Registering a LMNP

Hello Valerie

My wife and I purchased an apartment near Cannes in 2008 under a 20 year leaseback arrangement, and were able to benefit from
the government scheme at the time by reclaiming TVA on the apartment purchase price. After 10 years the lease company (Exploitant) terminated the original Bail Commercial and we negotiated a two year Mandat Gestion, with rolling 1 year extensions. The Mandat Gestion replicates the services provided by the lease company but we now rent the apartment for only six weeks in the summer months and are able to benefit from ownership of the apartment for the rest of the year.
We have had significant problems recently with the lease company (they were recently taken over) and plan to terminate the Mandat Gestion at the end of this year. We have a number of questions we would like answering regarding registering and setting up and new no professional LMNP:

1. Under normal circumstances we would simply terminate the existing Mandat Gestion and not rent or lease the apartment again - but our understanding is that this would result in the tax authority seeking repayment of a portion of the TVA we were refunded on the original purchase - is this correct?

2. To avoid repayment of the TVA, we would like to continue to rent the apartment for a few weeks in the summer months by registering ourselves as a non professional LMNP. We would then rent the apartment through AirBnB (or equivalent) and provide the services required under the original Residence de Tourism scheme (meet and greet, cleaning, bed linen etc) through a third party we know who lives local to the apartment - would this arrangement be acceptable to the tax authorities?

3. I assume my wife and I would need to register as the non professional LMNP, but would we require a formal contract with the service provider for meet and greet, cleaning etc or would a less formal arrangement be acceptable providing we are able to document all of the costs and expenses involved for our accountant?

4. I understand we would be required to charge TVA on our rental weeks, and our accountant would then be required to pass on the TVA payments to the tax authorities each year when they complete our annual accounts for our tax submission - is this correct?

5. Are there any other considerations that we would need to think about before terminating our Mandat Gestion with the current ‘Exploitant’?

Many thanks

Mark