Become Estonia’s e-resident
e-estonia.com
e-estonia.com
I was only there a week, so my impressions are addmittedly naive, but very positive. There was a lot of technology forward thinking - online voting, constitutional right to internet access, co-working spaces catering to young entrepreneurs.
So quite hight tech on the one hand, and on the other hand, there is a deep respect for and serious comprehension of nature. The country is 50% forest! And my experience with Estonian camp sites was that they were free, ancient, and beautiful. I felt like I was camping in a sacred grove (I probably was).
Man, wish I had stayed longer. Anyone doing any cool projects there?
Everyone I've met and spoken to out there has been through some serious shit right up until the late 1990s from wars to genocides. They really are forward thinking because looking back hurts badly.
It might sound cheesy but I have a lot of hope for Europe and most of it comes from the East.
At the same time I'm disgusted at how the media and general population treats our fellow Europeans.
"Out there"?
I'm going to presume that the wars and genocide you're talking about was the former Yugoslavia, as not many places fit the bill unless you go looking much further away, in which case Estonia is almost as far from there as it is from the UK (driving distance can go either way depending on route).
And still 1700km from Estonia to Donetsk, Ukraine if you want to include that conflict...
So I highly doubt Yugoslavia was the intended subject there.
I very much agree with you. The East of Europe has very recent memory of how not to run countries, the West is already forgetting those lessons and repeating past mistakes. For now the West is still ahead economically, but I suspect that this will not last indefinitely. You can pretty much draw a line through 'Helmstedt' (the site of the old autobahn border crossing between 'East' and 'West' Germany) and use that as the pivot point. On the left of that pivot the swing is steadily downwards whereas on the east of that up to the Russian border there is slow but fairly steady progress.
Of course the map is not the territory and you'd have to account for the situations further North and South with different pivot points but on the whole this seems to be how it is today.
On the other hand, I read a few years ago (and I don't have much reason to suspect much has changed though I'd love to hear I'm wrong) about a village in East-Germany that was entirely in control by neo-nazis. That was scary to find out such things are actually going on today (this was before I heard about Greece's Golden Dawn and how they run refugee camps). When travelling, I was warned about the are that people that looked too "foreign" might have a bad time (I suppose when coloured or Arab, me and my travel companion were both very white, Dutch and half-German).
Maybe it's just an anecdote or some small isolated issues blown out of proportion, but this is what also plays in the back of my mind whenever I consider they're learning from past mistakes.
Either way, no throwing babies out with the bathwater, we can both support and learn from their historical awareness, as well as be vigilant about rising intolerances.
I'd love to move out of the UK and will do this if we ever drop out of the EU. Perhaps East of that line.
I live in Ireland and I'm very pro-EU. Not in the sense that I like or dislike policies or structures, but in the sense of the EU's real and original goals: Solidarity. Open Borders. Peace.
It makes me sick to see that countries have sent the EU Parliament their nationalists, populists and outright fascists.
Solidarity. Open Borders. Peace. It's worth making it a generational goal. A thousand years of solidarity, open borders & peace.
I have hope for, with and from our brother east of here (which for me is pretty much all Europe :) .
I'm having trouble interpreting this sentence since I have no context. Does "the media and general population" refer to Western Europeans or does it refer to Estonians?
> Anyone doing any cool projects there?
One Estonian startup whose product I use a lot is TransferWise, here's an invite link (for one free currency transfer):
I went to Tallinn for the first time in 2002 before it was part of the EU. I took the ferry from Helsinki and spent the day walking around the old town. Quite enjoyable. Two things that really stood out were - internet cafes were readily available and extremely cheap (under $2/hour from what I recall) and the beer was cheap :)
I have since been there a handful of times while I was at Skype - unfortunately I never did make it outside of Tallinn.
Edit - I forgot, I caught a rather fun Folk-metal band on Eurovision when I was visiting once. Metsatoll - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dC3Q9q4cRZA
EDIT: seems like it was made in Estonia, but that the founders were swedish and danish.
By the way, Estonia has a cool tech scene also outside of Tallinn! We're in Tartu and there are a lot of cool startups here too!
My understanding is that this status allows you to form companies, open bank accounts and sign binding documents just like someone living in Estonia. And that is pretty impressive.
Add cryptocurrencies into play, and whole new world of companies is now suddenly possible.
I don't think it works for money laundering in any way.
Nothing stops you opening a company in Estonia now, but that does not mean you would only pay corporation taxes there (they are at 10% when distributed as dividends), your physical location plays a role too.
Can't see why a US or Estonian company (whether or not you are a director is irrelevant) can't hire you to do some work. Unless you don't have work visa in the country of your stay.
If the country you are physically in wants to (e.g.) tax you, they can. (There are, of course, many more nefarious possibilities than taxation.) This is, I think, true in an "in accordance with international law" sense (though there is the possibility that a bilateral double taxation treaty might apply) and it is certainly true in a "who's to stop them" sense. (And if we're hypothesizing that the person is physically located in a corrupt/war torn country, the latter would probably be all that matters anyway.)
But in my daydreams, I've never considered a third-party government issuer. I don't see value in this beyond the value that I see in a corporate-issued digital ID, and that's hardly more valuable than a self-issued ID.
Obviously, Estonia has considered some angle which I have not.
You can become an e-Estonian!
They should probably change that to e-Stonian or something so that it's pronounced "eastonian". :) The "eee-eh" is awkward to pronounce.
A start would be to do anything an Estonian can do today online in almost real time. Founding a company online: 5 minutes and you're in business. Very simple tax and other legislation, so very simple reporting online - and getting tax refunds if needed in a few days.
But this should not be limited to existing legacy services we use. Think of what you could do anything online with an absolute cryptographically strong vetted proof, that it's you, valid across the world? That's very different from a corporate ID which has no power internationally.
* Voting
* Facebook (or whatever)
* Spam
* Banking
* Contracts
* Jury duty (Don't think boring.. think sci-fi!)
* Taxes
* Whistleblowing
* Bar tabs
* Power of Attorney (This one has new meaning in this context. It's a technical thing, a provable act of delegation.)
* Police reports
Basically the same use cases as PKI, but if it were government issued, the common person would know what it means.
A conversation about a fender bender might include "Then, he drove off without e-signing the standard insurance form!".
I dunno. Like I said, daydreaming.
The government and ministry under which this is is pretty open to ideas that need a change of legislation to make the e-services available and happen. So keep those ideas coming.
The thing about Estonian e-services has always been that while many other countries say it's not doable, Estonia just does it. Possible in a lean country of smart people.
But in my daydreams, I've never considered a third-party government issuer. I don't see value in this beyond the value that I see in a corporate-issued digital ID, and that's hardly more valuable than a self-issued ID.
Obviously, Estonia has considered some angle which I have not.
I think the angle is that it allows a business presence in the EU and Eurozone for essentially anyone.
From the leaflet [PDF] http://e-estonia.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Become-Eston...
Wouldn't this kind of ID be granted to anyone, so long as they are who they say they are, so long as their identity is vetted.
I think selectively doling out benefits or rights is the job of a separate system. (And if everyone has one of these IDs, the design of the second system could be simpler than it might be otherwise. I think.)
I think that our local spy people have access to them (there was a theory about them managing our offshore database backups and therefore never asking for anything); if and how they share it is not disclosed.
foreign governments might get access through travel information agreements (biometric passports were a requirement for free travel to US) but I am not certain about those details.
Does this mean I can form a corporate entity in Estonia and gain all the tax benefits without any physical presence?
The rest depends on various double-taxation treaties which affect more individuals.
As soon as you distribute the profits, 10% tax applies from the Estonian end.
If you don't - let's say you're Dutch, living in Holland and consulting mostly for Dutch clients, then forget it.
But let's say you're Dutch, you have a girlfriend in Estonia, you work from there a week every month, and you have clients in several EU countries, with NL only one of them... Maybe you even have a local employee in Estonia. That will work no problem.
Those should convince you that you need good fiscal advice and a somewhat conservative attitude when it comes to fiscal grey areas.
If you want to avoid paying a lot of taxes, build a multinational and set up tax avoidance schemes like the Double Irish with a Dutch sandwich. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement . But hurry, because some of this might actually become a bit more difficult starting from next year...
It's probably cheaper to simply pay Irish corp. tax (12.5%) for all but the biggest companies. You have to setup 2 Irish companies, a Dutch company and a Caribbean-based company, a battalion of tax lawyers and advisers to exploit the loophole legally....etc
Whether a company is considered to be CFC depends on many factors such as double taxation treaties between the two countries, the amount of shares you own and the level of taxation in the offshore country.
You're likely to run into domestic Controlled Foreign Corporation rules. Basically if you or your family own a large portion of a foreign registered company and that company is taxed less than domestic tax rates, it'll be classed as actually residing in your home country for corporate tax purposes.
Estonia could have a shot at becoming the "Delaware" for non-US entrepreneurs, esp EU, i.e. have all the high-growth companies incorporate because of clear, friendly startup support infrastructure and laws.
"e-residency is also launched as a platform to offer digital services to a global audience with no prior Estonian affiliation – for anybody who wants to run their business and life in the most convenient aka digital way! We plan to keep adding new useful services from early 2015 onwards."
http://e-estonia.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Become-Eston...
I don't think there are any downsides to the e-residency, apart from having to give some of your data (and a modest fee) to Estonia.
Certainly for Americans, not a huge number of people will have two weeks spare and sufficient funds to wait for their application to be processed (or the money to fly to Estonia and back twice in two weeks).
Edit: apparently they're "working to add capacity to our embassies to process e-residency applications and issue cards abroad by the end of 2015". This makes the whole thing absolutely amazing. Let's see how the rest of the world reacts, I guess.
I really don't understand why Americans aren't moving out and dumping their citizenships in droves. I know that earning money in USA is supposedly easier than anywhere else but still...
E-future cannot be built if we don't fix serious issues with software engineering. There is no guarantee of security. There is no assurance. We basically don't know how to build secure systems yet. As daily events show (from #fappening, #shellshock to Snowden's revelations), this is one of those "hard", unresolved problems...and not just from algorithmic (non-repudiation) perspective, but also from a practical engineering perspective (we are still dealing with buffer overflows).
“The software security industry today is at about the same stage as the auto industry was in 1930" ... "it looks fast, goes nice but in an accident you die.” ... "The major shortfall is absence of assurance (or safety) mechanisms in software. If my car crashed as often as my computer does, I would be dead by now.” -- Brian Snow, Former Technical Director of the NSA, We Need Assurance http://www.research.att.com/talks_and_events/2008_distinguis....
only found this not-very-good response in english to those "experts": http://www.vvk.ee/valimiste-korraldamine/vvk-uudised/vabarii...
but saying "terribly insecure" is more than wrong. yeah, thare are many procedural things which could be better, but technologically estonian e-voting is secure. only serious threat is propaganda.
They got away with customer data and who-knows-what-else. I'm pretty sure JP Morgan has a bigger cyber-security budged than the whole state of Estonia, many times over. And then check the laundry list of these: http://cybercampaigns.net/
The basic truth is: we still don't quite know how to design digital information systems that can resist attacks from very persistent or nation state level actors. Even if these are air-gaped (as demonstrated by Stuxnet).
and no matter how big is your budget, kidnapping/blackmailing sysadmins is cheaper :P
The analysts themselves were invited to the country and to do the analysis by that opposition party (Centre Party/Keskerakond); they had participated in several Centre Party events prior to publishing the research. They were reimbursed for their expenses and most likely paid a fee for the analysis. The group had demands that the system be taken down; they however refused to publish details about the study which is uncommon and is not a sign of goodwill.
- who makes the smart card? What is the model?
- wow - that's just like Neal Stephenson and joining Tribes based not on location but membership.
But I can't see myself going to Estonia just to pick one up ... I'll wait till the embassy in London does it :-)
Here are the Estonian specs: http://www.id.ee/index.php?id=35772
The Estonian ID-card and Digital Signature Concept: http://www.id.ee/public/The_Estonian_ID_Card_and_Digital_Sig...
I can see Bitcoin - or its decedents - easily being used for Phyle "ID-card" infrastructure; no nation-state required.
Although the first stages will be more towards foreigners who conduct any business in Estonia, the next stages should allow appearance of new business models and internationally operated activities headquartered and registered in Estonia.
I would love to see Estonia take on this challenge as well, but it will take a long time and concerted effort.
It doesn't in itself give you any specific rights, as far as I can tell ("e-residency" is a bit of a marketing term). It just makes it easier to do things that foreigners are theoretically allowed to do, but which aren't currently very easy to do remotely. For example it's already legal for a foreigner to register a company in Estonia, but it's a bit of a hassle if you aren't an Estonian resident; this is supposed to make it easier, because you'll be electronically "in the system" with a proper ID number and login, making it easier for agencies and financial institutions to know how to deal with you. Especially since it's combined with a move towards self-service online portals for government services, so you should be able to log in with this ID and do a lot of things over the internet, instead of visiting civil-service offices.
Here (Denmark) all that is also theoretically true—anyone with legitimate business in Denmark can get an ID, and once you have one you can do things like register a company entirely online, self-service, as well as interact with banks and anyone else who implements the "NemID". But in practice the authorities are very suspicious of anyone not living in Denmark trying to get into the system, so almost the only non-residents who do so are Swedes and Germans who either commute cross-border or have frequent business in Denmark.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_identity_card
Maybe the main difference is that they will issue it also to non-residents.
By the way, I don't know in other countries but in Spain it was a complete failure due to a really bad implementation: only worked with Internet Explorer, reader with proprietary drivers, etc...
Source : http://www.plugshare.com
For anyone Russian reading this: should residency be прописка? It actually was canceled in favor of registration. So, I guess, residency is registration?
(which by the way is a few years outdated: e.g. there's no South Sudan, and Libya is still the "Libyan Arab Jamahiriya", which was Qaddafi's name for it).