The Estonian company started to solve the problem of temporary employment

Last year, almost 100,000 people worked part-time in Estonia. In order to facilitate freelance or temporary employment and the hiring of employees, Estonians came up with a solution called Arveteenus, the aim of which is to legally mediate the remuneration of temporary work and simplify paperwork.

The invoice service Arveteenus is simple in nature. The employer and the employee agree on the work to be performed, the price and the payment terms. When the work is done, the employee submits an invoice via the online environment of Arveteenus, from which state taxes are automatically deducted. They reach the state through the service provider.

Olavi Aasmann, CEO of the Arveteenus, explained that hiring employees for seasonal work, for example, or to cover a temporarily increased workload, entails various bureaucracies within the company.

„Entrepreneurs must take care of the necessary information and the calculation and payment of income tax, social tax and unemployment insurance premium," said Aasmann. „A talented freelancer must also be a diligent accountant today, although this is unlikely to be related to one’s core business. We want to make this situation easier and support freelance entrepreneurship, in other words light entrepreneurship.”

According to Aasmann, there are many people in Estonia who already work as freelancers or could offer their skills to another company in addition to their main job. „We offer a solution that makes settling accounts between them and companies very easy – the worker does not have to become an entrepreneur oneself or dive into the paperwork in order to submit an invoice to the company. Similarly, the company that ordered the work does not have to hire a person. In short, we enable the company to pay all taxes to the state and the employee to officially receive the amount earned,“ described Aasmann.

Aasmann stated that the non-payment of taxes is clearly detrimental to the state, but in fact also to the employee oneself, who may therefore be deprived of both health and pension insurance. Moreover, in case the envelope wage is consciously accepted, the employee is as responsible for it as the employer. However, through the Arveteenus, people can get health and pension insurance because social security is paid for their service. For health insurance, the state has set a minimum amount in one month that an employee must consider in order to obtain insurance.

Joining the service and sending out invoices is free of charge, regardless of the volume of invoices submitted. There are no current expenses, you only have to pay a one-time service fee upon receipt of the earned wages. Arveteenus is approved by the Tax and Customs Board.