Limited UK business with French branch?

Myself and my husband are at the moment self employed in the UK with a retail business which we have been running by regular visits back and to with great staff supporting us. We are now settled here in France and want to expand our existing business here. We have been advised that the best way to go forward is to turn our business in the UK to limited and operate a branch over here.

The UK buisness actually is two businesses combined into one retail unit, one being my business the other we are partners. My feelings are I do not really want to go Limited as I feel it will be costly for the business having already had a hard year with the recession and all. But looking at the French side of choices for self employed they too look expensive. We have ruled out auto-entrepreneur as you can not claim back expenses of stock purchases and we cant do that anyway. Have looked at the others too but very confused. My husband has a dormant Limited company that maybe we could use this if I decide to leave the other business alone.

If we have a Limited UK company do we pay our salaries via the French branch and if so what tax rates do we pay? Bearing in mind we would be managers of the French branch, if that makes any difference. Do we have a choice to pay ourselves from the branch or the UK office? Regarding dividends paid do we pay the UK rate or the French rate of taxes on theses?