ELECTRONIC MATTERS OF LIFE - The digital Multi-Pass

Some time ago I heard about the

"first digital state in Europe": Estonia.

All economic and administrative matters would be digitized there. Whether that's the registration as a citizen, the opening of a company, the tax return, the medical record, just everything would be fed into a digital network to simplify people's lives. Estonia seems, it is said, to run its country like a "start-up" company.

In the Zeit - a German newspaper I read:

Estonia, the fourth smallest member of the European Union with a population of 1.3 million, aims to grow to ten million by 2025. With large Internet campaigns is recruited around new citizens from all over the world, religion, ethnicity, age, sex does not matter. What a beautiful utopia, in the literal sense of the word. The highlight of this historically unique recruiting campaign is that new Estonian citizens from all over the world stay in the world. They can only live in their new home digitally. The Estonian government calls the programme e-residency. It sees itself as the avant-garde of international state policy in the 21st century.

Just as the Estonian invention Skype has revolutionized the global telephone business, e-government is to replace the traditional government business.

SZ-Magazin online writes:

Prematurely, the Estonians are digitizing pretty much everything that can be digitized. From tax returns to voting papers in elections, everything has been done with just a few mouse clicks for a long time. The country even wants to introduce an electronic currency similar to the bitcoin. But the ECB has reservations. Electronic citizenship attracts particular attention. People who have never been to Estonia before and do not intend to travel there at all can obtain a kind of citizenship light in Estonia via an internet form and a fee of 100 euros.

The magazine t3n lists the advantages and disadvantages of starting an Estonian company.

The blog Wireless life from the German Sebastian Kühn:

The e-services include:

• e-Cabinet: digital cabinet that saves travel expenses and thousands of paper documents for government officials.
• i-Voting: Since 2005, residents of Estonia have been able to vote via the Internet in elections (2011 almost every fourth person has voted online).
• e-Tax: tax returns have been submitted online since 2000.
• e-School: Attendance, grades and homework are regulated by the system. iPads are an integral part of Estonian schools.
• e-Prescription: all hospitals and pharmacies in Estonia prescribe medicines completely digitally.
• DigiDoc: with an ID card or MobileID, documents can be signed digitally.
• eBusiness registers: everything is possible via this platform, from access to digital business registers to the establishment of a company.
• e-Police, e-health, e-energy and much more...

On the tax issue, the blog page links here

Here, you find out, how to become an e-resident of Estonia (Governmental side)

How to get your e-card is described in detail on this page

This human being - a German nomad called "Bastian" - has actually done it

and is now in possession of Estonian citizenship. I recommed this page highly for German readers as it is very detailed and from a perspective of a person who indeed went through the whole process. I asked the blogger if he allows me to translate his article in English and am waiting for an answer. The headline of his blog states: "work smart. not hard."
In fact, I will ask him to join the steemit blockchain, if he is not already here. I guess, this is going to take a while. Meanwhile read what he writes:

I have been using the agency's services since mid-2016 and I am extremely satisfied. However, I don't want to advertise here and I have no financial gain if you decide to work with LeapIN. You can set up and manage the company in Estonia without or with another service provider. The service of LeapIn was also very helpful and supportive for general questions.

If you don't want to use the digital paperwork for your company registration, you can get support from the agency right from the start. An all-round service for nomads in E-Stonia.

He goes on saying:

... the question arises:

Do I inevitably need an Estonian business account?

No. But it makes sense in any case. Because corporate profits are taxed as soon as they leave the country on a foreign account, for example a German one. LeapIN gave me the following information:

People use E-Residency to open companies in Estonia and your company needs a bank account to function. E-Residency does not interfere with your personal tax residence but the Estonian company is considered a tax resident in Estonia and taxed accordingly.

From the rich abundance of his blog article is still to be read:

TAXES AND OPERATING EXPENSES

First of all, Estonia is not a tax haven. There is a double taxation agreement with Germany, which is why information is being exchanged between the authorities.

And. Sorry if I repeat. But. The e-residency is not synonymous with citizenship, work permit or tax residence. That brings with it two things:

If you do not live in Estonia, you are not liable to tax as a person. The e-residency does not change this. If you are liable to pay taxes in Germany or any other country on the globe, you may have to pay for your e-residency at home. But there is a cool hint: Winnings of your Estonian company remain completely tax-free until they are distributed. As long as they hang around on the business account or get reinvested, nothing happens. So you can invest 100% of your income in your business growth without paying taxes. Hello, cash flow.

In fact, there is a massive media coverage on this topic and if you are interested in more to read, I guess it is enough to use the searching engine.

So what do you think?

Is this a world you want to live in? Which of these things do you approve of, which ones do you criticize?

For my part, I do not yet have a final verdict on this. I have too little knowledge and touch with this subject.

In principle, I'm rather annoyed by the digitalization experiences in my professional environment. Data collection in the social sector and the extra work associated with it is not a simplification but an obstacle.

I see it this way: Everything that has to do with numbers and figures fits perfectly into a digital control system.

How nice it would be if my current account movements simply - Bing! - spit out an automatic tax return at the end of a year.

Or maybe my crypto money movements did this. The tax return would be ready with the creation of every single financial transactions, so to speak. Every day of the year. I just don't want to worry about this thing. I also don't want to have to find any "loopholes" or "have to" apply any legal tricks.

My income and expenses are as they are and if I have to pay a certain amount of taxes and social security contributions, then so be it. However, I want my government to have an interest in developing the smartest, most intelligent and easiest system imaginable. What's wrong with simplifying things?

I am sure I am revealing some naivety here, but I have never been in a position to worry about excessively high levies. Forgive me, then.

I was searching for tax-related articles on the steemit blockchain to recommend one or another. But I found out, there is a lot to read. So I give only a screenshot from my D-English searching method:)

For about 15 years I started with a utopia:

the Unconditional Basic Income. I founded a blog - welcome the future - for people who move, wrote more than a hundred articles on the subject, and subsequently dealt with my wishes and life concept. I came across fantastic projects such as the construction of Earth-ships - buildings that supply themselves with clean energy - I was concerned with commons economics, Buddhism and finally with cryptocurrency.

All these things have changed me. I chose a way of life that is already pretending to have an unconditional basic income and is oriented towards the shared economy. In the meantime, I have been trained as a systemically integrative family and social counsellor and work as a freelancer in this area.

My specialist articles are based on sharing my knowledge and experience. I "sell" this knowledge here on the block chain to those who are interested and give a value with their votes.

I guess, the MULTI PASS fits me a lot more than what I've got right now. But I have indeed no final conclusion on that. Maybe you - community - can help.

Thank your for visiting me

^{P.S: I will hopefully find the time to translate this article into German for I mentioned mostly German websites}

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^{All pictures - except the screehnshot from Bastian's blog site, the German nomad - are from the official website of Estonia:
https://investinestonia.com/
https://e-resident.gov.ee/become-an-e-resident/}

^{more related resources:
https://www.eff.org/de/cyberspace-independence - A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
https://e-residency.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/signin?return_to=https%3A%2F%2Fe-residency.zendesk.com%2Fhc%2Fen-us%2Fsections%2F201603731-How-to-Use-Estonian-e-residency-open-a-personal-bank-account-in-Estonia-}

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