5 Reasons Why e-Residency is Perfect for Freelancers
This is a guest post submitted by Xolo, a company that’s growing by serving e-residents. Learn more about working in partnership with the e-Residency programme here, and learn more about Xolo.
If you’re brand new to the freelancing game, or even a veteran in the field, you need to know about Estonian e-Residency. And if you don’t already, allow us to help introduce it to you. e-Residency was started in 2014, as a way to share Estonia’s incredible range of digital public services with the world. And the most important bit for independent professionals? The fact you could start a business in Estonia without ever setting foot there.
They offer access to the European Union, an easy to understand tax system, and the ability to run your business completely remotely, meaning you can work from anywhere in the world. And if that doesn’t already sound awesome, here are our 5 reasons why you won’t find anything better than e-Residency.
1. A lot less admin
In our time working with freelancers, one-person businesses and solopreneurs alike, we’ve found that one of the biggest problems is the amount of time business administration takes. If you’re good at what you do, then you’ll have customers who you want to serve, and deadlines you need to meet. You don’t need to be spending precious hours checking receipts and calculating taxes.
Well e-Residency makes that burden a whole lot easier. Corporate taxes are totally simple, and expense reporting is a breeze. You can pick from a whole host of companies that e-Residency promotes to help you out with this at a very fair fee, and a big weight will be off your shoulders.
2. Personal freedom
Have you ever dreamt of spending your evenings on golden beaches? Or maybe in lively bars in foreign cities? Well, with a company that’ll follow you around the world, you can.
When you start a business with e-Residency, you can register it remotely, and then run it remotely. Where you work is up to you! As long as you keep your customers happy, and you’re running things by the book, your location is insignificant. Go from Alicante to Ubud and everywhere in between.
3. No. More. Paperwork.
Yes, you read that right. We mentioned Estonia’s digital public services, and one of the best of them all is the digital signature. Once you get an e-Residency ID card, you’ll have the ability to digitally sign documents, and this signature is just as legally binding as one done in ink.
There’s also the fact that both starting and running your business are done totally online, so there are no papers to fill in there either. Estonia is a beautiful, forest-filled country, and they’re giving a little back to the trees by not chopping so many of them down.
4. Cutting costs
One of the perils of freelance life is the way outgoings can rack up quickly. Depending on the business you’re in, you might need a lot of help just to keep things running smoothly, and everything comes at a price. From accountants to invoicing tools, to taxes, there are always things to be paid for, and this is where it makes sense to look for value for money.
In Estonia, you won’t pay corporate income tax on earnings that you keep inside the company, only on the money you pay out as dividends. And you can find a local service provider to help you take care of all of your company’s admin, normally at a very fair monthly cost.
5. Totally trusted
By starting a business in the EU, you’ll immediately improve the credibility of yourself and your new business entity. Even simply by having a business entity, you may have more success in finding clients who are happy to work with you. You might even have more clients available to you, as you can easily work in the European single market, with hundreds of millions of potential customers.
It’s this access to a major global market, along with convenience, ease of use, and minimal cost, that makes e-Residency an ideal option for freelancers looking to start their own business. And if that’s you, what are you waiting for — apply now!
