Frequently Asked Questions

In case your company has made a profit, it is possible to pay a dividend to the shareholders. Shareholders receive dividends proportionately to the share of the company that they own. 

NB! Before the company is allowed to pay dividend, the company’s share capital needs to be paid into the company bank account. To do that, each shareholder needs to make a payment to the company bank account, indicating clearly that this payment is for “Share capital downpayment”. 

Also – your company’s annual report needs to be submitted to the Business Registry before you can pay dividends.

After you have made the share capital payment, please inform us so we could formulate the changes in the company registration documents 

Value Added Tax (VAT) is a tax levied on goods and services in most countries of the world.

For a theoretical background, you can read the Wikipedia article.

It is important to understand how and when VAT is applied to your business model. In some cases VAT rules can also be an important factor in deciding whether or not it makes sense to run your business using the “e-Residency + company in Estonia” model. Read more about VAT in our dedicated memo.

In case your company has made profit, it is possible to pay dividend to the shareholders. Shareholders receive dividends proportionately to the share of the company that they own.

NB! Before the company is allowed to pay dividend, the company’s share capital needs to be paid into the company bank account.

After you have made the share capital payment, please inform your e-Residency hub accountant, so we could formulate the changes in the company registration documents

Dividends are taxed with 20% corporate income tax.

Example: A company decides to spend €100,000 of its accumulated profit to make a dividend payment. This sum is divided in the following manner:

• €80,000 is paid out to company shareholders according to their shares of the company
• €20,000 € is paid as the Estonian company’s corporate income tax to the Estonian Tax and Customs Board (the tax payment is made no later than on the 10^th day of the following calendar month)

In the case described above, the €80,000 which is received by the company’s shareholders, may be considered their income in the country where they are tax residents. It may therefore be taxed with a personal income tax in their country of residence. Please check with a tax advisor in your country of residence to find out if this applies to you.

In case your company pays regular dividends, a different methodology is used to calculate the taxes.

“Regular dividends” means that the company has paid a similar amount of dividends for 3 consecutive years. In such case, the corporate income tax on these regular dividends is 14%.

NB! This lower tax on dividends can only be used if the Estonian company is owned by another company and not by a physical person. So, in effect, most companies owned by e-residents can not use this lower dividend rate

Please contact your accountant at e-Residency Hub if you have any further questions about how the dividends that your Estonian company pays to its shareholders are taxed in Estonia.

The Estonian law allows a company to pay to its Board Members a fee for performing their duties as Board Members. This fee is always taxed in Estonia (regardless of whether the Board member lives in Estonia or not). The Management Board Member fee is taxed in the following manner:

• 20% of personal income tax
• 33% social tax

In case you pay yourself the Board Member’s fee, then your company is obliged to pay 33% or Social Tax in Estonia. If you live in another EU member state and you wish that these payments would be made directly to the social welfare account in your country, you need to do the following:

1. Get an A1 form, which is issued and approved by the social security institution in your country
2. Send this form to your accountant at e-Residency Hub, so we could indicate the recipient country in your company’s monthly tax filings.
3. Based on this form, you are not required to pay social tax in Estonia. It is possible that you personally or your Estonian company will then need to pay the social tax in your country of residence. Please check the details from your country’s social security institutions. It is your responsibility to make sure that all relevant social taxes which may need to be paid in your country of residence are properly declared and paid. E-Residency Hub can not do this on your behalf.

In case the company has employees who are not Estonian tax residents and who live and work outside Estonia, salary payments to these foreign employees are not taxed in Estonia and we do not submit any tax declarations about these employees.

In such case, these foreign employees must declare their income from your Estonian company in the country in which they live and are tax residents.

NB! It is your responsibility to make sure any income of your foreign employees is properly declared in the foreign countries in which they live. In case any supporting documentation is required on behalf of your Estonian company – please let your e-Residency Hub accountant know.

In case you plan to employ people who are tax residents of Estonia, please send us their Estonian ID code and start and end dates of their employment contracts. You must do that BEFORE these people begin actual work in Estonia. We will enter this information in the Estonian Employee’s Registry.

NB! Employees who are not Estonian tax residents and do not live in Estonia do not need to registered!

In case your company is paying salaries to its employees who are Estonian tax residents, the company is required to withhold the following taxes and transfer them directly to the Estonian Tax and Customs Board:

• 20% of personal income tax
• 1.6% unemployment insurance payment (employee’s share)
• 0.8% unemployment insurance payment (employer’s share)
• 33% social tax

We will calculate the taxes, based on actual payments your company has made to your employees during the previous calendar month and inform you no later than on 7^th day of each month. In case there are tax payments, which are due, this leaves you three calendar days to make the tax payment.

NB! It is your responsibility to make sure that the tax payments reach the bank account of the Estonian Tax and customs board on time. We shall inform you of the relevant bank account numbers and reference number you need to use when making the tax payments.

Once per year your company needs to submit an annual report. The annual report has two parts:

• Executive summary of company activities. You need to write a text about what the company has done and achieved during the previous calendar year, what have been the key milestones and what are the plans for the future. This should be a few paragraphs of text at minimum. If you’d like, you can always be more thorough.

Please note that annual reports of all Estonian companies are public information that can be downloaded by anyone from the Internet (for a state fee of 2 € per company)

• Company financial statements. We will prepare those on your behalf.

Before submitting the annual report to the Estonian Business Registry, we shall send it to your company’s Board Members for approval and digital signing.

Deadline for submitting the annual report for the previous calendar year is June 30^th of the following year.

In case your company was established between 01.07-31.12 of a calendar year (i.e. during the second half of the year), you do not need to submit an annual report for that first year. You will submit an annual report for the first 1.5 years of activities in June of the third year of activities.

Example: if your company was established on 15.07.2018, then you do not need to submit a separate report for 2018.

The first report that such company will need to submit is the joint report for 2018-2019. This report is due by 30.06.2020

When you register a company with E-Residency Hub, you’ll receive a private limited liability company (OÜ or osaühing in Estonian) which is registered in Estonia.

An OÜ is the simplest format to run your micro business. According to the law, by default an OÜ is managed by it’s shareholders and management board members.

• Shareholders have the ultimate decision making power in the company. They are the ones who founded the company in the first place. During the course of business activities they can decide to amend the Articles of Association, increase/reduce share capital, elect/remove members of the management board, approve the annual report and distribute profit, decide on dissolution of the private limited company etc.
• The management board is the managing body of the company which represents and manages the company, and takes official responsibility for the activities. There is a legal distinction between an official role as a “management board member” and an unofficial role as a “manager”, “director” or similar. The first one comes with the legal rights and obligations valid outside the company as well, but the latter one is for internal or promotional purposes only.

A private limited liability company can also elect a supervisory board, but it’s optional, and the companies registered via E-Residency Hub do not have it.

Since you are both the sole shareholder and management board member of the company, fulfilling both roles at the same time, you are fully in charge and don’t have to bother with the official distinction of decision making rights between the shareholders and the management board members, or the internal reporting requirements. In other words, in case of a single-member company, the corporate governance rules and processes are simplified – a benefit for you. And it’s up to you which title (CEO, manager, director, etc) you use on your business card.

Please keep in mind that the legal power to manage your company comes with equal responsibility. By law, the founders of a private limited company and the members of the management board shall be liable for damage caused to the private limited company by their action or inaction.

We strongly recommend that you watch these short video tutorials before starting to use the Envoice platform:

Introduction to Envoice

Creating sales invoices

Creating travel reports

Creating expense reports

Receipts are different from invoices in that they usually do not have the buyer’s name written on them. In most cases, receipts are in hard copy (paper copy).

A receipt needs to include:

• Date of issue
• Receipt number
• Description of goods or services purchased
• Numerical data (amount, price of unit, total sum)
• Name of the seller
• Address of the seller
• Seller’s company registration number
• Seller’s VAT number (in case the seller has it)

Receipts can be forwarded to us, using the Envoice app. You simply take a photo of the receipt and send it to us via the app. Please use Multipage function, if your receipt has multiple pages (card payment slip and receipt itself).

It is very strongly preferred that only business related expenses are on your receipts that you send to us.

Example: you go to the shop and buy A4 office paper for your company’s use and also ice-cream for your children. Please ask the seller to issue two separate receipts: One for the A4 office printer paper and another, separate receipt, for the ice-cream.

Your purchase invoices and your receipts will appear in the Envoice tool. The invoices will be digitised line-by-line within 5 hours from the moment you send them to us.

e-Residency Hub will provide you with an email address in the following format:

xxxxxxxxxxx@envoice.eu

You need to send your purchase invoice to that email address either in .PDF or .JPG format.

In case you have received hard copy (paper copy) invoices, you can use our mobile app to snap a picture of the invoice and send it to us via the app.

If possible, please ask your suppliers to submit invoices in English, Estonian, or Russian. If that is not possible, please include in the email an explanation about what this invoice was for.

NB! When emailing your invoices to us, please attach only one invoice at a time!

In case you wish to upload your invoices to Envoice in bulk, you can set up your own DropBox or OneDrive folders for your invoices. These folders will then be automatically synced with Envoice. Please contact your accountant for more info about how to set up such folders.

The following information needs to be written on purchase and sales invoices:

• Title (e.g. “Invoice” or similar)
• Invoice number
• Date of issue
• Description of goods or services purchased
• Numerical data (amount, price of unit, total sum)
• Names of the seller and buyer
• Addresses of the seller and buyer
• Seller’s company registration number
• Seller’s VAT number (in case the seller has it)

See a video tutorial here.

Only expenses, which are directly related to your business, can be booked as company expenses. In case you use the company bank account to pay for expenses,
which are not directly related to your business, you must pay additional income tax of 25% on these sums.

All non-business related expense occurred during the past calendar month, must be declared by 10th day of the following month to Estonian Tax and Customs Board using TSD declaration Annex 6. Your accountant at e-Residency Hub will do this for you.

VAT is not recoverable on such expenses.

In case we have a doubt whether some expenses are business related or not, we shall ask for your explanation about those and we shall advise you about whether these expenses are business related or not in our opinion. The final decision about whether to include these expenses in the company’s accounting is made by the Board Members of the company (i.e. by you). The Board Members also carry the responsibility about that decision in any future disputes with the Estonian Tax and Customs Board.

See a video tutorial here.

Business trips are defined as short-term travels, with a specific business-related purpose and with actual business-related activities being carried out during the trip. Business trips usually start from your permanent place of employment. A business trip typically involves meeting customers, project partners, attending conferences etc.

When travelling for business purposes, expenses usually occur (accommodation, taxi rides, plane, train or bus tickets, meals etc). If your country’s legislation allows it, daily allowances can also be claimed.

For submitting travel report and expense statements, Envoice travel application should be used. The easiest way to do this is via the Envoice mobile app. This app is used to start travel expense reports and submit related receipts (by taking a photo of the receipt using the app).

A client needs to forward to ERHub all data about its economic activities in a given calendar month no later than on the 5th day of the following calendar month.

Using Envoice, this data exchange can be done in real-time and as-you-go. We recommend that you send all
invoices and receipts to us as they occur, instead of sending them all together at the end of the month.

You need to send us the following information.

• Purchase invoices
• Receipts
• Bank account statements. The easiest way is to give ERHub the rights to see your bank account activities (i.e. so that we can not transfer money out of your account but we see the transactions you are making).This way you do not need to separately send us your account statement every month.

Sales invoices must be created using Envoice. You do not need to send these to us separately.
Travel expense reports must be created using Envoice.

The answers to most commonly-asked questions can be found here. And when in doubt, you can always get in touch.

Absolutely! Read more about travel opportunities here.

Thousands. For the most current figure, click here.

Most entrepreneurs elect to partner with an experienced service provider for three reasons:

1. To avoid or help resolve issues due to lack of experience with Estonian companies and the Estonian government.
2. To receive support during the application and set-up process. For example, if there are any problems in opening a bank account, this could prevent you from needing to be physically present in Estonia.
3. To receive tax and accounting support on an ongoing basis after your company is established.

No. Income tax is flat 20%, and VAT is 20%. But corporate income tax is only applied to dividends, meaning reinvested corporate profits are tax-free. Fringe benefits are taxed in the same way as salaries. Read more about Estonian taxes here.

Yes and no. While Estonia makes it easier than almost anywhere else, there are a couple issues commonly faced:

• Registration of a company still involves legal questions and fine print that you may miss at first glance. Without any previous experience or professional assistance, there can still be some challenges and frustrations. This is where we come in.
• Opening a bank account without any formal links to Estonia can be challenging – and without an Estonian bank account, a business doesn’t have much use. Fortunately, we can help.

Numerous international organizations have recognized Estonia as having a thriving, open, and competitive economy. Estonia has been ranked:

• 1st in the International Tax Competitiveness Index – OECD
• 1st in Entrepreneurship – World Economic Forum
• 1st in Digital Economy and Society Index – European Commission EU
• 2nd in Internet Freedom – Freedom House 2015
• 8th in the Index of Economic Freedom 2015 – Wall Street Journal/The Heritage Foundation
• 16th in Ease of Doing Business Report 2016 – World Bank
• 23rd in the Corruption Perceptions Index 2015 – Transparency International
• 30th in the Global Competitiveness Report 2015-2016 – World Economic Forum

Estonia offers highly-competitive international credit ratings:

• Standard & Poor: AA-
• Moody’s: A1
• Fitch IBCA: A+

There are a few steps involved, but we can help. Click here to learn more.

So far, individuals from over 100 countries have applied to be an e-Resident within Estonia. Find out more here.

Tens of thousands – and the number continues to grow.

No. The e-Resident ID card is not a travel document and does not display your photo.

Yes. The smart ID card is protected by two unique PIN numbers for secure digital authentication and transmission of digital signatures.

All e-Residents receive a digital ID card to prove e-Residency.

The answers to most commonly-asked questions can be found here. And feel free to contact us.

e‐Residency does not provide citizenship, tax residency, a residence permit, or the right to enter Estonia.

e-Residents can:

1. Found and manage a location-independent online company
2. Apply for a business bank account and credit card
3. Securely manage banking online
4. Access international payment systems (PayPal, Transferwise, etc.)
5. Digitally sign, encrypt, and/or transmit documents
6. Use Estonia’s e-services (see the state portal at eesti.ee)
7. Provide reports to the Estonian Tax and Customs Board and E-Business Register
8. Declare Estonian taxes online

e-Residency is available to anybody in the world.

e-Residency provides access to the EU business environment from anywhere in the world. e‐Residents are granted access to secure e‐services, such as digital authentication, digital signatures, and the ability to start a company.

e-Residency is a secure, government-issued digital identity that provides access to Estonian e-services.

Most solutions can be found on the ID card help page. For further support, you can contact us.

No. Your secure chip-enabled ID card is what allows you to prove your identity and digitally sign forms and documents.

You can download DigiDoc3 software for free: https://installer.id.ee/

You can buy an ID card reader here: https://www.pluss-id.com

A digital signature can be provided by connecting your ID card to your computer with a ID card reader and running the free DigiDoc3 secure ID card software.