Incorporate and manage your business in Estonia

If one of your 2020 goals is to start your own company then incorporating in Estonia might be the solution for you. Even if you are not a resident of Estonia, the e-residency programme offers many great solutions that are also inexpensive. You can find out more and apply for e-residency here:

https://e-resident.gov.ee/

A digital e-residency card makes it easy to incorporate and manage your company online. Even if you choose other options (described below) to incorporate, you can still take advantage of a good business climate and the fact that profit is not taxed in Estonia.

Some of the examples of running a company remotely include consultancy, software development, tourism, financial services like managing a private fund, selling handmade furniture online, insurance services and more.

1. Company in Estonia can be founded online (with an e-residency card or a residence permit card) or at a notary. For the notary visit you need to bring your passport or if you would like someone else to do it, you need to send a power of attorney from your country of residence - with an apostille and translation to English (accompanied with an apostille as well). If the founder is a company, additional requirements such as business registry excerpt, articles of association etc apply.

Expat Legal Estonia has advised in all kinds of business incorporation - simple and more complicated. We will make sure you know all the compliance regulations beforehand (such as possible license requirement or an obligation of economic activity notification). We also offer the necessary contact person and address service.

2. It is probable that when your business evolves, you need to add more shareholders, sell your share, split the existing share, issue new share etc. These kind of transactions can be done online or at a notary. Everything that involves selling or transfer of a share has to be done at a notary or someone else can do it with a power of attorney.

These kind of transactions need planning to optimize the costs and time spent for the whole process. Please take into account that in addition to the power of attorney, separate shareholder decisions might be necessary, also consents from other shareholders as well as consent from your spouse if the share is your marital common property. We work with these questions on a daily basis so we know what to prepare for the transaction and get everything sent to the Estonian Company Register.

3. When starting your business, you need to understand the taxes and also you need to do banking. Accounting is also important.

There are numerous consultancy companies specializing on taxes and accountancy and we encourage to do some research there before opting for costly monthly subscriptions of the traditional service providers. On many occasions you can also collect your invoices yourself or use accountancy programmes like Briox or Merit Tarkvara. When you do need an accountant, a professional accountancy company is not expensive and will provide a quality service - we can surely recommend a few.

There are many fintech solutions for banking like Holvi, Transferwise, Paysera etc that also except e-residency companies.

So make 2020 your year!