Setting up a company abroad and trusting whoever pops up on Google...

The other day I came across this article by a certain "Massimo Tonci", about whose preparation I have personal doubts.

www.massimotonci.it/aprire-una-societa-all-estero/

The article, again in my humble opinion, contains a number of inaccuracies - the author, whom I contacted, preferred not to discuss my corrections, nor to fix them in his article, since it seems that to have the luxury of speaking a word with such an Eminence, it would have been compulsory for me to also provide my private mobile phone number (besides my email address, first name and surname, which he already had), something I obviously did not want to do. As if he were a police officer... !

These are the inaccuracies I found in his article:

(A premise for those who don't know me: I am not a tax consultant, on the contrary, I am rather ignorant on the subject and that is why I rely on professionals (I mean the real ones). I am just an Italian entrepreneur and technician, living in Malta, where I have been living for about 4 years now with my wife, and here I founded my small company that deals with online games. I have dealt with many tax consultants, I asked myself many questions and did a lot of research, even going to look for the underlying regulations, rulings and laws.

Here are some excerpts from the article in question:

1) "A company registered to and managed by Italian people is not a foreign company".

This is not true: the nationality of the person doesn't matter, only their actual residence does ! I can very well be Italian, move to Spain, and create and manage a company. That doesn't make the Spanish company an "Italian company" just because I am Italian. I find there is an immense underlying ignorance in this statement...

2) [...] it is a 100% Italian company because... [...] "it has a website registered to a person resident in Italy"...

Not only is this not true, but the concept underneath is also wrong... To begin with, who a domain is registered to has no relevance whatsoever: for the tax agency all that matters is that the servers are not in Italy (with some exceptions, such as "mirrors") and that the company's residence, meaning its real operations/administration, is not in Italy. Furthermore, the very idea that ownership of a domain (from whois) is equivalent to being the owner responsible for managing its contents, or to being the owner of the domain, would be debatable in the first place, but these are more complex matters and we would go off target.

3) [...] (it is a 100% Italian company because...) the centre of interests of the business is only in Italy.

Horror ! This one is completely wrong and shows you how ignorant this gentleman is on the subject. What the tax agency can challenge is the centre of interests of the person, not of the company ! That is, if I am in Malta, but my centre of interests is in Rome, because that is where my children go to school, I am a member of the golf club, and I regularly go back there for anything, even if for periods shorter than the famous 6 months + 1 day, then it is MY residence that can be taken apart. But if the company is in Malta and 100% of the customers are Italian, there is no law, to date, that can undermine the company's residence.

I haven't nitpicked his article any further, but I think there are still other details that could be explored in more depth.

Now, the point is that in my opinion, anyone who passes themselves off as a "professional" must -necessarily- abide by a fundamental rule: the ability to sustain a discussion / a debate and the (not simple) ability to question oneself and, if needed, take the opportunity to recognise one's own mistakes and grow. Or, alternatively, the ability to defend one's statements in an analytical way. Well, this is --exactly-- everything this gentleman did not do with me, perhaps because his head got too big thanks to the hundreds of comments on his articles from people looking for answers.

So my personal advice to everyone is: be extremely careful with these "pseudo-professionals" who keep popping up on the internet, always take everything with a pinch of salt, but do so with me as well: don't take my word for it !!!. Take notes, but verify, first-hand, always. Do research, look for official documentation. The rulings and laws published on official websites are what count, not what others write in posts around the internet. Always form your own judgement, rational, consistent, and supported.

And, of course, if anyone wants to correct what I have written, feel free to do so by adding a comment or by contacting me personally by email (and no, I won't make it compulsory to send a document, your mobile phone number, or your shoe size).

N.B: This article represents my personal opinion.