{"id":1935,"date":"2019-04-01T10:00:45","date_gmt":"2019-04-01T10:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/virtualofficeinestonia.com\/?p=1935"},"modified":"2026-02-20T19:05:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T17:05:09","slug":"brexit-is-a-mess-but-uk-startups-may-find-refuge-in-estonias-e-residency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/virtualofficeinestonia.com\/et\/brexit-is-a-mess-but-uk-startups-may-find-refuge-in-estonias-e-residency\/","title":{"rendered":"Brexit is a mess, but UK startups may find refuge in Estonia\u2019s e-Residency"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The UK government has tried to come up with solutions<\/a> to make the breakup easier on the country\u2019s startups, but it hasn\u2019t addressed the biggest issue: losing access to the EU single market. Luckily, Estonia offers a way for the UK to maintain its foothold.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I visited the e-Residency<\/a> office in the capital city Tallinn, a unique program that lets foreigners register to become \u2018e-residents\u2019 of Estonia. \u201cWe saw a sharp increase in applications due to Brexit right after Article 50 was triggered,\u201d Arnaud Castaignet, Head of Public Relations for e-Residency, told TNW. \u201cWe received more than a thousand emails that week as many people discovered that they had a solution which could potentially help them remain in the EU business environment and single market.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Estonia currently has 2,651 British e-residents that have set up 312 companies in the country, and 40 of those were established this year. There\u2019s clearly a lot of interest from the UK in Estonia\u2019s e-Residency program, but what exactly does it mean to be an e-resident, and can it really solve UK startups\u2019 Brexit woes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

UK\u2019s lifeline a by product of cutting costs<\/b><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

It doesn\u2019t matter where you\u2019re from or where you\u2019re located, anyone can apply online to become an Estonian e-resident<\/a>. The whole process takes only a few weeks and if you\u2019re accepted, you\u2019ll get a government-issued digital identity card that gives you online access to all of Estonia\u2019s governmental services in English, such as company formation, banking, payment processing, and taxation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That sounds\u2026 neat? But why is gaining access to governmental services of this Baltic country desirable? Well, first of all, Estonia is at the forefront of digital governance in the world, letting citizens and e-residents sort out bureaucratic stuff in a few clicks, instead of racing between various governmental bodies and dealing with paperwork in person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second benefit is probably the most important one for UK startups: Estonia is in the EU. That means the companies you just set up in a few clicks have access to the biggest single market in the world, making it incredibly valuable for entrepreneurs and freelancers. But how do existing UK startups fit in with the e-Residency program, and how can they mitigate the damage that Brexit could deal to their businesses?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOnce you\u2019re an e-resident, in only takes a couple of minutes to create a company,\u201d Castaignet explains. \u201cAnd the companies<\/a> created through e-Residency are just like any Estonian company. You have the exact rights to access your physical market.\u201d This means British citizens can found new companies in Estonia and run their EU operations through them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The funny thing is, what could be a crucial lifeline for UK startups was just a byproduct of the Estonian government cutting costs. After Estonia gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, it was in a hurry to catch up with the Western world in every way. One important step was providing the same level of governmental services, but cheaper, to make up for the country\u2019s small population. So the Estonian government swiftly began adopting new tech and optimizing its services to make them easily accessible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEstablishing e-Residency<\/a> didn\u2019t cost much, because it\u2019s not a technological innovation at all,\u201d says Castaignet. \u201cIn 2014, the Estonian government simply decided to give access to the infrastructure which already existed for our citizens to the rest of the world. It\u2019s basically a byproduct of a digital society.\u201d Today, this has culminated in one of the most progressive digital governmental environments in the world \u2014 and that\u2019s what e-residents get access to with their Estonian ID.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ethical backdoor<\/b><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

It seems weird that this \u2018backdoor\u2019 exists to Europe\u2019s single market, but Castaignet explains that most EU countries already allow non-residents to found companies. It\u2019s just the digitization that sets Estonia apart, which has made it a popular choice for people who need to manage their EU operations on-the-go or outside the union. Other member states also aren\u2019t opposed to Estonia providing this service as it doesn\u2019t affect e-residents\u2019 taxes in their home countries (i.e. not a tax haven), making it an ethical backdoor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEvery e-resident still pays their personal income tax where they live and corporate taxes need to be paid where the company generates value,\u201d says Castaignet. He adds that some of those taxes do end up in Estonia, but it\u2019s not a particularly impressive sum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s actually all the \u201cindirect benefits\u201d of the e-Residency to Estonia<\/a> that are the biggest boon, according to Castaignet. When people become e-residents, they might need a virtual secretary, legal advisor, or other business services. To help e-residents out, e-Residency puts them in contact with Estonian companies that can help, boosting the country\u2019s private sector. e-Residency and Estonia\u2019s other digital initiatives also greatly add to the country\u2019s soft power, making Estonia often central in geopolitical discussions on tech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The UK government has tried to come up with solutions to make the breakup easier on the country\u2019s startups, but it hasn\u2019t addressed the biggest issue: losing access to the EU single market. Luckily, Estonia offers a way for the UK to maintain its foothold. I visited the e-Residency office in the capital city Tallinn, a unique program that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1257277,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[425,487],"tags":[325,328,326,327],"class_list":["post-1935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","category-tax","tag-brexit","tag-e-residency","tag-estonia","tag-eu"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/virtualofficeinestonia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/brexit-is-a-mess-but-uk-startups-may-find-refuge.png","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/virtualofficeinestonia.com\/et\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/virtualofficeinestonia.com\/et\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/virtualofficeinestonia.com\/et\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/virtualofficeinestonia.com\/et\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/virtualofficeinestonia.com\/et\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/virtualofficeinestonia.com\/et\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/virtualofficeinestonia.com\/et\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1257277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/virtualofficeinestonia.com\/et\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/virtualofficeinestonia.com\/et\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/virtualofficeinestonia.com\/et\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}