There are "portage companies" where you basically are paid by the portage company, who contracts with the foreign employer to handle the payroll side of your employment (and take a percentage cut of your gross pay for their services). 

Depending on your pay level, the contractor route is probably the simplest in the long run. But it does place the onus for complying with the French regulations squarely on your shoulders - which involves a bit more time on your part. You may want to consider negotiating a slightly higher rate of pay to cover the additional paperwork and responsibility you'll be taking on.


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## Crabtree

But can you be an AE if you are working solely and exclusively for one company especially if you were an employee of that country before?


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## Bevdeforges

Crabtree said:


> But can you be an AE if you are working solely and exclusively for one company especially if you were an employee of that country before?


That's always been something of an open question. If you're working exclusively for one company within France, I suspect that would cause problems - especially because the actual prohibition is (as I understand it) that you have to work to your own policies and standards, not allowing your "client" to dictate specifics of your working conditions. There may be a bit more "flexibility" to these terms if your one (or "main") client is overseas - particularly in a different time zone, but you never know exactly how these things will be enforced in practice. But as with so many things here in France, "your mileage may vary."


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