In effect, the self-employed will revert to the pre-2009 situation before the invention of the Auto-Entreprise and be strangled at birth by taxes, social charges and layers of confusing bureaucracy. The present number of Auto-Entreprises is 900,000 and the majority will die, the “black economy” will burgeon once more and compared with that 30% of young people in the UK looking to start their own business, the figure for France will be more like 3%.

If you care about the future of the Auto-Entrepreneurs sign up to the Coordination de Défense des Auto-Entrepreneurs, an internet-based lobby group founded at the end of April to defend the AE status (see www.facebook.com/DefenseAE or www.federation-auto-entrepreneur.fr). Les poussins, as they are known, organised demonstrations in June across France and one hopes they'll have the same success as les pigeons, a small business lobby that helped overturn Hollande’s crazy notion of inflicting massive capital gains tax on the sale of a business.
As always, with the current government it is likely that there’ll be a change of direction, one minister saying one thing and another saying the opposite. There is no clarity at the top in government, just constraint and ambiguity!
Changes in tax rules concerning expatriates in France
Some of the ambiguity, however, has worked in favour of those with second homes, as President Hollande has reduced the term needed to be free of capital gains tax on a holiday home from 30 years to 20, and elsewhere it has been confirmed that social charges will not be levied on the pro- fit from UK rental property. A little bit of good news to mitigate the rest of the gloom.
Enjoy the summer and let’s see what happens at la rentrée: a considerable majority of the French feel that with all the social unrest quelque chose va péter – something is going to blow. Man the barricades!