Individual Tax Numbers to be delivered with Tax Cards
Tax Administration Bulletin, 12/9/2011
English translation of the Bulletin of the Tax Administration dated 22 Nov 2011
The Tax Administration will deliver official notices of Tax Numbers, TNs, to all wage earners (including other types of earned income) as enclosures of their tax cards for the year 2012 (tax card = the employee's withholding allowance certificate).
Tax-card mailings start 15 December 2011 and continue to late January 2012. The system of issuing individual Tax Numbers to all construction workers will be finalised in 2012.
Employees working on building sites
These employees must look up their TN in their tax cards and make sure that the TN is notified to their employer company. All work performed on building sites will entail the obligation to carry a badge with the employee's photograph and TN.
Employers in the construction industry
Employers have the option of submitting an online request in December 2011- January 2012 to the Tax Administration in order to receive their employees' TNs online as a computer file. The employees covered by such online requests will automatically be entered in the new public register of construction employee TNs, to be set up in the summer of 2012.
Foreign workers will be entered in Population Register
Starting June 2012, the Tax Administration will implement temporary registration of the foreign nationals entering Finland to work in this country. In this way, the foreign employees who previously have no Finnish registration will receive a Finnish personal identity number through the processes of the Tax Administration.
To be officially entitled to receive Finnish personal identity numbers, the foreign employees should visit a tax office in person. The Tax Administration will collect basic information on the individuals for the purposes of taxation and issue them the TNs that are necessary for their badges to be worn when working on building sites.
Public register of construction-worker TNs to start in August
August 2012 is the estimated start month of the new public register of construction-worker TNs. It will cover all the information, as recorded in the Tax Administration database, on individuals who work on building/construction/installation sites. Entries in the register can be made on Tax Administration initiative, employee initiative, employer initiative, and also on the initiative of the main contractor of the project in question.
Amendment of the Finnish legislation on occupational safety
The amended law will impose the obligation on construction workers to always wear badges with their TNs printed on them. Prior to the effective date of this amendment, a six-month transition period is observed involving sites where work started earlier, and ending on the final deadline date of 1 March 2013.
Regarding the sites where work started after the amendment of the Finnish legal act in question, all badges issued to site workers must have the individual TNs printed on them starting on the start date of the construction project.