Estonia e-residency application now online

http://apply.e-estonia.com/

by sytze • 11 years ago

131 88 11 years ago

apply.e-estonia.com

arsalanb2• 11 years ago

Indians can't hold dual citizenship. Does this count as an actual citizenship?

Joona2• 11 years ago

From https://e-estonia.com/e-residents/about/

  e-Residency does not confer citizenship, tax residency, residence
  or right of entry to Estonia or to the European Union.
  The e-Resident smart ID card is not a physical identification
  or a travel document, and does not display a photo.

izolate2• 11 years ago

Serious question, if you were to never disclose your dual nationality, would the Indian government ever find out? Any idea how the government stores the data, and if it's cross-linked with any other services?

arsalanb2• 11 years ago

They probably wouldn't from what I've seen. But it can be a hassle sometimes if they're particularly hellbent on finding out — Case in point, Sonia Gandhi had to pass on being Prime Minister because she held dual citizenship (to put that in context, she is or was at the time one of the most popular politicians)

Spooky23• 11 years ago

I would be more concerned about the consequences of not complying than the probability.

Joona2• 11 years ago

Interestingly the application page/subdomain is not HTTPS, but the main site is.

sushimako• 11 years ago

Maybe the mods can change the submission's URL to https://apply.e-estonia.com/

jugbee• 11 years ago

wow, it's not even an HTTPS and they expect me to fill my most sensitive data here?

necrodawg• 11 years ago

Switching to https might help https://apply.e-estonia.com/

zura• 11 years ago

Is it possible to publish paid apps on Google Play store with this? From the unsupported country (While Estonia is supported as a merchant country).

monort• 11 years ago

I think you will need to register an Estonian company. You can do it online after getting e-residency card: https://ettevotjaportaal.rik.ee/index.py?chlang=eng

koyote2• 11 years ago

A bit disappointed that the combo box for citizenship has 'Great Britain' instead of 'United Kingdom'.

viraptor• 11 years ago

Why? I mean, I know the difference between them, but why was it disappointing?

nicksellen2• 11 years ago

The full name of the country is "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" - calling it "Great Britain" is just wrong (it excludes Northern Ireland and all other smaller islands). You would also hope an official website can get it correct.

Although entire languages get it wrong - in German the UK is translated as "Großbritannien". Edit: they do have translation for UK ("Vereinigtes Königreich") but I've never heard it said/written yet... I think I'll start using it.

A worse version is when "England" is used to refer to the UK. It's very common, maybe less so in official contexts.

coob• 11 years ago

Both are locations and not types of citizenship. 'British' is a descriptor for citizenship 'Great Britain' and 'United Kingdom' are not.

To be picky, there are technically 6 different types of British citizenship:

https://www.gov.uk/types-of-british-nationality/overview

yc1010• 11 years ago

"0% company income tax means more money to invest" https://e-estonia.com/e-residents/services-and-benefits/

I dont get it, does this mean there is 0% corporation tax in Estonia? What are the taxes on wages then as in if your estonian company pays you? What other taxes should one be aware? what is the VAT rate

so many questions but their answer is "talk to a professional" which means visiting Estonia, answering some of these questions up front would make things clearer and make it easier to decide whether to apply for one

BTW has anyone here done it? a blog post on experiences pros and cons would be great...

kasparloog• 11 years ago

Yes, the corporate tax is 0%.

There is a dividend tax, making this business environment expecially lucrative if your plan is to reinvest profits.

VAT is 20%

Income tax for physical person is 20% and the company has to pay on top of it roughly 33% of social taxes. There's a plan in place to reduce social tax by 1%

No other catches.

geomark• 11 years ago

Other than being able to establish a company in Estonia there doesn't seem to be anything compelling about this. Those tax rates - 20% VAT and 33% social taxes - are not friendly. You have to rely on a third party for a mailing address just to open the company. And if you want to try to open a bank account you have to visit.

What is the attaction of this?

patrickaljord4• 11 years ago

Any idea what the dividend tax is?

smhg2• 11 years ago

I guess related to all tax/business questions "talk to a professional" means "talk to an accountant". An Estonian accountant sounds like a good choice.

As in most (all?) EU countries, all tax/business related work passes through an accountant. Am I right to believe this is different in the US? At least for one-man/small businesses?

ghaff2• 11 years ago

Not sure what you mean by "passes through an accountant." In the US, a small business is typically not required to hire an accountant but it's probably a good idea--especially once you have employees and are dealing with payroll taxes, etc. Personally I've always used one even for personal taxes.

mhuffman• 11 years ago

I've read the "about" and "services and benefits" pages, and still don't get it. Why would anyone (from the US, for example) be interested in this?

draugadrotten• 11 years ago

"To this point, foreigners have found it complicated to participate in managing Estonian companies. The e-resident’s digital ID provides the needed flexibility"

http://www.grantthornton.ee/infokiri/en/the-digital-e-reside...

Katre2• 11 years ago

Hi everyone, this is Katre from the communications team in the e-Residency program. Thank you so much for your interest! We are proud to launch the first government-backed digital identity in the world. Here in Estonia, we view the e-Residency program as someting of a "governmental startup," and appreciate your thoughts and feedback.

We will soon redirect the HTTP page to HTTPS (thanks for catching that!). For now you can simply visit https://apply.e-estonia.com. We are also working to update the country lists.

After being approved as an e-Resident you are welcome to apply for a bank account and payment providers. As noted on the site, we are working on easier ways to facilitate this.

Benefits for US and global entrepreneurs include access to EU and European markets, and truly hassle-free online company administration. We are working on expanding services for individuals as well, which currently include two-factor authentication, document signing, and encryption.

Thank you again -- we are truly excited to launch this programme in open beta and welcome further questions at e-resident@gov.ee!

amarsahinovic• 11 years ago

Your application form has issues with č and ć characters which are in my last name.

Tepix2• 11 years ago

The e-Residency sounds interesting.

What exactly do you mean with "the first government-backed digital identity"? The German Identity card, for example, can be used for online authentication and it can store a digital signature on its chip. [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_identity_card#Chip ]

jpatokal• 11 years ago

Katre left out a key word: per their About page, it's the first transnational digital identity available to anyone in the world. German ID cards are only for physical residents of Germany.

honzzz2• 11 years ago

Czechoslovakia in the list of countries? It dissolved into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993. Please fix it.

aquassaut• 11 years ago

Even then, I don't see why they couldn't ask whether you were born there.

jarek4• 11 years ago

Not sure I want to apply for an identity document via a form that says "Oh snap!" to report errors...

jarek4• 11 years ago

The current functionality of this offer is 1) deal with Estonian government (not that useful for most of us) and 2) presenting that the Estonian government has confirmed your real-life identity and provided you with means of forwarding this confirmation (the keys). Functionality 2 is a bit undermined when people don't take the Estonian government seriously. As they might when a rather important form isn't on HTTPS, or when an error message is "Oh snap".

fweespeech• 11 years ago

https://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2014/06/12/delfi-v-e...

http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/sites/eng/pages/search.aspx?i=001-...

Sadly, rulings like this prevents a startup like Reddit, HN, or really anything that allows UGC from being practical via e-Estonia.

Best of luck tho.

simonebrunozzi• 11 years ago

When I get to the payment page, part of the text is in Estonian (apply.e-estonia.com, Politsei- ja Piirivalveamet Pärnu mnt 139,Tallinn).

recuter• 11 years ago

This is a great thing and I filled the form out in about 2 minutes. Upon payment your payment processor redirects to:

"https://apply.e-estonia.comhttps//apply.e-estonia.com/feedba...

Which is obviously broken. I got an email confirming I paid and so far nothing else.

benkant2• 11 years ago

Calling this e-Residency is a mistake. It's confusing enough that a commenter here was unsure if they were eligible because their country does not allow dual citizenship.

It's a government identity you can apply for and use online that allows you to register companies, among other things- right?

As an electronic resident of Estonia what are you entitled to that you can't do in Singapore, Hong Kong, the UK, etc? The only difference I can see is that in those places you likely need to visit the country to setup the company. Those countries certainly wouldn't call that process airplane-Residency.

Electronic mail is mail that you send electronically. Here, e-Residency is not residency in any definition of the word, even the ephemeral kind. An e-Residency does not afford the bearer any entitlements not offered to a non-bearer, save for not requiring a flight to Estonia.

That said, I appreciate the innovation in an online government ID card for foreigners. The name is a mistake. More accurate would be to call it e-Airplane.

As I haven't read everything about this, I'm willing to admit there's a chance I'm wrong.

dragonwriter2• 11 years ago

Residency in the usual sense isn't the same thing as citizenship -- lots of people are citizens of one country and residents of another.

And while the initial set of benefits don't seem a lot like residency (except insofar as being eligible for a digital ID of this type -- in countries that offer them -- is, itself, typically something that requires citizenship or residency, so in a sense calling the program that provides access to it to non-citizen non-physical-residents "e-residency" may be reasonable on that basis alone), its overtly an initial "beta" set with planned expansion.

quicksilver03• 11 years ago

I commend you on the approach and this is something I was very much looking forward to. However there are a couple of constraints that will prevent me (and I think other people) to apply:

- need to visit Estonia to open a bank account

- filing taxes with an accounting software in Estonian only

Solve those 2 issues and the only one left is the unavoidable double taxation complexity: you could try adding more information to the site about this subject, for example stating with which countries Estonia has currently established treaties to avoid double taxation.

kolev• 11 years ago

You don't have a consulate in California? Pick up locations in US are not very convenient for half of the country.

GBond• 11 years ago

Will I be able to register a *.ee domain name?

siscia• 11 years ago

Other than taxes, what are the cost associate with having a company in estonia ?

Has any of you already open one ? How was the experience ?

siilats2• 11 years ago

Hey everyone, I am an Estonian entrepreneur residing in Silicon Valley and can set an Estonian company up for you. As a U.S. resident you are subject to controlled foreign corporation taxation if US residents own over 50 pct of Estonian corporation, but there are ways around it. If you are a minority owner you need to understand how the boards work with the b-card system (digital board of directors). Reading congressional testimony on how apple avoids taxes describes a system of avoiding CFC. Estonian eresidency is a cost effective way to implement it. I am at keith@siilats.com

beagle3• 11 years ago

As a U.S. resident you are subject to controlled foreign corporation taxation if US residents own over 50 pct of Estonian corporation, but there are ways around it.

I have no idea what "ways around it" you might be referring to - but generally, unless it is an IRS accepted structure, even if it is compliant with the letter of the law, you can expect tens of thousands of dollars in costs of proving that compliance if you are audited.

I recommend everyone who considers this option to get a really good international tax professional on board. Those are hard to find, and very expensive - but totally worth every penny.

siilats2• 11 years ago

Being eresident means you get a smart card that generates a private key on the chip and public key is stored in a public ldap server. There is also a cross platform actively used client "digidoc" that makes it easy to send encrypted and signed docs between residents.

benologist• 11 years ago

Can you use Stripe with an Estonian company?

ajdlinux• 11 years ago

Have submitted my application - I'm not planning on starting any businesses right now, though it's a possibility in the future. More interested in how the Estonian government is actually experimenting with technology in a way that other countries are yet to try - am hoping for more services to become available eventually.

(To be fair, they also do internet voting, which I'm not a huge fan of...)

Katre2• 11 years ago

Hi everyone, this is Katre from the communications team in the e-Residency program. Thank you very much for letting us know about the HTTP and form submission errors -- we were able to resolve the issue 6-8 hours after receiving your feedback. We are still working on the country lists, and hope to have an update shortly.

Please stay tuned for news on .ee domain registration! :)

Thank you again! We appreciate your interest in the world's first transnational government-backed digital identity, and hope to continue this level of quick feedback and support. Please keep sending us bug fixes and feature suggestions!

Estonia e-residency application now online

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