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Estonia’s digital society has helped create a number of benefits in the business and finance sectors. The 9th video in the enter e-Estonia:the video series takes a look at some ways that digitalisation has improved these areas.
In this video: ease of doing business in e-Estonia
The first digital service, e-tax, came about in 1999 and its speed and ease of use incentivised people to utilise it. Taxes could be filed in under 3 minutes and their returns came back in as little as 11 days. In 2019, 96% of all personal income tax declarations were filled in online.
Another benefit for business and finance is the e-business register. This allows entrepreneurs to open a new business online and without visiting a lawyer or government office. Since 2011, most businesses have been established online. In 2019, 98% of businesses were established with this system and the record time for creating a company was a mere 18 minutes! The platform allows you to file reports, update your business’s info, and search out other companies to conduct business with.
Estonian ecosystem is particularly conducive to startups. And perhaps one reason why they hold the honorific for the highest number of unicorns per capita. Many big international companies use the country as a sandbox to test solutions and try out innovative products. The banking sector also helps to make private and business transactions easy. This sector helped create and promote many of the digital solutions and encourage early use of eID for transactions and verification. Now 99.8% of all bank transactions are done online.
This all makes for a trustworthy and transparent business environment in Estonia. And many of these innovations helped to bring about e-residency, the final topic in the series that we will explore in the next video. See you then!
