The President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskiyy signed the law on e-residency allowing foreigners to move their business to Ukraine without the need to physically move to the country.

The law provides a special status for foreigners who plan to do business in Ukraine. It will come into force on April 1, 2023.

The list of countries whose citizens are allowed to become e-residents of Ukraine is determined by the government. This service is not available to Russians, people who are on the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF) “blacklist”, and also for those who have income in Ukraine.

To obtain the status of an e-resident of Ukraine, an entrepreneur must follow these steps:

  • register in “Diia” and pass financial and security checks;
  • if everything is fine, the specialist becomes an e-resident which means paying a single tax of the third group without VAT and getting the electronic signature;
  • open a bank account remotely, the bank becomes the tax agent for the e-resident;
  • work and pay 5% of income tax within the limit for the private entrepreneurs of the third group. The upper limit is 15%, but only for external contracts with the export of services.

All the documents are electronic, all correspondence with the State Tax Service is online, and all the payments are cashless.

As we reported earlier, a similar model of e-residency is already used in Estonia, the first digital country in the world. About 100,000 foreigners have received the status of e-residents there. During the five years, the Estonian budget got €25 million of direct income.