Where to put the company

This is the decision people most want to outsource to a country ranking, and the one where a ranking helps least. The right answer is usually boring: sell from where you already are, unless a specific obstacle makes that impossible.

If you are already in the European Union

Use your own country. Your company, your bank, your accountant, your language, your tax authority. You register for VAT at home, you use the One Stop Shop for cross-border sales, and your compliance work happens in a legal system you can read.

Setting up in another member state because its corporate tax rate is lower rarely survives contact with reality: you still owe tax where the business is actually run, you add a foreign accountant to your costs, and you have made every future question harder to answer. If a tax adviser you are paying recommends a different structure for reasons specific to you, that is a different matter.

If you are outside the European Union

You have two workable paths, and they are not equal in effort.

1. Sell as a non-EU business. Perfectly possible. You register for VAT in the member state where your goods are stored, and depending on the country you may be required to appoint a fiscal representative — a local entity that becomes jointly responsible for your VAT obligations, charges for the service, and often asks for a deposit or bank guarantee. Requirements differ by member state, which is why the country where you store goods is a decision worth taking with an adviser rather than by default.
2. Establish a company inside the Union. More setup, but it can remove the fiscal representative requirement, makes banking easier, and gives you an entity that can act as the responsible economic operator the product safety rules require — a role lesson 5 explains in full.

Estonian e-Residency, described accurately

Estonia's e-Residency is the option most often recommended to non-EU sellers, and it is usually described inaccurately. What Estonia itself says: it is a government-issued digital identity that gives remote access to Estonian e-services, letting you establish a company online and sign documents with a legally recognised electronic signature, with incorporation typically taking one to two days. The application costs a state fee of €150, identity checks take around 30 days, and the card is then collected at a pickup location after a delivery period of two to five weeks.¹

What it is not:

• Not residency or citizenship. It grants no right to live, work or travel anywhere.
• Not a tax residency. Where you are taxed personally does not change because you hold a digital identity card.
• Not a guaranteed bank account. Estonia references access to business banking and payment providers during company setup, but the account is a separate application to a separate institution with its own criteria.
• Not a way around VAT. See the warning above.

Used for what it is — a way to run an EU company remotely, with real digital signatures — it is genuinely useful. Used as a tax structure, it is a misunderstanding that costs money.

Beneficial owners and public registers

EU member states maintain registers of beneficial owners, and you will be asked to identify the natural persons who ultimately own or control the company when you register it, when you open a bank account, and when Amazon verifies your seller account. The practical consequence is simple: nominee arrangements create problems at every one of those checkpoints, and the effort of maintaining them exceeds the effort of simply being the owner of a small business.

How to actually choose

1. Where will the stock be? That country's VAT registration is happening regardless. Start the decision there.
2. Does that country require a fiscal representative for non-EU sellers? If yes, price it, then compare against establishing an entity.
3. Who will be your responsible economic operator for product safety? If the answer is “my own EU company”, that pushes towards establishing one.
4. Where can you actually open a bank account? The most theoretically elegant structure is useless if nobody will bank it.
5. Who will do the filings? Choose a country where you can find and afford an adviser who answers email.

Mistakes at this stage

• Choosing a country by corporate tax rate. It is rarely the binding constraint and often not the tax that matters.
• Assuming the company's country is the VAT country. The goods decide.
• Treating e-Residency as tax residency. It is a digital identity, nothing more.
• Incorporating before checking banking. Ask the bank first.
• Ignoring the fiscal representative question until a registration is refused.
• Using nominee owners. Three separate verification processes will ask, and each will ask again.

Next

Lesson 2 is VAT: the €10,000 threshold, the One Stop Shop and what it does not cover, EORI numbers, and the reform timetable already fixed in law for 2027, 2028 and 2030.