Articles
How to start your own business?
When does it make sense to establish a private limited company and how to make all the right steps? Adam Rang, the Communications Director at Unicount, a top company formation agent in Estonia, shares recommendations on this topic.
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The ultimate guide to banking for Estonian e-residents
Our friends at Nomad Gate have written an article that will give you a brief overview of the history of Estonian banking, as well as a list of recommended banks and fintech you for your Estonian company and what it takes to open accounts with them. It is a must read before registering a company in Estonia through e-Residency. Read more
Attracting investments and exercising of share options has been simplified
The amendments to the Estonian Commercial Code that entered into force on the 1st of August 2020 simplified the attraction of investments and exercising share options, which makes Estonia more attractive to foreign investors and solves several problems that arose in practice.
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How to submit your Estonian company’s annual report (without an accountant)
Every Estonian company has to submit an annual report to the Estonian Business Register. This document is an overview of your company’s finances and activities in its previous financial year. All citizens, residents, and e-residents of Estonia that own companies are subject to the same rules, although the reports are simplified for micro and small enterprises.
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Top things to do after you register Estonian company
You can register a company in Estonia with Unicount in five minutes. Once you receive your company registration notification, here are the first steps you’ll probably want to take with your new company.
First of all download your registration certificate and shareholders data in English. These documents are often useful, especially when applying for banking, payment providers, or other services. Downloading them is free and takes just a minute or two.
For the registration certificate, go to the Estonian Business Register, search for your company then select “Registry card”. This takes you to the registry card view where you can download machine translated English version as a PDF.
How to register share capital for your Estonian company
Estonian companies were required a minimum share capital of €2500 until 31 January 2023. This was an investment in your company that could then be spent on developing your business, but you were and are obliged to preserve equity (company assets minus liabilities) on the level that is at least half of the share capital as described in the Estonian Commercial Code § 176.
Until 31 January 2023, Estonia also had a system that allowed you to postpone this investment when registering a company as a natural person founder. The only catch was that your company could not pay out dividends until your share capital had been registered, but you could start trading and even pay out salaries before then.
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Does e-Residency work? Here’s what the data shows
While it is easy to start an e-resident company online, some have heard about problems accessing banking, some are confused about tax implications, and others just wonder if maybe digital residency is all a bit overhyped.
Estonia’s e-Residency programme has generated heaps of positive headlines around the world and been the buzzword among entrepreneurs in coworking spaces on every continent. But does the Estonian digital citizenship actually work? That’s a question we see a lot online.
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How do I register a ‘beneficial owner’ of my Estonian company?
Estonia has one of the world’s most transparent business environments. This helps ensure Estonian companies can be trusted worldwide, even though they can be run entirely online from anywhere by Estonians and e-residents.
A key part of this transparency is ensuring it’s clear who controls each and every company. As an Estonian company director, you are legally obliged to declare the persons benefiting from your company’s activities, the so-called ‘beneficial owners’. This must be done by everyone after starting a company through Unicount, as well as updated within 30 days whenever there is a change to your company’s beneficial owners.
Free template: Add a new shareholder to an Estonian company online
There’s a very simple way to add a new shareholder for an Estonian company online – even if that’s a person who doesn’t yet have an Estonian digital ID or if it’s a foreign legal entity. To help you do this, we created a free template you can download and submit to the Estonian Business Register.
We recently explained in our previous article about how to add a new shareholder for an Estonian company online. Instead of transferring part of existing shares to a new co-owner, which is quite complex, you can simply issue new shares to them online instead.
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