For reasons that aren't entirely clear to me, Estonia has recently been getting quite a bit of good press in the U.S., both in the mainstream media and in the blogosphere. For example, Publius Pundit has a nice piece today, that starts like this:
In less time than it takes for a new baby to reach U.S. voting age, the nation of Estonia has transformed itself from a cold, gray, stagnant outpost of the Soviet Empire to one of the world’s most impressive dynamic democracies. Its banks are pristine, its one of the most wired countries in the world, it is famous for its absence of corruption, as well as its flat tax, its sound stable money, its property rights, its free trade (unilaterally done with no miserable CAFTA battle, as Alvaro Vargas Llosa noted.) The only shortage out there for Estonia is enough praise for this marvelous nation that is lighting a flame for the rest of the world.
In the rest of that article, he points to this comment on another blog, from someone whose sentiments (and sighs) I certainly share:
[Sigh] "Filing an annual tax return online, as 80% of Estonians do, takes a few minutes."
Processing these tax returns takes an average five days.
Estonia has a flat tax of 24% on personal and corporate income.
"Estonia's economy showed 9.9% year-on-year growth in the latest quarter -- Europe's fastest rate."
[Figures & quotes from The Economist 10/15/05.]
[Another sigh]
Maybe the Estonian government hired a new public relations firm?
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