Cases from my own companies: what we decided and why.
VAT that gets stuck
Food supplements · 10% VAT on sales
Problem
We sell at the reduced 10% VAT rate, but almost all our costs (advertising, logistics, fees, services) carry 21%. Every quarter we paid more VAT than we charged, and the balance kept building up in our favour. Under the standard regime, the tax office only refunds it at year end: our own money tied up for months.
Decision
Register for the monthly refund scheme (REDEME), accepting what it involves: filing VAT every month and keeping our books through SII.
Result
We recover VAT every month instead of once a year. More admin in exchange for cash that no longer sits idle.
Lesson A business can be profitable and still run out of cash because of VAT. If you sell at a reduced rate and buy at the standard one, check your VAT before anything else.
Selling in Italy and Germany
Own-brand e-commerce · Amazon FBA
Problem
Selling in another EU country through Amazon looks like switching on a marketplace and sending stock. It isn't. Once your goods sit in an FBA warehouse abroad, that country wants things from you: its own VAT registration, EPR registration for packaging and waste, and someone local to file your taxes in its language and on its deadlines. Every country, its own paperwork.
Decision
Treat each country as a tax and admin project before a commercial one: get the registrations, the EPR and a local adviser sorted before the first shipment, not after the first letter from the tax office.
Result
We now sell in Italy and Germany, with stock in their warehouses and everything running. What looked like a barrier is now part of normal operations.
Lesson Opening a country isn't shipping stock. It's registering in that country. Doing it in that order is what prevents problems.
When to set up the holding company
Own-brand e-commerce · First business up and running
Problem
We started with a single company on purpose: we didn't know whether the business would work, and running two from day one means paying for a structure you may never use. Once it worked, the opposite problem appeared: every euro of profit we wanted to take out or reinvest elsewhere went through our personal income tax, and that bill grew with the business.
Decision
Set up the holding company as soon as the business proved it worked, not once profits were already large. We accepted the cost of running two companies in exchange for getting the structure right in time.
Result
Profits stay inside the structure and can fund the next project without first passing through the partners' personal income tax. We now have several new businesses in mind, and the structure to launch them already exists.
Lesson Structure isn't decided on day one, nor once the problem is already big. It's decided when the business proves it works.
How much margin you can give up to grow
Own-brand e-commerce · Amazon
Problem
Margin was a constant fight: every tool on the market calculated it its own way and none gave us the real figure by product, channel and country. Without that figure we didn't know how much we could spend on advertising without losing money, so we either spent blind or didn't spend at all.
Decision
Build our own way of measuring real margin, with everything deducted. Seeing it clearly showed us something we didn't expect: we had plenty of room to grow even if we gave some of it up along the way. We decided to spend more on advertising with one clear limit: each product's break-even point.
Result
Advertising stopped being a bet and became a decision with a known ceiling. We know how far we can push each product and how much it can grow before it stops being profitable.
Lesson Real margin isn't only for defending yourself. Sometimes it tells you that you can afford to give some of it up to grow.
These are decisions made for specific businesses. What worked here is not a recommendation for yours: every case is different, and that is what the diagnosis is for.
Shall we look at it?
The first step is a three-question form. It exists so neither of us spends a call finding out
this is not a fit.