One interesting aspect of Estonia is the Digital residency: if are you are allowed to live in Estonia (EU citizen or equivalent) you can be asked to be considered a “digital resident”. That means that you can choose to pay tax there. The main advertised advantage is that all your paperwork, including your company’s, can be done entirely on-line, using a super-secure ID card.

That comes with the (welcome) assumption that you are not going to speak Estonian, and would prefer strong encryption and associated protocols.

I haven’t tried it myself, but my experience of paper-based administrations vs. Finnish and Swedish (far more IT-friendly) is night and day.

Estonia sounds great on paper, has a proof of concept (Skype), English skills are good but the ecosystem around their Ltd (OÜ) is not as widespread as eg UK's where you find tons of resources.

there isn't any standard... in Belgium the taxes are 55% : http://www.oecd.org/ctp/tax-policy/taxing-wages-tax-burden-t...

thanks!

You are welcome !

BTW if you are a Portuguese citizen you can register your company in a easier way, from this page: https://e-estonia.com/component/e-business-register/

Finally if you want to open a company in estonia you will need a physical address, fortunately the government is aware of this hurdle, and in it's website suggest an handful of providers: https://e-residency.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/205207022-...

The one with the nicer website is LeapIN, that has very affordable prices...

You need more than a physical address, you need to live in estonia if you don't want to pay extra taxes. This is true for at least Finland, I have consulted tax lawyers about this.

I have explored quite a bit the idea of opening a company in Estonia via e-residency and this particular point of extra taxes never showed up.

I am sure is not something that they would put on the first page, however I am a little surprise.

Do you care to elaborate ?

They are not listed because the extra taxes are not levied by Estonia.

Almost every country in the world taxes their residents' income, even if it arrives from a company abroad. And US (in)famously taxes their citizens' income, even if they do not live in US.

So if you run a company remotely, you still have to check with your local tax rules to see how much tax you may need to pay if this company pays you salary or dividend.

Well of course, but I would pay those tax even if I were working for Google in California or for Ferrari in Italy, at different government, with slightly different rates, but I would still pay...

Those are not "extra" taxes, those are regular taxes on your income...

This was about Finnish tax authority taxing company income as personal income (another possibility) or taxing the company as it would be finnish based on location of your operation/management location, not the basic taxes based on your location. I'll check if I can find some information about this online.

edit: Here is article about it in finnish http://www.yrittajat.fi/fi-FI/uutisarkisto/a/uutisarkisto/vi...

Translation of key point (by me)

– Jos liiketoiminta tapahtuu Suomessa ja omistajat ja päätöksentekijät asuvat Suomessa, myös verotus tapahtuu Suomessa, vaikka yritys olisi perustettu Viroon. Jos yritys harkitsee toimivansa Virossa, pitää aidosti mennä lahden taakse, asua siellä, pitää kiinteää toimipaikkaa ja harjoittaa liiketoimintaa, Akselin sanoo.

"If business operations are conducted in Finland and decision makers live in Finland the taxation also happens in finland even if the company has been founded in Estonia. If company thinks of operating in Estonia, you have to actually go over the sea and live there, have actual business location and operate your business there Akselin states. (this is a guy from finnish Accounting firm)"

(my note: it doesn't have to have all of the above meaning operations and management, it could be one of the above for example just management living in Finland)

(Poor) Google translation of the article

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...

Sorry this took so long, see my other reply.

AFAIK the extra taxes apply to your country of origin, not to Estonia.