5 ms·

Estonia wants to become a 'country as a service'

76 points by sdabdoub 10y ago

brianbreslin 10y ago
Did businessinsider just run an article about what was an april fools joke? http://arcticstartup.com/article/estonian-country-as-a-service-due-soon-but-not-on-april-1/ http://arcticstartup.com/article/estonian-country-as-a-servi... https://countryos.com/ https://countryos.com/
- neopallium 10y ago
  The article is about https://www.leapin.eu/ https://www.leapin.eu/ and https://e-estonia.com/ https://e-estonia.com/ Those two sites don't seem like an april fools jokes.
Bartweiss 10y ago
Given the long history of flags of convenience and purchasable citizenship in tax havens, something like this seems bound to be attempted eventually. If it takes off, it'll be curious to see how hard the pushback is.
- gamblor956 10y ago
  Their doesn't need to be pushback. Every country that has an income tax taxes its residents, whether or not they are citizens.
gesman 10y ago
Not too many in silicon valley can claim that: ... He adds: "I have been like a kid in a candy store. I have lots of investment money and full political support."
mattmanser 10y ago
Seems like it'll be a non-starter for most sane businesses given the insane reporting requirements. we started to ask companies to give us more data. The reason is we wanted to get rid of fraud. Currently, all the companies in Estonia are declaring their B2B deals. If I’m a company and you’re a company and I buy something off you and it’s more than €1,000, we both have to declare it
- reustle 10y ago
  How is this insane? It's just about keeping very clear logs of the transactions, right? I's not like in the US they don't know where my money transfers are coming from.
  - Bartweiss 10y ago
    I guess it's the thousand Euro minimum? CTRs in the US are min $10,000, but that doesn't seem like an overwhelming hurdle when the transaction is already being recorded somewhere. Most people auto-generate this stuff anyway.
  - mattmanser 10y ago
    What business is it of a government what I spend money on?
    - wodenokoto 10y ago
      It's their tax business.
      - tyingq 10y ago
        It's unusual for a government to ask for recordings of individual transactions. Tax forms tend to ask for aggregate numbers on quarterly or yearly boundaries.
        superuser2 10y ago
        Yes, but you are required to retain much more detailed records and produce them upon request.
        tyingq 10y ago
        In unusual circumstances, like an audit perhaps. Many small businesses go their entire existence without sharing detail level transactions with the government. So, when it's proposed, it's unusual, and is worthy of concern.
tzaman 10y ago
Imagine this becoming a thing. Where anyone could eventually become Estonia's resident with all the rights (and of course responsibilities) equal to the people actually living there. Once other nations would follow, then the borders would truly start to disappear because it wouldn't really matter where you are located. No more us and them, just people of the earth. I know it's way too optimistic and this solution probably introduces just as many problems as it solves, but still, one is allowed to dream, right?
- qaq 10y ago
  Well tax laws apply to you based on your tax residence and your citizenship so this has very limited benefits if you are already living in a western country. Plus due to all the anti money laundering rules you will have tough time opening a bank account remotely.
  - tzaman 10y ago
    Agreed, but I think these are all solvable issues, someone just has to make the first attempt at solving them.
  - nordify 10y ago
    Actually, Estonia just passed a law which will allow remote bank account opening for all e-residents.
    - qaq 10y ago
      Passing a law and being able to implement it are 2 different things. If US decides to put pressure on banks they will comply.
- wmeredith 10y ago
  It reminds of the franchised countries ("Burbclaves") in Neil Stephenson's Snow Crash.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  The cynical read on the same statement is "therefore other countries will stop respecting Estonian citizenship to maintain selectivity". Shipping's been done under flags of convenience for years, but I suspect a lot of people will be deeply unwilling to walk that road for residence.
kfk 10y ago
Interesting, though physical residency must come in at some point, otherwise who pays taxes for the country you actually live in? But hey, if they start making good laws, I'd move there, as European it's very easy. But good laws means also lower taxes and a decent healthcare at decent prices.
- GordonS 10y ago
  > But good laws means ... decent healthcare at decent prices I'd say it means decent healthcare, universally free of charge.
  - kfk 10y ago
    For cancer yes, but for a back pain? It's very hard to make universal healthcare because universal healthcare is a very subjective term. The only way to make healthcare universal is to work out serious insurance plans and then make sure that what's not covered is priced honestly.
    - GordonS 10y ago
      > For cancer yes, but for a back pain Yes. Someone shouldn't have to suffer in pain because they work a low paid job, or are unemployed. > The only way to make healthcare universal is to work out serious insurance plans It's not the only way. The other way is for our taxes to foot the bill, as we do in the UK with the NHS. The NHS is far from perfect, with long waiting lists and varying levels of care depending on your location - but it works, and provides universal healthcare to the whole of the UK.
      - kfk 10y ago
        Well, I have never seen a healthcare system that works well for non-deadly issues like back pain and I have lived in Italy, Denmark and Germany. Also, at the end of the day somebody has to pay the bill, so either you pay with taxes or someone else has to pay yours with his taxes. Considering population is getting older, people that can pay your healthcare bills are going to be scarcer and scarcer. From a practical standpoint, what you want is unattainable. If we focus on the right stuff, instead, we can make sure that we are all better off, while right now public healthcare is a joke and people end up paying the same thing 2 times (first public healthcare insurance, second the private doctor).
natchiketa 10y ago
From https://e-estonia.com/e-residents/about/ https://e-estonia.com/e-residents/about/ e-Residency does not confer citizenship, tax residency, residence or right of entry to Estonia or to the European Union. The e-Resident smart ID card is not a physical identification or a travel document, and does not display a photo.
- wmf 10y ago
  It's like they chose the second most misleading name they could think of (#1 being "e-citizen").
SyneRyder 10y ago
Estonia's E-Residency program has gotten a few mentions on HN before, at one point they actually replied to some of the comments here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9537551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9537551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10407604 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10407604 And Kaspar Korjus, director of the E-Residency program, gave an AMA over on the Digital Nomad forum a few months ago: https://nomadforum.io/t/i-m-kaspar-director-of-estonia-s-e-residency-program-ama/4769 https://nomadforum.io/t/i-m-kaspar-director-of-estonia-s-e-r...
legitster 10y ago
Estonia is such an interesting country. Story is that after the fall of communism they built, their entire economic model off of Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose" book, having relatively little knowledge of any economics. This lead to some very interesting successes as a post-communist nation, especially considering Free to Choose was likely a banned book just a few years before. It sounds like they are going even further to the right and experimenting with some of the ideas from Anarcho-capitalism. Bully for them. It's been working for them in the past, and it's nice to see a government that (at least seems) to have their act together trying out some weird and out there stuff.

76 points by sdabdoub 10y ago

Did businessinsider just run an article about what was an april fools joke? http://arcticstartup.com/article/estonian-country-as-a-service-due-soon-but-not-on-april-1/ http://arcticstartup.com/article/estonian-country-as-a-servi... https://countryos.com/ https://countryos.com/

neopallium 10y ago
The article is about https://www.leapin.eu/ https://www.leapin.eu/ and https://e-estonia.com/ https://e-estonia.com/ Those two sites don't seem like an april fools jokes.

Bartweiss 10y ago

Given the long history of flags of convenience and purchasable citizenship in tax havens, something like this seems bound to be attempted eventually. If it takes off, it'll be curious to see how hard the pushback is.

gamblor956 10y ago
Their doesn't need to be pushback. Every country that has an income tax taxes its residents, whether or not they are citizens.

gesman 10y ago

Not too many in silicon valley can claim that: ... He adds: "I have been like a kid in a candy store. I have lots of investment money and full political support."

mattmanser 10y ago

Seems like it'll be a non-starter for most sane businesses given the insane reporting requirements. we started to ask companies to give us more data. The reason is we wanted to get rid of fraud. Currently, all the companies in Estonia are declaring their B2B deals. If I’m a company and you’re a company and I buy something off you and it’s more than €1,000, we both have to declare it

reustle 10y ago
How is this insane? It's just about keeping very clear logs of the transactions, right? I's not like in the US they don't know where my money transfers are coming from.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  I guess it's the thousand Euro minimum? CTRs in the US are min $10,000, but that doesn't seem like an overwhelming hurdle when the transaction is already being recorded somewhere. Most people auto-generate this stuff anyway.
- mattmanser 10y ago
  What business is it of a government what I spend money on?
  - wodenokoto 10y ago
    It's their tax business.
    - tyingq 10y ago
      It's unusual for a government to ask for recordings of individual transactions. Tax forms tend to ask for aggregate numbers on quarterly or yearly boundaries.
      - superuser2 10y ago
        Yes, but you are required to retain much more detailed records and produce them upon request.
        tyingq 10y ago
        In unusual circumstances, like an audit perhaps. Many small businesses go their entire existence without sharing detail level transactions with the government. So, when it's proposed, it's unusual, and is worthy of concern.

tzaman 10y ago

Imagine this becoming a thing. Where anyone could eventually become Estonia's resident with all the rights (and of course responsibilities) equal to the people actually living there. Once other nations would follow, then the borders would truly start to disappear because it wouldn't really matter where you are located. No more us and them, just people of the earth. I know it's way too optimistic and this solution probably introduces just as many problems as it solves, but still, one is allowed to dream, right?

qaq 10y ago
Well tax laws apply to you based on your tax residence and your citizenship so this has very limited benefits if you are already living in a western country. Plus due to all the anti money laundering rules you will have tough time opening a bank account remotely.
- tzaman 10y ago
  Agreed, but I think these are all solvable issues, someone just has to make the first attempt at solving them.
- nordify 10y ago
  Actually, Estonia just passed a law which will allow remote bank account opening for all e-residents.
  - qaq 10y ago
    Passing a law and being able to implement it are 2 different things. If US decides to put pressure on banks they will comply.
wmeredith 10y ago
It reminds of the franchised countries ("Burbclaves") in Neil Stephenson's Snow Crash.
Bartweiss 10y ago
The cynical read on the same statement is "therefore other countries will stop respecting Estonian citizenship to maintain selectivity". Shipping's been done under flags of convenience for years, but I suspect a lot of people will be deeply unwilling to walk that road for residence.

kfk 10y ago

Interesting, though physical residency must come in at some point, otherwise who pays taxes for the country you actually live in? But hey, if they start making good laws, I'd move there, as European it's very easy. But good laws means also lower taxes and a decent healthcare at decent prices.

GordonS 10y ago
> But good laws means ... decent healthcare at decent prices I'd say it means decent healthcare, universally free of charge.
- kfk 10y ago
  For cancer yes, but for a back pain? It's very hard to make universal healthcare because universal healthcare is a very subjective term. The only way to make healthcare universal is to work out serious insurance plans and then make sure that what's not covered is priced honestly.
  - GordonS 10y ago
    > For cancer yes, but for a back pain Yes. Someone shouldn't have to suffer in pain because they work a low paid job, or are unemployed. > The only way to make healthcare universal is to work out serious insurance plans It's not the only way. The other way is for our taxes to foot the bill, as we do in the UK with the NHS. The NHS is far from perfect, with long waiting lists and varying levels of care depending on your location - but it works, and provides universal healthcare to the whole of the UK.
    - kfk 10y ago
      Well, I have never seen a healthcare system that works well for non-deadly issues like back pain and I have lived in Italy, Denmark and Germany. Also, at the end of the day somebody has to pay the bill, so either you pay with taxes or someone else has to pay yours with his taxes. Considering population is getting older, people that can pay your healthcare bills are going to be scarcer and scarcer. From a practical standpoint, what you want is unattainable. If we focus on the right stuff, instead, we can make sure that we are all better off, while right now public healthcare is a joke and people end up paying the same thing 2 times (first public healthcare insurance, second the private doctor).

natchiketa 10y ago

From https://e-estonia.com/e-residents/about/ https://e-estonia.com/e-residents/about/ e-Residency does not confer citizenship, tax residency, residence or right of entry to Estonia or to the European Union. The e-Resident smart ID card is not a physical identification or a travel document, and does not display a photo.

wmf 10y ago
It's like they chose the second most misleading name they could think of (#1 being "e-citizen").

SyneRyder 10y ago

Estonia's E-Residency program has gotten a few mentions on HN before, at one point they actually replied to some of the comments here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9537551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9537551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10407604 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10407604 And Kaspar Korjus, director of the E-Residency program, gave an AMA over on the Digital Nomad forum a few months ago: https://nomadforum.io/t/i-m-kaspar-director-of-estonia-s-e-residency-program-ama/4769 https://nomadforum.io/t/i-m-kaspar-director-of-estonia-s-e-r...

legitster 10y ago

Estonia is such an interesting country. Story is that after the fall of communism they built, their entire economic model off of Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose" book, having relatively little knowledge of any economics. This lead to some very interesting successes as a post-communist nation, especially considering Free to Choose was likely a banned book just a few years before. It sounds like they are going even further to the right and experimenting with some of the ideas from Anarcho-capitalism. Bully for them. It's been working for them in the past, and it's nice to see a government that (at least seems) to have their act together trying out some weird and out there stuff.