10 helpful information resources and support channels for e-residents
A comprehensive list of online knowledge resources and key contacts for e-residents to help you start and grow your business in 2020.
Happy New Year! Welcome to the new decade!
I’m curious… what are your entrepreneurial plans in the 2020s? Have you made a resolution to pursue that business project you have been putting off?
Well perhaps e-Residency can help!
E-Residency is a digital identity and status issued by the Republic of Estonia to people outside of its borders. It provides access to a wide range of public and private e-services in Estonia as well as our open, trusted, and transparent business environment. E-residents can open an EU company online, digitally sign and encrypt documents, and run your business low cost and paperless from anywhere in the world.
And when you become an e-resident, you join a growing community of like-minded entrepreneurs — currently there are over 63,000 e-residents from 160+ countries, who have started over 10,000 companies. You can find up-to-date statistics on our website dashboard.
Once you have decided to take the plunge, you might need help in becoming an e-resident, starting your company, and growing your business to its full potential.
The e-Residency team is here to help as much as we can. Whatever stage you are at on your e-Residency journey, we have a wealth of content and resources available for you.
Have we missed something? Link to any resources and tools that you have found helpful in the comments section below to share with fellow e-residents.
1. Start your e-Residency journey at our Website
New to e-Residency? Read more about becoming an e-resident of Estonia and starting an EU-based company from anywhere in the world.
Our website is the starting point for those wanting to join our community of over 63,000 e-residents. It provides basic information about the program, a link to the e-Residency application form, a Marketplace of service providers for new entrepreneurs, and links to many other useful resources we will go over below.
You can also read the stories of other e-residents at the ‘Meet the e-residents’ sub page and why not tell your story there too!
2. See if e-Residency is for you by reading our comprehensive Business Guide
The Business Guide for e-residents web page is short and interactive. Its goal is to help you understand in minutes, what it means to be an e-resident entrepreneur from a tax perspective.
The page also contains a questionnaire to help you understand which taxes you will need to consider in relation to your e-Residency company.
From this page, you can download a full version of the comprehensive Business Guide written specifically for e-residents in cooperation with PriceWaterhouseCoopers Estonia. The guide focuses on the taxation of internationally-managed microenterprises — i.e. how the majority of e-residents run their businesses.
3. Get answers to all your e-Residency questions at our Knowledge Base
The e-Residency Knowledge Base is the holy grail of learning and information for e-residents.
Do you have questions about becoming an e-resident, setting up your company, or understanding how taxation works? We’ve got you covered at our Knowledge Base.
The Knowledge Base is e-Residency’s home of learning. It contains articles that are divided into sections such as ‘Your Company’, ‘Banking’, and ‘Taxes’. The majority of the articles are based on frequently asked questions by e-residents. Besides articles, you can also find how-to videos, information about upcoming webinars, and recordings of some past webinars. You can either use the search function to quickly find relevant content for you or just browse through the articles in different sections.
Can’t find an answer to your particular question? Locate the relevant entity for support at our ‘Contacts’ page or check out point nine of this post.
4. Need business or tax consultation or help starting your company? Check out the e-Residency Marketplace
At the e-Residency Marketplace, you can meet some of the service providers available for e-residents, in order to facilitate your first steps when planning, registering, and administering your businesses.
At the Marketplace you can find service providers that offer legal address and contact person service (What is this?), i.e. the only local service that you need to run your company.
Many e-residents also decide to take accounting, tax, and legal advice from local service providers, many of whom are listed on the Marketplace.
The Marketplace also contains a list of different banking service providers familiar with e-Residency and with the location-independent, internationally-run company concept.
Do you feel that you are ready to grow your company? You can find service providers that offer sales and marketing, hiring, relocation, and insurance services there too.
The e-Residency team is working hard all the time to expand the members listed on the Marketplace to service the growing number and diversity of e-resident companies. Just recently we welcomed three new banking and payment service providers, Transferwise, Paysera, and Stripe to the Marketplace, tax and legal consulting firms BDO and Gate to Baltics, and business management platform Plutio.
5. Stay up-to-date with e-Residency developments by subscribing to our newsletter and following our social media accounts
Need a regular fix of e-Residency happenings? You can sign up for the monthly newsletter here.
And for up to the minute news, follow e-Residency on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.
6. Still haven’t got enough e-Residency content? Follow us on Medium and check out our older blog posts
You’re already here so it’s highly likely you have read other posts on our Medium blog. But in case you are new or have time to re-read them, browse our back catalogue of blog pieces. They include helpful guides to becoming an e-resident, setting up a company, and finding your service providers, as well as numerous e-resident stories, guest posts, and programme milestones.
7. What better way to learn than from others like you? Connect with fellow e-residents
Join the Facebook group ‘e-residents in Estonia’. It’s a discussion group for anyone interested in e-Residency of Estonia (but not an official support channel). It can be very useful to seek advice from fellow e-residents here, as many of them have already gone through the same process and addressed the same questions.
Start by searching the existing posts by keyword as it most likely that your burning question has already been asked and answered! The group is moderated to keep out spammers and posts that are wildly off-topic or low quality but otherwise it is left fairly open to encourage discussions among community members.
Join the Estonian e-residents International Chamber Association (eerica). A group of nine diverse e-residents living across the globe created eerica, a non-profit organisation to independently represent the interests of e-resident companies and help them do more business within Estonia and with each other.
8. The e-Residency team is not the only government resource for doing business in Estonia. Check out these external resources
The Estonian State Portal is a gateway to Estonian e-services and related information. You can find a wealth of information here about doing business in Estonia, work and labour relations, how to obtain business licenses, etc. This is also a good resource if you are looking for an e-service or wish to know, which state authority is responsible for a particular topic.
Check out the e-Estonia website to learn more about how Estonia became the world’s first digital nation.
Europa is the official website of the European Union, where you can find information about doing business and work relations in all EU countries.
The Estonian Tax and Customs Board website is equipped with all the information you need to know about the Estonian tax system and legislation. If any of it seems daunting or confusing or you can’t find something in English (although the majority of it is available in three languages), get in touch with them at nonresident@emta.ee. They are happy to help and advise.
9. Still haven’t found what you’re looking for? Let me introduce you to some awesome contacts that will help you navigate e-Estonia!
E-Residency digital ID cards are issued by the Estonian Police and Border Guard Board or PPA as they are known in Estonia. Besides the e-Residency team itself, the PPA are probably one of the first contacts you will have with Estonia when you commence your e-Residency journey. The PPA oversee and manage the application process, so if you have applied for e-Residency, you will have already received emails from them about your application or your document validity.
Of course, e-Residency is just a fraction of what the PPA does daily. They are also responsible for keeping residents, citizens, and visitors of Estonia safe and managing migration, including issuing residence permits and determining rights. This is why it is important to consider that from the time of your application to e-Residency, it may take 6–8 weeks for the PPA to process your application, conduct background checks, and issue your documents to the chosen pick-up location.
Which brings us to the next key contacts….
Estonian Embassies and pick-up locations
Every e-resident needs to collect their e-Residency digital ID card in person from the pickup location within 6 months. So your first (and perhaps only) face-to-face meeting is likely with the consul or representative at the pickup location when your documents are issued to you.
E-Residency does not provide you with any right to residency, citizenship, or travel to Estonia or the EU. If you are interested in visiting Estonia, Estonian Embassies and other designated visa centres can assist you with your visa application.
ID card technical support line
If you want quick help, ask from the right person! And who better to ask for assistance on how to use the e-Residency digital ID card online or in your computer than the technical support team, that services the whole digital nation! The ID card website is full of helpful articles, FAQs and how-to videos and their “Ask for help” messaging tool enables you to give them relevant information from the start to help them find a solution for you.
Estonian Tax and Customs Board
I don’t know about you, but some years ago, when I first heard about the ‘tax office’, I imagined long difficult forms and unfriendly officials pointing out everything you’ve done wrong.
Now, imagine a tax office, which aspires to be customer-friendly, knowledgeable, and efficient.
Sounds like a fantasy right? Wrong!
Welcome to the Estonian Tax and Customs Board or e-MTA as they are known here. e-MTA are always thinking about how to save time and resources for customers and employees and continuously improving their e-services and processes for tax reporting while maintaining the high standards that reflect the transparent and open Estonian business environment.
They even have a dedicated support page and direct email contact (nonresident@emta.ee) for e-residents. Take my word for it that if you have any questions or issues regarding Estonian taxes, the e-MTA will do all they can to help you.
10. The e-Residency Team
Last but certainly not least, you can also contact the e-Residency team for customer support, as well as to inquire about partnerships or press and media.
The e-Residency support team started out as a single email with a part-time employee answering incoming inquiries. Since then, we have built a comprehensive Knowledge Base to help e-residents to learn and self-serve, posted numerous video tutorials, webinars, and other resources, and also recently published the Business Guide. Our team has also developed a robot chatbot, which helps e-residents and those interested find relevant content and solutions instantly.
And of course, our team is made up of real human support specialists to answer e-residents inquiries directly.
The e-Residency customer support agents are part of the e-Residency product sub-team and act as the voice of e-residents. We always consider what prompted you to invest your time into contacting support and whether your questions could have been solved quicker or better through another channel. And then with the product team, we use this analysis to develop a better and a more effortless e-Residency journey for you.
Our support team is quite lean, so we do recommend making the Knowledge Base your first port of call. Most of the content on there is based on support inquiries we receive and so it’s likely you will have your question answered instantly rather than waiting for one of us to respond.
Thank you for taking this glimpse into the fascinating world of e-Residency knowledge resources with me!
What other resources have you used online and found useful? Share links in the comments below!
