French based consultancy business structure trading through UK

I am a director of a small UK consultancy limited company (Project Management and business improvement), trading primarily this year in the UK, Italy and the United States. I currently take a small salary per year (£5,600) and dividends from the business (typically £50,000-60,000 per annum).

Now that my wife and I live permanently in France I am considering setting up a business in France that will trade via the UK company with established clients. The incentive for doing this is to integrate into the French social system and in particular to get carte vitale cover for us both, (unfortunately the S1 route doesn’t work this year because of complexities introduced this summer). From reading other posts on your website it looks like the auto entrepreneur route is not applicable due to the turnover limit.

By and large all expenses are billable to the client so an SARL approach does not look very attractive due to the social charge applied as I will have limited opportunity to net off expenses.

I am therefore interested in options to establish a business that enables me trade efficiently without incurring a substantial tax liability. I have the option to take out full health insurance cover, which works as a short term solution but given that our plans are to stay in France into our retirement (I’m 52, and my wife is 51) I am keen to find a long term solution.