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Estonian. Did my tax declaration this morning while pooping. Used my phone. Toke me less than one minute including the log in time.

Estonia looks like a place where all these "simple solutions" we all thought about took place despite people telling us it cannot be done.

It’s nice to see that you’re focusing also on countries not often at the center of the attention 💪

Personally I am super impressed with Estonians & Estonia itself. Every time I buy a product from an Estonian company I am always 100% satisfy with its quality , craftsmanship, & design. This small country packs a big punch when it comes to tech, innovation, quality.

It's impressive what a young country without too much historic legislation can achieve. Certainly most countries could learn a lot from it as efficiency is an undervalued quality.

As an Estonian livinig in Britain I get proper annoyed by the bureaucracy here. Really made me think of what seemingly small things I took for granted.

Cries in Portuguese. I visited them 2 years ago and was amazed. Love them (and the rock of Tondi).

Estonia is one of the few countries in Nato who actually spend 2% of its gdp on its defens force!

Love Estonia From USA 🇺🇸❤️🇪🇪 ...

I'm from Latvia and I have to say I am sooo envious to our smaller but more efficient neighbours. Well we all have to do our part to improve I guess.

Love Estonia from Brazil 🇧🇷❤🇪🇪

Im estonian and taxes take less than 2 minutes even if you check it. But glad to see small country be talked about :) cheers

As a Finn, it really feels like I should start learning Estonian.

I’ve fallen in love with Estonia ever since I visited it in 2019 with Erasmus. 🇪🇺🇪🇪

Much respect to Estonia. Building a country in 30 years.... Badass

I live in Germany. I'm kinda jealous of Estonia, cus the bureaucracy in Germany is just...terrible. Soooo much paperwork...

Greetings from Germany ❤🇩🇪🇪🇺🇪🇪

"Many of you didnt know there was a country called Estonia"??? Really??? I'm an International student (from India) who came to Tartu for my Master's. Now I like this country even more.. and I have applied for my PhD, here.

I've marveled at Estonia's rise, and applaud it. Many dismiss my interest; now I have a video to support my claims. Thank you.

Estonia would be a lovely place to be. If Nigeria would adopt Estonia's system of taxation, many start-ups would grow.

Estonian here. When someone else is discussing it, it does start to feel really tech savvy and well managed. And yet we feel that a lot could be done better. Healtcare is mostly free for everyone. You can get free help for almost anything, although some waiting times could be months long. You have free health care if you are officially working or officially registered as unemployed. There are great support programs for the unemployed - you can be unemployed for up to a year and get compensated (this depends on the reason your contract ended and also on your total length of being empoyed in previous years) We have paid maternity leave for full 1.5 yrs (which also depends on your previous earnings but there is a national guaranteed minimum), the father has EXTRA 30 days paid leave. There are also numerous one time family grants for the birth of a child, birthday money etc. Also monthly relief grants for large families etc. There is also paid sickness leave up to 4 months, which is not paied for the first few days, then covered by the employer for the next few days and onward totally by the counrty. The pay is reduced to 70% of your normal pay. There's also large grant programs to support setting up a new business or expanding an existing one. Kindergardens (with a small head fee) & schools are almost free. You do have to pay for workbooks & partial/total fee for lunch. Your first University degree is also free in most cases. There's a system of cost free spots in place. Not all transportation is free tho. Usually there is some type of free transportation avalible for you (an it could depent on your county of residence). For example, living in Tallinn, all public transport inside Tallinn is free to me, but not to a person registered to Tartu. In Tartu they have free county buses for anyone (that even you as a foreigner can use for free), but not free inner city transportation. So it depends a lot. The roads are everywhere & free. Not in the best shape probably, but free. Mostly all the banking can be done from online or your phone app. This includes loans, credit cards etc. We vote online. We do the taxes online, takes less than 2 minutes actually. You have all your personal and medical data, avalible online to you. This includes medicine prescriptions, medical check-ups, your pet's chip number to anything immaginable. You can pay by card ANYWHERE. Even at the smallest shop in the middle of nowhere. And nobody will think strange of you or be mad at you. You mostly pay extra when taking out profit (investments, company profits, winning the lottery etc). There's a guaranteed national minimum pension. For now. And you CAN get a tax bonus for Investing in your third pension pillar.

This dude couldn't be more proud of not paying for bus rides.

South Korea: finally a worthy opponent. Our battle will be legendary.

I am from estonia. Because there are fewer of us, we need to be more clever to catch up.

Estonia is an amazing country.

Just moved to Estonia. I love the simplicity of the system here.

This is way we need to move company to Estonia. I’m moving 10 companies to Estonia in 2021

Greetings Estonia From Chile 🇨🇱🇨🇱

Am jealous of people living in such countries!! The system there actually works... I would love to visit Estonia.

in Brazil, every citizen's dream is to enter the public service. That’s why the country is broke.

That's not all. I am in realestate business and have recently discovered that its possible to conduct transactions with a notary remotely in Estonia . I sold and bought property while being on vacation in Mexico with a smartphone!

To visit Estonia today you would never know it had once been a Soviet Socialist Republic. It far more resembles a prosperous, thriving and modern Nordic nation like Finland, Sweden or Denmark.

everytime i see this guy i immediately brush my teeth

I love how Grant pokes fun of himself with #BringBackSimon

Estonian here , we just want to be nordic ...

I understand nothing but i still enjoy hearing him say Tartu as Tarüü, its bloody amazing

As estonian, I can testify to agree to most of this video.. With a minor correction about the public transport.. .. it's free for local residents of particluar county. We feel less advanced as You paint the picture.. Our salaries are half of our neighboring countries as Sweden and Finland and we are not where we would like to be in a matter of corruption. Again Nordic coutries (Finland, Sweden, etc) are miles ahead of us.. That's It!!! We are, where we are today, thanks to our neighbours good excample and maybe making some decisions a little more suitable for us!

Now this is an interesting video! Ιn Greece we recently starting digitising a big part of our public administration with huge bureaucracy according to the Estonian model. Yet we're sooo far to reach Estonia. I think it would be nice to have a video with countries importing successful strategies from other countries.

Also Estonia everytime has more quality of life, better wages.

This vid was only the Taxes but there is so much more than taxes we do online. Buying a car and filing the documents from both parties is no longer than 7min and they will send the documents to your home address. Filing the construction/renovation papers for your real estate is the same thing and you usually get the answer in a week or so (PDF files needed from the architects and engineers thow). The health department is also online and you get your test results online and followup phone call usually the same day or the next if there is an issue). There are many problems we still need to undertake for sure. but I am proud to be an Estonian.

This how heaven should look like for me something like Estonia. Greeting from Ukraine.

Please check most important fact about Estonia. Independence was declared on 24 February 1918.

Was in Tallin 2018, i really loved it there. Nice to see that they are also leading in how to make a smaller state

Fired government employees? How utterly RADICAL! How on earth did they survive without government employees telling them what to do day night and Sunday? Their survival is a freaking miracle.

Americans must be crying everytime they see a video on how they would have used their wealth to benefit the citizens. Instead of constant war.

Thank you for the video.

In Portugal some right wing libertarian politicians have talked about the Estonia tax system. But the commies hate seeing people having more money to spend ...

What brought my attention to Estonia, actually from movie Tenet :)

v Estonia love from Botswana u are awesome

Watching this video as a Portuguese is so painfull

Amazing!!!

Ethiopian here and if you don't grease hands, you will leave the tax bureau in tears. We could learn a ton from Estonia about reducing bureaucracy and corruption.

The simple and low taxes help decrease tax evasion. Meaning revenue from taxes is in fact higher. Also, the ability to check if your employer has indeed paid the taxes, is a good thing. And to actually see the taxes you pay, go to be used effectively, also improves how many ppl pay taxes.

A country with no bureaucracy? Sounds like paradise.

Atleast one of stock clips was from Riga, the one with (presumably Tallink) boat. :)

pange like kui sa oled eestlane 🇪🇪🇪🇪

why did they have to use soviet songs tho

when you talk about the history please don`t put in any agressive countrys anthem. The history part was quit unpleasant to hear because of it seemed like you were prising the communists. All Estonian struggels didn`t came only because we got independent, struggels started 50 years before that with the soviet occupation.

Love Estonia from Germany

Finland: In here we can also do our taxes in couple of minutes. But Estonia is a real role model for us too. Especially our conservative politicians are often jelous of 20% tax rate and how they use internet to reduce buroucracy. Also, Estonia is our favorite holiday destination :D

Very informative video ❤️.

You can't get free ride in every town.

Good video. I like learning more about other countries. As I like history It would be nice if you did a video on Ireland. Greetings from Ireland 🇮🇪

When comparing numbers it would be awesome to see some graphs or at least some numbers on the video. You went through the numbers so quickly that I had to go back to understand the difference in between. thank you for a awesome video😉

I my self am Estonian and i realy dont like when videos of Estonia are shown with russians hymn we have our own hymn and we are proud of it so next time please but Estonina hymn over Estonina videos thanks

I mean, we all have a guilty pleasure for the Russian anthem, but calm it down! You, me and the Estonians are still all in NATO

Greetings from Chechnya and Ingushetia!

Public transport is only free in Tallinn.

Omg i love you so much biggest fan

Love to see positive content about my country 🇪🇪

Estonia can into Nordic

In Sweden the tax authorities also give the possibility to do your tax declaration online in a minutes time. But all the elderly can still declare their taxes on paper in mere minutes. Actually it takes longer to write down the address on the envelope and put on a stamp than to declare your taxes, for most people. The calculus is already done both on the internet and on the paper tax declarations. All you have to do is sign the papers and write down the date and place. But I always use the internet, it is even easier and we have a super safe digital signing procedure.

Estonia. Sounds like they nicked their tax system from the Young People's Party UK. Like a lot of successful economies land and its taxation is key.

the scale of this shift to digital first hit me around 2003, when our school switched from a soviet-style system of noting grades and marks in a physical journal/book to a web-based platform called eKool (e-school).

The timing of this video ties in nicely with the Estonia citizenship promotion tweets

All I knew about Estonia before this video was the running gag of "Estonia cannot into Nordic sphere" from Polandball. That might be a fun video to do in of itself.

Everyone comment on Grant's teeth. Back then It was Simon's green beard

What a great idea! I'm going to start my Air B&B today. Wish me luck!

I wish Spain did like Estonia...

Estonia Latvia Lithuania

Hello, I am estonian, who else?

Wow, I wish taxes in Germany were so straightforward. As a tax clerk you have a three-year apprenticeship, tax auditors need a college degree. And I had two tax lectures in my studies in economics and there for each lecture at least three law books with at least 1000 pages needed. I was happy to have just passed the lectures. For my income tax return I needed special software, many need help from a tax clerk. In Germany there are also hardly any computers in the schools and if so then very outdated. And we'd rather not talk about the development of the Internet, especially in rural areas. Well done, Estonia!

Estonia is the best country. We live from air and ride on unicorns 24/7.

Like, from Tallinn ^-^

Idk if that has changed since, but when I lived in Tartu in 2019, Tickets weren't free for all. Only some buses which went into rural areas were free for students. In Tallinn, public transport was, to my knowledge, free only for registered Tallinn residents.

Our country (Georgia) has followed almost the same model, but, with three differences, a later start (starting in 2003), no welfare state, and unstable, poor quality governance. Despite our problems with governance and a later start, following something similar to the Estonian model has resulting is good economic growth since 2003. If we could only fix the governance problem we'll be in a similar position as Estonian in around 5-10 years.

I'm from Estonia and even I didn't know some of this :D but the taxes part is definatly really amazing and fast :)

I want to visit Estonia. I've learned about because my favourite hard cider is from there.

Hello, Estonian here! There isn't free public transportation for all in Estonia. As far as I know there is free transportation in Tallinn for Tallinn citizens and maybe in Tartu? (not sure about that) Anyways I loved your video!

Canada could learn from Estonia on how to get the big things done

I love your delivery - so engaging. You are one of the best presenters on KZfaq. You have been able to strike the perfect level of enthusiasm, being energised and interested without it being a façade. I have only just returned to watching VisualPolitic and am now catching up on what I have missed. I do have one piece of advice, and please do not take this as an insult since it is not intended as such. I don't know if you are a heavy drinker of tea or coffee, but you need to get your teeth whitened. I am a little hard of hearing, so when watching someone speak, I spend most of the time looking at their mouths. You have a lovely smile, but perhaps now that you are a media personality you should investigate some tooth whitening options. Who knows, it might be as simple as changing to a whitening toothpaste. Thank you for all your work, I love it.

Love Estonias system!

It’s a new year with bright and beautiful ideals , hope you’ll got a huge list for this 2021 . Coz last year was messed up due to many weren’t wise enough to consider investment . But the question, what will you achieve this year?

Very unique systems by Estonia, I'm impressed. A Democratic country which laid off 40%+ of it's public workforce without fear of losing elections or pandering to the public is balls to the walls kinda brave.

It seems like they took Colin chapman's adage "simplify,then add lightness" to a country to heart.

Effective and streamlined nations. Beautiful. We need more of that. Big fan of the PM, too, Kaja Kallas. Hottie.

Man, signing in for ENEM test (like a pubic brazilian SAT) takes more than 5 min. Actually, it takes much more than that. They ask even how many refrigerators there are in your home. Seriously, I'm no joking.

That is very valuable for other countries, because they demonstrate many things that could seem to be impossible. And it helps for changing to be like this to understand what is possible and how to do it, as a base to use science.

Shout out to Simon, come visit sometime. Keep up the good work Grant and Team.