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Comment by lordnacho | Hacker News Reader

This is why I was wondering what the point was. Surely most countries will claim taxes from you if you work there, so having an Estonian entity will do little?

Can someone explain the actual benefit of sitting in a developed country and charging via Estonia?

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I suppose there is one possible rather significant benefit, depending on where you live. If you're going to be an independant contractor, a freelancing "gun for hire", you may want a corporate entity to be your front: As a sole proprietor[1], you'd be personally liable for all your business liabilities -- debts, as well as, say, prosecution. A joint-stock company[2], OTOH, is a legally independent entity, that carries its own assets and liabilities independent of the stockholders. So "as a business", you'd perhaps want not to "be yourself", but rather "be" a joint-stock company.

Those can, AIUI, in many countries be hard, bureaucratic, or expensive to set up. The great advantage of Estonian "electronic residency" (again, only AIUI) is that it enables you to easily and cheaply set up an Estonian "electronic stock company", which might not be so easy and cheap where you live.

It's not just about "charging"; it's about shielding.

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[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sole_proprietorship

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint-stock_company

For customer, unless you are a true digital nomad e.g. have no residency anywhere the benefit is: none.

For Estonia who uses services like Xolo to promote this for unaware people the benefit is: money (in a form of dividend tax, e-residency registration fees and so on).

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