4 ms·

Far and away the best government website I've ever seen. I've heard of Estonian e-residency before, but have never met anyone who actually took advantage of it

Far and away the best government website I've ever seen. I've heard of Estonian e-residency before, but have never met anyone who actually took advantage of it. I'd be interested to know people's personal experiences with the program.

dontbenebby 8y ago
From what I've read it seems to be geared towards people with an online business who wants access to the EU financial markets. I'd love to see them consider granting visas for digital nomads. Most people don't know that it's technically illegal to work on a tourist visa (even remotely). It would be really cool to have a legal way to draw a paycheck from one's home country while exploring the EU. Estonia would benefit from such an arrangement since your tax residency would be Estonian (and thus you'd pay taxes on the salary you draw to the Estonian government) - all without taking away any jobs from EU citizens, and even creating a few. (Ex: paying for hotels/apts, restaurants, evenings out etc)
- ohples 8y ago
  That would be cool, we could even make our own little neighborhood or something in some city.
gumby 8y ago
I have done it and only needed to "visit" Estonia by visiting the embassy. (though I have in fact visited Estonia). You can now make an EU company registered in ee entirely online, even more easily than in the US. I have a Delaware company that is a subsidiary of my EU company and it works great -- I only use the Delaware company to do business with US entities and use the EE one for everything else. While technically a multinational the revenues are not large. I am not a citizen of any EU or North American state. I wish more companies supported the PKI that comes with the E-ID and is similar to the PKI that comes with a German ID card. Right now you can only use it to communicate with a few entities, all listed on the e-residency web site. It's also a bit of a pain that the ID card is the size of a full format SIM card (1FF -- size of a credit card). I hardly use a physical wallet any more and if I could use the identity online via Touch ID or something like that for certain transactions I believe it could be even more useful.
sccxy 8y ago
E-residency became much more limited after money laundering scandals. But government is working hard to make it work.

dontbenebby 8y ago

From what I've read it seems to be geared towards people with an online business who wants access to the EU financial markets. I'd love to see them consider granting visas for digital nomads. Most people don't know that it's technically illegal to work on a tourist visa (even remotely). It would be really cool to have a legal way to draw a paycheck from one's home country while exploring the EU. Estonia would benefit from such an arrangement since your tax residency would be Estonian (and thus you'd pay taxes on the salary you draw to the Estonian government) - all without taking away any jobs from EU citizens, and even creating a few. (Ex: paying for hotels/apts, restaurants, evenings out etc)

ohples 8y ago
That would be cool, we could even make our own little neighborhood or something in some city.

gumby 8y ago

I have done it and only needed to "visit" Estonia by visiting the embassy. (though I have in fact visited Estonia). You can now make an EU company registered in ee entirely online, even more easily than in the US. I have a Delaware company that is a subsidiary of my EU company and it works great -- I only use the Delaware company to do business with US entities and use the EE one for everything else. While technically a multinational the revenues are not large. I am not a citizen of any EU or North American state. I wish more companies supported the PKI that comes with the E-ID and is similar to the PKI that comes with a German ID card. Right now you can only use it to communicate with a few entities, all listed on the e-residency web site. It's also a bit of a pain that the ID card is the size of a full format SIM card (1FF -- size of a credit card). I hardly use a physical wallet any more and if I could use the identity online via Touch ID or something like that for certain transactions I believe it could be even more useful.

sccxy 8y ago

E-residency became much more limited after money laundering scandals. But government is working hard to make it work.