These are not aggressive optimisations. They are ordinary rights, and they are almost always forgotten for the same reason: nobody has the receipt in the right place at the right time.
1. VAT on fuel and tolls
VAT on petrol is 80% recoverable for a passenger car and 100% for a commercial vehicle. On tolls, it is fully recoverable. Over a year with €6,000 of travel, forgetting it costs hundreds of euros.
2. Business owner training
The business owner training tax credit has not applied since 1 January 2025, but training can still be funded. A self-employed owner pays the professional training contribution through Urssaf, which opens access to funding from their training insurance fund: Agefice, FIF PL or FAFCEA depending on the activity. It covers accounting training just as much as languages or management.
3. The registered office at home
Registering the company at your home lets you recharge a share of the rent, service charges and insurance, in proportion to the floor space actually used. The condition is to have formalised that share, not to estimate it after the fact.
4. VAT on unpaid invoices
A debt that is definitively unrecoverable gives the right to reclaim the VAT charged that has already been paid over. You have to prove it — reminders, formal notice — which means having kept them.
5. Forgotten mixed-use expenses
Phone, internet subscription, computer equipment: whatever serves both private and business use is deductible pro rata. The missing reflex is not about tax, it is about paperwork — you have to be able to show the split.
- Keep the invoice, not just the bank statement.
- Formalise the share once, in writing, rather than every financial year.
- Have the first year reviewed: the following ones are copies.