Recently, many sellers operating on the Italian site have received reminders from Amazon: Provide VAT information for Germany/UK/France within 14 days, otherwise it may affect the inventory + FBA permissions on the Italian site, there is a risk of account suspension, and Italian VAT issues may even affect the shipping/warehousing of other sites.

At present, most Chinese sellers operating on the Italian site have encountered similar reminders. It is precisely because of this that Amazon is relatively more lenient in dealing with Italian tax number issues.

However, the system prompt logic has not been fully updated, so some sellers still receive warnings of "account suspension risk", which may seem scary.

Don't be panicked! First, figure out whether you really need to register for Italian VAT and how to deal with it!

1. Situations where Italian VAT registration is not required

Strictly speaking, there is almost no real "exemption from registration" situation for Italian VAT. As long as a non-resident enterprise has taxable activities in Italy, it must complete VAT registration before starting sales, and there is no exemption threshold for sales volume.

However, in the following specific modes, you can temporarily not register for Italian VAT:

1. Only open sales on the Italian site, but do not use FBA in Italy, and have no local inventory or overseas warehouse. All orders are shipped from other EU countries such as Germany and France through EFN (European Distribution Network).

2. Have registered EU OSS (One-Stop Service) and declared remote sales to Italy uniformly through other EU countries, while not using local performance in Italy.

3. Adopt a pure MFN (Merchant Fulfilled Network) model, directly ship from abroad to Italian consumers, and do not use FBA or overseas warehouses.

2. Sellers who need to register for Italian VAT

1. All FBA sellers selling on the Italian site;

2. Sellers who use Pan-EU services and have inventory allocation in Italy;

3. Sellers who use Italian overseas warehouses for delivery.

The core principle can be summarized as: the inventory is in which country, you must register VAT in that country.

3. Conditions to keep Italian VAT valid

According to the latest requirements of the Italian tax authorities, to keep the VAT number valid, two guarantee conditions must be met at the same time:

1. Guarantee by the financial representative

Provided by the designated financial representative, the guarantee period shall not be less than 48 months.

2. Personal financial guarantee

The amount shall be at least 50,000 euros, and the period shall not be less than 36 months, usually provided in the form of a bank guarantee or insurance policy.

Both of these requirements must be met at the same time, and one cannot be missing.

Consequences of non-compliance:

Both guarantees are indispensable. If either the seller or the financial representative fails to provide a guarantee, the Italian tax authorities may delete the VAT number from VIES, causing the tax number to become invalid.

4. Solutions for invalid Italian VAT

1. Close Italian warehousing

Stop creating Italian FBA shipments; remove Pan-EU Italian inventory allocation in the backend; remove, abandon, or transfer existing Italian FBA inventory.

2. Check multi-country inventory reports

Backend → Inventory → European Inventory Report / Pan-EU Inventory Allocation → Confirm whether there is inventory automatically allocated to Italy, and whether there is still inventory in the Italian warehouse, and completely close related nodes.

3. Pay attention to the grace period exemption situation

Usually, it will go through several stages:

During the grace period (usually 14 days): System reminders are the main focus, and functions are basically normal

Just after the grace period: Italian FBA inventory can usually be sold normally for a period of time

About 14 days later: The inventory will begin to be frozen one after another

Once it enters the freezing stage, you need to deal with it as soon as possible: It is recommended to prioritize transfer of inventory to avoid long-term locking of goods in Italian warehouses

4. Maintain Pan-EU operational capabilities

Even if there are abnormalities in Italian VAT, as long as the operation is proper, you can still normally layout the Italian market.

First of all, the product needs to enable Pan-EU, and orders on the Italian site will be remotely distributed from your other sites with enabled inventory allocation through EFN (European Distribution Network). Based on the Pan-EU enablement rules, as long as the product meets two major conditions, it can be normally sold on the Italian site and enjoy the advantages of Pan-EU:

Requirement 1:

Inventory allocation must be enabled in at least two of Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Poland, and have the corresponding EU VAT number for the country/region.

Requirement 2:

The product Listing to be added to Pan-EU must be uploaded to Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands and maintain a saleable status.

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