How to annoy the French tax office

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:01:00]That's mommy or daddy, I don't know. And every time I'm in the workshop, they come in with food for the chicks um and sort of give out to me for being in my own workshop. So, I have to sort of leave so they can feed the chicks in peace.

[00:01:52]Good morning. It's what day is today?

[00:01:55]Tuesday today and we're on the way to work at the chatau chat damont to be clear. I know there's many chateau in France, but we're going to the coolest one today because let's face it, it is. Um, apologies for the audio fidelity today in Pascal. I've forgotten the little cable that I can plug the microphone into the camera with. So, this is just the microphone on the camera. So, hopefully it's intelligible. Although, argument could be made to say, Brian, rarely what you say is intelligible. Anyway, that doesn't matter. This might not even make it into a vlog because I don't know. I've been chatting a lot in cars lately and yeah, but yeah, we're on the way to work. We're on the way to work. Yeah, we're on the way to work.

[00:02:41]You're coming with me and I'm looking forward to seeing that mad old sausage.

[00:02:46]I have no idea what the plan for the day is. Zero idea. I was up there last week for lunch cuz Calvin was up and he was sort of preparing things to do, but I don't think well he didn't tell me what he's landed on doing today. So, who knows? Could be anything. Just sit around drinking coffee most of the day.

[00:03:08]Who knows? But there's a puppy waiting on me and that's all I'm kind of focused on at the minute to be honest. Um, I have some lovely new work clothes on as you may have noticed. And if you are noticing my lovely new work clothes, notice that this will be the last time they are this clean cuz it's uh raining this morning a little bit. It's going to clear up in a minute. Um, so I'm imagining many dirty puppy paw prints will be on me and also whatever shenanigans we get up to today. Why are you covered in dirt? What were you up to?

[00:03:46]What is in your Oh my god.

[00:03:50]Look. See? This is what I'm dealing with. Mankey little puppy with a fat belly.

[00:03:56]You know why you have a fat belly? Do you want to tell them why you have a fat belly? Cuz you stole lunch.

[00:04:02]Nice little ham sandwich you had for yourself. Right, come on then.

[00:04:08]Got any eggs?

[00:04:17]Hi there.

[00:04:20]Oo.

[00:04:37]Showmont omelette for brine for dinner.

[00:04:44]>> This video is sponsored by Novium.

[00:04:47]Novian make the Hoverpen Interstellar and the Hoverpen Future and they both make great gifts. I gave one to my friend Ben last year who has it sitting on his desk in his engineers's office in Germany. It's a funky thing and it comes in really cool packaging. So, it's sort of ready to be gifted because when you open the box, everything's laid out nice and neatly. The magnetic base the pen sits in is quite cool as well. It sits at an angle of 23.5° which mimics the Earth's axial tilt and it doesn't require electricity for the pen to spin on its base. It comes in four colors.

[00:05:18]Ben got the blue one. And I have the black hover pen future sitting on my desk in the workshop. And to be honest with you, it is quite nice having a pen I can just grab when I need because I'm constantly losing pens and pencils. So to have something in its own dedicated stand has just been kind of handy for me to have here. There's a promo code in the description of the video and if you scan the QR code on the screen, it'll bring you to the website where you can buy one of these pens.

[00:05:48]Now, just a quick thing about the beer.

[00:05:50]If you see me drinking beer on the vlogs, you see me light's terrible.

[00:05:56]Chances are it's zero zero. Let me start that again. Chances are it's zero zero beer.

[00:06:05]And that's mostly because I don't know.

[00:06:07]I just like the taste of beer, but I don't want to be having alcoholic beer all the time. I do have a nice alcoholic beer from time to time, but for the most part, just a nice cold glass or bottle of um non-alcoholic beer does me just as well.

[00:06:24]Also, in France, um I don't know if you know this, we drink the bottles of beer you see are quite small. Uh 33 CL. I don't know what that is. It's the size of a can of Coke. Now, actually, that's not very helpful if you live in America cuz cans of Coke are bigger. So, if you live in the UK or Ireland or wherever, can of Coke. Everyone knows what a can of Coke looks like. Small thing. That's the size of a French beer. Actually, I think it's smaller. I think it's 250 here. So, it's smaller than the can of Coke. Uh I don't know what that equates to in America because I know in America you you guys drink larger volumes of things, but it's quite a small beer. So, the non-alcoholic is quite cool. The trick I have found with non-alcoholic beer because not all of it tastes brilliant is you got to you got to hold on you it has to be cold. If it's cold it's lovely. Like I mean as cold as you can possibly get it. Um but if it's not cold it's not brilliant. I suppose warm beer in general isn't brilliant. That's enough about beer. Time to get some work done.

[00:07:37]nail gun.

[00:07:48]No, can't be that much.

[00:07:54]It cannot be that much.

[00:07:59]120 quid for a small little canister of gas for a nail gun. Not a chance. I'm paying 100. Well, I'm not paying it, but not a chance. We're paying 120 quid for gas for a nail gun. Like I said, normally when you order a box of nails, you get like I think it's like 5,000 nails in a box. And they send you uh gas cartridges with the box of nails.

[00:08:25]And I'm pretty sure we have some at the chatau. So, I'm going to we're going to risk it first cuz there's two new boxes of nails upstairs that I found yesterday. And I reckon there's about four gas cartridges in there. Let's try that one first before we go and spend 120 quid and a little toothpaste tube size thing of gas. Oh my god. Greenhouse update.

[00:08:49]Everything is still alive. Me lettuce is absolutely thriving. So, I'm delighted about that because that's really tasty and everything else is sort of doing its thing. So, I'm happy with that. I'm just going to keeping it watered. It gets hotish here. Well, it's a greenhouse so obviously it gets hot, but um I don't want it to get too hot. So, I do leave the door open sort of when I'm kicking about here on a sunny day cuz I don't want it to overheat. And I've got a vent in the top. I'll open that up in a second. But, I'm delighted. Everything's flying. Absolutely flying. Right.

[00:09:33]First kind of normal job of today. You see me? He's a bit wobbly. Is to get normal person clothes.

[00:09:48]Don't really go in for normal person clothes, you know, like jeans and shirts and things. This is the Catholon. I think it's one of the only shirts I have, but I've been invited to a few events, not big events, like barbecues and things this summer. And I feel I should get semi-respectable clothes rather than just an action t-shirt or an out pair of work pants.

[00:10:26]Welcome to Brian being not in his comfort zone. I hate these places.

[00:10:32]Give me normal clothes.

[00:10:41]No, it's not terrible.

[00:10:47]>> I I have no idea. I have no idea.

[00:10:58]>> Where do you pay for these things?

[00:11:01]This is why I don't go clothes shopping.

[00:11:06]There's quite enough of that madness for one day summer year.

[00:11:12]Okay, onto our next meeting. And our next meeting is to go and annoy the tax office. is in France where we are if you're self-employed or what's called an auto entrepreneur which ends very grand an organization called Ursaf kind of looks after all your taxes and all your bits and bobs it's all very interesting not really but um because it's France god knows what's happening so they're doing this thing at the moment where every auto entrepreneur has to now submit invoices electronically I think onto a portal. I'm not 100% sure, but they've they've changed the whole system. And it's one of the many things that they do in France sort of at random throughout the year. Now, they have an online portal where you pay your taxes normally every quarter or every month or every year or whatever it is. And it's pretty straightforward. But seeing as French isn't my first language, although France is my home and I am learning, I'm always a bit paranoid about getting everything correct when it comes to taxes and all that other stuff. So about once every 3 months, I make an appointment with Ursaf, the people who do all the other entrepreneur stuff. Go into them with all the bits and bobs and say to them, "Is this all okay? And if it's not, can you tell me how to fix it?" I think they're getting sick of me at this stage. But I'd much rather them being sick of seeing me than me being sick of seeing them. So it's something I like to keep on top of. Basically, just go in and go, "Here is all my information. Does that match the information you have? And if not, tell me how we can fix it. And thankfully, in all the times I've gone into them, there's never been an issue. But, and I can't stress this highly enough, this is France. And I never want to get a letter in the door saying, "Oh, we changed the rules 6 months ago. Didn't you here?"

[00:13:08]Because they do that from time to time, and I just want to make sure I'm on top of it all. So, that's where we're going now. Hopefully, it won't take long.

[00:13:15]Maybe 20 minutes and then we can go about the rest of our day and enjoy the sunshine.

[00:13:30]Right. Well, that all went really well.

[00:13:32]Really helpful lady called Julia sorted me right out in the tax office. Just showed her everything I had. No dramas.

[00:13:38]But she even gave me a card with her number on it and said if you got any problems, any questions, give me a call.

[00:13:42]So, I'm well happy with that. So that's today's bit of a hodge plodge of a vlog.

[00:13:47]I do hope you enjoyed it. Plenty to do here tomorrow on the farm and then I think of something to do on Sunday as well, but we might squeeze in a bit of adventure in between now and then. So, thank you very much for watching. Do hope you enjoyed it and I'll see you soon.