Opening a UK limited company is at least as straightforward. Registering takes a couple of hours, it can be done entirely online and the fee is £12 ($15). You don't need to be a UK resident. You do need a registered office in the UK, but a company formation agent will provide one for about £20 ($26) per year. All your tax returns can be filed entirely online and HMRC provide a very helpful tax advice service. It really is fantastically simple.<p>The obvious advantage to registering in Estonia would be the certainty of continued access to the European Single Market. We're still not entirely sure how Brexit will pan out.<p><a href="https://www.gov.uk/limited-company-formation" rel="nofollow">https://www.gov.uk/limited-company-formation</a><p><a href="https://www.gov.uk/corporation-tax" rel="nofollow">https://www.gov.uk/corporation-tax</a><p>Another option well worth considering is Stripe Atlas. It's not the cheapest way to start a corporation, but Stripe provide a huge amount of added value.<p><a href="https://stripe.com/atlas" rel="nofollow">https://stripe.com/atlas</a>
After looking into it for a while, i decided not to do it. Context: I live in Germany for roughly 2/3 of the year, rest is traveling.<p>Not sure where you are located, but if you spend the majority of your time in a other EU country (e.g. Germany) you will have a very hard time explaining to the local tax authorities that the company entity is not effectively being managed from Germany. And when you fail to explain this, the company entity becomes a german tax resident and you have to deal with all sorts of paperwork and expensive tax consultants. This is especially true when you have no local employees in Estonia.
Seriously guys, consult an accountant, a tax lawyer or just someone who could have at least a clue what you are trying to do. There are reasons to incorporate companies that are not in your place of residence, for example: vat registration and to have a "front-door" in that country for selling to the public, for procurement, for legal reasons (e.g. if you sell products in the EU, you need to have an EU contact address listed on the product) etc.
International taxation is not easy and nobody will explain to you the problems here but there will be for sure problems. If you want to do it right, you usually pay what you saved in registration to the accountant instead. And no, you won't save any tax. Let me be clear, you won't save any tax! If you do, it's either called tax avoidance (punishable in many countries!) or you are an international company that already has a tax accountant/lawyer to structure things properly, has substance in those countries and will for sure not ask questions here.
I considered it for my SaaS business. But at the moment my business is based in Poland, so moving to Estonia doesn't change things much (I still can't economically sell to individuals within the EU because of idiotic VAT regulations). I chose to remain in Poland for the time being. On the plus side: low taxes, EU law, first patent troll doesn't bankrupt my business. On the minus side: Stripe continues to ignore Poland, so I have to deal with Braintree and this is a pain in oh so many ways, VAT MOSS is a disaster, and we have the Cult of the Invoice.
I am an e-resident and I used it to establish a business entity for my startup. It works really well for my particular use case.<p>I am a Canadian resident, my co-founder is an Estonian resident (physical). Both of these may change in the future and the intended market for our startup is global. Estonia was chosen as a common ground with a minimal overhead - it's easy and costs almost nothing.<p>Using government services with an ID-card was a breeze. For banking we use a "physical" Estonian bank, once set up I have no problem accessing it online either.<p>We didn't have any revenue the previous year, so cannot say much about taxation story here. It gets more or less complicated depending on your country of residence, but I don't think that having a business entity in Estonia is fundamentally different from other EU countries here.<p>Slightly more personal and readable story, written by me: <a href="https://medium.com/e-residency-blog/how-to-launch-an-estonian-startup-from-the-canadian-mountains-7ae95f1ff11" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/e-residency-blog/how-to-launch-an-estonia...</a>
In my experience a lot of freelancers are using it (especially when they like to work in different countries). Personally I’m quite happy using it and it’s a way better experience in comparison with the chamber of commerce in the Netherlands when you start freelancing (had some bad experiences unfortunately when they sold my data to shady companies which will target you with fake invoices/bad deals/spamming). Another great feature is that you are in full control how to pay yourself (salary/board member fee/dividends) which can have serious tax advantages depending on your country’s tax system.
You can register a company with it in 1 hour. Then open a bank account with Revolut Business and run it from anywhere in the world. It really depends on what you want to use it for.
Getting an Estonian bank account is nigh impossible. If you want to do anything AdSense related, go with an Armenian account instead. Less hype, same rules (~), totally worth it.
In most cases that setup does not absolve you from tax obligations where you live.
I can see a benefit in setting up a business or branch in EU in general, if you have customers in EU. Otherwise why Estonia specifically?
I too have been curious, and I haven't seen anything beyond "nifty factor" to compel me to set it up.<p>In most cases it won't positively benefit people in terms of taxation.<p>However, it might perhaps be useful for people coming from countries that are looked down upon by some significant EU countries. In that case, having an Estonia registration might increase the credibility of the business from an initial (and sometimes important) external view.
I set up a company and bank account a couple of months ago. It was very easy.<p>We are in development so don't have any customers yet, so I can't tell you how taxes etc will be but I can tell you the process of dealing with the .ee government so far is paradise compared to the US process.
It may not be important for your use case, but Stripe will not work with Estonian company. <a href="https://stripe.com/global" rel="nofollow">https://stripe.com/global</a>