My use case: as a Russian citizen living in Russia but planning to release an app, I'd much rather prefer doing it via an EU company than via a Russian company.
First, there's a lot of nasty stuff happens to business owners who don't have proper "protection" (their businesses get "transferred" to the right people and they themselves go to jail on phony charges for not wanting to sell their business for peanuts).
Second, the situation in Russia will definitely get worse, and when that happens, the problem I described above will also get worse. I just don't want to expose a business generating revenue in USD in Russia. And if it gets exposed (which it will, due to the automatic information exchanges between jurisdictions), I will have an additional barrier of protection against unwanted "transfers" -- it's easy to do to a Russian business, but it's much harder with foreign companies.
And third, selling an app while being listed in app stores as a Russian company definitely won't improve my first impressions, given all the hype about Russian hackers (there's even an example of it in this thread!)
By the way, if you want to register a company, go with a provder like LeapIN.eu -- they're fantastic.
If yes, then you own a Russian-resident company and Russian corporate tax law is applicable. You are required to prepare financial statements and file corporate tax returns in Russia. Presumably there's also many foreign ownership disclosure requirements.
Please consider discussing your case with a tax advisor if you have not already done so. I would never ever easily recommend a citizen of an OECD country incorporate a company overseas without first thoroughly researching disclosure requirements and tax law. Please be careful as tax laws generally are of the "go straight to jail" type.
I wish this Estonian e-residency program would contain more warnings in red about the significant impact such a foreign company will have on a shareholder. This applies to Atlas as well--non-US-residents need to be extremely careful with US corporations as there's a good chance they will not actually be resident in the US.
Opening a bank account is more difficult because it's up to individual banks to make the decision to allow remote account holders. Banks are private companies, and government can't easily force their hand without the big hammer of passing some legislation in the Estonian parliament (which would then also need to be vetted for compatibility with pre-existing EU law).
In my experience, European banks seem to go out of their way to make it difficult to open an account. I've had bank accounts in Finland, France and USA, and the last one was a breeze compared to the others.
[0] https://e-residency.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/205283661-...
"Visit the bank office in person and apply for a bank account. The bank will want to know how you are connected to Estonia and how you plan to use the account. You will need to bring your e-residency card along."
In terms of opening a bank account, SEB now offers a way to do that through a video meeting: http://www.seb.ee/eng/remote-advisory, although right now if you're not yet a client, you can not use it. They promise to open it up for new clients as well, but no ETA I think.