
Estonian e-residency - alexpogosian
https://e-estonia.com/e-residents/about/
======
0x006A
Quite an elaborate tourist program:

[https://e-estonia.com/e-residents/apply-2/](https://e-estonia.com/e-residents/apply-2/)

1\. Fly to Estonia!

...

4\. Wait for the results of your background check (max 14 days)

Meanwhile, explore our untouched forests and free-Wifi boasting cafés in
historical old towns.

~~~
higherpurpose
Also an elaborate ploy to get everyone's fingerprints in their database.

~~~
scott_karana
_And_ iris? Yikes. Disappointment in an otherwise fantastic program...

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keerthiko
Can someone help build a flow-chart of determining whether this program is of
value to me or not?

I'm a cofounder of a tech/internet startup in country A. I am a citizen of
country B. I have no valid work visa in country A so work as an off-shore
consultant for my own company, hence no longer a resident there. I am now a
digital nomad in South East Asia.

Most valuable things for me:

\- Being allowed to apply for visas in other countries from their consulate in
a country other than country B (embassies and consulates are slow and painful
and I don't like working there while waiting for my passport). Usually I'm
allowed to do this in any other "country of residence." Would e-residence
count?

\- Being able to easily establish a corporate entity and proof of employment
paperwork (also expensive and slow and painful in country B) which helps
streamline my visa application processes.

Edited to fix some extraneous statements.

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sysk
Previous HN discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8417062](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8417062)
(when the program was announced)

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omouse
I live in Canada. Is there any advantage for me to establish a corporation in
Estonia? Would my income be subject to both Canadian and Estonia taxes?

~~~
scott_karana
I believe profits and capital gains from foreign entities are taxable in
Canada.

Not sure about the Estonian side: you might only pay corporate taxes, not
personal.

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presty
Any word on where Estonia plans to go with all this in terms of
citizenship/visa, taxation and so on?

~~~
AndrusAsumets
Estonian here. The attitude towards the project over here is: "We have have a
cool idea which can be easily implemented, so let's see try it out." In
essence, no one really knows what might come out of it. As far as I know there
has been 16000 sign ups so far of which 63% did it because they would be able
to launch a company here. Currently Estonia has approximately 35 000
companies, so this could potentially become very profitable to the country if
done right. Assuming the project will hold security-wise, of course.

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khoury
I think we gave the site the 'ol internet hug :)

This sound interesting though.

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pajtai
all i see is, "Error establishing a database connection"

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mceoin
Oh dear: "Error establishing a database connection"

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ForFreedom
wordpress error: db

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dominotw
>Error establishing a database connection

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AxisOfEval
All hail e-residency, the newest oxymoron of our times.

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Vladipoteur
I guess this is the smartest tax haven that went live.

~~~
_delirium
I don't think in itself it has any tax benefits. In fact by itself it has few
benefits at all: it doesn't confer any kind of residency, legal right to work
or conduct business in Estonia, etc.

What it _does_ give you is a standardized ID and login system, which the
Estonian government and major businesses (financial institutions, etc.) will
be using in the future for identification and authentication. This will make
it easier to conduct some kinds of business in Estonia as a non-resident,
compared to many countries where it's difficult to get the proper credentials
without being a resident (e.g. many Danish institutions use the CPR number and
NemID [1] login system, but it's difficult to get one without being a Danish
resident). The intent is to remove some of the procedural barriers to
conducting business in Estonia, like "can't figure out how to get the bank to
let me log in b/c I don't have an Estonian ID #" or "I don't know what to put
down on this form that assumes I have an Estonian ID card and ID #". It
doesn't give you any new legal rights in Estonia; it's just supposed to make
it easier to do business in Estonia as a nonresident, if you're legally able
to in the first place.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NemID](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NemID)

~~~
Vladipoteur
Yes indeed, there no direct tax benefits.

> But this system is making doing business from Estonia easier > Estonia is
> very business friendly country - low taxes compare to countries like France

So, it will be much more easier to move your business there and this is good
for them.

Many business in France are fiscally in Luxembourg for tax reasons and on my
opinion this new Estonia system is like having a second Luxembourg on the
French border.

I hope those smart initiatives will help France (and some other heavy tax
countries) to reform.

Moreover, reducing paper work is beneficial for any business.

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ExpiredLink
> _E-residency is provided by the government of the Republic of Estonia, but
> does not bring physical residency or rights of entry to Estonia or EU.
> E-residency does not entail any residential or citizen rights and cannot be
> used as a physical identification card or travel document._

A hoax?

~~~
_delirium
Misleading branding maybe, but not quite a hoax. It's just a login system: you
get an ID# and a way to authenticate to digital services in Estonia (both the
government's, and anyone in the private sector that implements the system). It
will be genuinely useful for nonresidents conducting business in Estonia who
previously couldn't get Estonian digital credentials, b/c a lot of stuff is
easier if you have them (filing online tax returns, logging in to online
banking, etc.). But it doesn't come with legal rights, so the "residency" part
is a bit misleading.

~~~
andy_ppp
To be fair I think the idea is to eventually keep adding rights to these
certificates.

    
    
        "we are moving towards the idea of a country without borders"
    

I think the nation state, borders, the tax system, voting, what laws you work
under and how you interact with the state should all be rethought as we move
towards a post scarcity society[0].

Or we could just keep the old system and destroy the planet because, by god,
it's good fun for billionaires to hoard all the worlds resources.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-
scarcity_economy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy)

~~~
msh
I think we are quite bit away from post-scarcity, just look at the third world
where there are quite a bit of scarcity.

~~~
teknologist
Unnecessarily. That's kind of the point.

