Annual information return on interest and other payments, taxable under the provisions of the Act on Income Tax (TVL), instructions 2024

This article contains instructions for annual reporting of the following amounts paid:

• Interest payments and aftermarket (secondary market) compensation
• Shares in mutual funds, investment funds, etc. and yield distributions on related shares
• Shares in UCITS and in foreign funds, and the distributions of their yields for the year

The instructions for completing the form refer to the return submitted as a computer file (VSTVERIE), the fillable Web form, and the return form on paper (Forms 7805 and 7805r).

Who must file an annual information return?

The annual information returns must comply with this article’s instructions when the beneficiaries or shareholders are Finnish tax residents.

Payors or intermediaries, brokers, other third parties must submit an annual information return if they had paid interest subject to withholding, late-payment interest, yields similar to interest, aftermarket compensation, fees for consent, or cash compensation paid in lieu of dividends (available in Finnish and Swedish, link to Finnish), or acted as an intermediary for a payment, to beneficiaries who are natural persons or estates of deceased persons.

• The annual information must still be filed, even if a Tax Administration’s official decision would provide for exemption from the payor’s obligation to withhold tax upon payment, as long as the amount that was paid or intermediated falls under the above categories. In the same way, if the payor effected the payments from outside Finland, or an intermediary paid the amounts outside Finland, the annual information must still be filed.

This information return may be submitted by a natural person, but only in a situation where the paid-out sum of money is related to the natural person’s business operation or related to his or her other activity aiming for the production of income. In addition, this annual information return must be submitted whenever the payor had withheld tax on the paid amount.

Credit and financial institutions, the Finnish State Treasury and other parties that engage in trade with securities or in brokerage must file annual information returns in order to give details on any secondary-market compensation that they have collected from natural persons and estates.

In addition, if your organisation is a Finnish fund management company, a Finnish affiliate of a foreign fund management or a foreign company that manages an investment fund established in Finland, you must file an information return to the Tax Administration, to provide the quantities and comparison values (vertailuarvo; jämförelsevärde) of the shares and units held by every taxpayer in every one of your funds or UCITS. The comparison value (previously referred to as the taxable value) is 70 percent of fair market value (§ 4.3 of the act governing the valuation of assets for the purposes of taxation (Laki varojen arvostamisesta verotuksessa (1142/2005)). Moreover, companies managing investment funds must report the annual distributions of yields on the fund units and UCITS units, separately for each fund and each UCITS as above.

The information-reporting requirement also concerns managers of Alternative Investment Funds, who manage a special common fund under the provisions of Act on Common Funds. The above also includes the management, operating outside of Finland, of an Alternative Investment Fund established in Finland.

When to file?

The deadline for sending the annual information return is the end of January following the year when the reportable amounts were paid to the beneficiaries. If the deadline falls on a Saturday, Sunday or other holiday, it is extended to the next business day, i.e. the submitted return must arrive at the Tax Administration on that day.

Other things to note

For beneficiaries who are nonresidents, you must use the VSRKOERI information flow, as a computer file generated in accordance with the data record specification, on the fillable Web form or on Form 7809e on paper. However, in the case of nonresident beneficiaries who own fund shares or UCITS shares, you do not have to report share quantities and the shares’ comparison values.

Please note that this annual information return is not for reporting the yield payments or year-end balances that are related to long-term “PS” savings and equity savings accounts.

Capital income paid by the employer, such as interest on wage receivables and guarantee commissions, are reported to the Incomes Register.

If your organisation is an employees’ fund paying out profit-shares to company employees who are the members of your fund, you must submit a report to the Incomes Register (instead of submitting this information return).

If an individual taxpayer who is a Finnish tax resident receives income from an ETF, UCITS or AIF fund, it is taxable as capital income (not as dividend income), regardless of whether the vehicle for collective investment is an incorporated fund or a fund based on a contractual arrangement. The types of payment that must be used for reporting are 3J or 2D, on the information return on payments taxable under the Income Tax Act (VSTVERIE).

What information must be reported on this annual information return?

(A) Required information on the payor

Fill in the payor's or intermediary's name, address, Business ID or Finnish personal identity code (fields 1 and 010); the contact person’s name and telephone number (041 and 042).

Fill in the payment year (058) as appropriate. The year of payment is the calendar year when you paid the amount. The time during which the interest was earned (or the time when other income was earned) does not matter.

(B) Information on recipients/beneficiaries

This part is for the itemization of all the payments made per beneficiary. Give the beneficiary’s name and his or her personal identity code or Business ID in full (fields 085 and 083).

Type of payment (084)

Asset type (only for information returns submitted electronically)

The above types refer to the payment or the asset being reported. Reports must be arranged by type of payment, so as to always provide information on beneficiaries by type of payment. Every type of payment must have its itemisation on a separate line. However, you can complete one single form where payments falling under different types of payment are reported one-by-one.

The codes for foreign and Finnish types of payment and assets have a different leading digit: Finnish codes start with “2” whereas foreign codes start with “3”. An exception from the above is the encoding of aftermarket compensation payments relating to foreign bonds and debentures: the codes 2E and 2F are used although the leading digit is “2” (normally for domestic categories).

If you paid out amounts that fall under the 2B and 3J payment types, or if you are reporting the 2G and 3L asset types, you must submit your information electronically.

List of the Finnish type-of-payment codes:

2B Annual distribution paid out on a yield unit (electronic filing required)
2C Annual interest on bonds or debentures
2D Other interest or other income from investment (capital income) (including amounts paid out in accordance with a contract of swapped interest)
2E Aftermarket bonus paid by the filer to the taxpayer (is capital income for the taxpayer being the beneficiary)
2F Aftermarket bonus withheld (received) by the filer (is a tax deduction for the taxpayer being the beneficiary of the payment)
2G Mutual fund share (electronic filing required)

List of foreign type-of-payment codes:

3J Annual distribution paid out on foreign shares in foreign UCITS (electronic filing required)
3L Shares in foreign UCITS (electronic filing required)
3M Interest paid or intermediated from another EU member state
3K Interest paid or intermediated from a non-EU country
3N Total amount of proceeds from sale, repurchase or redemption paid or intermediated from another EU member state

Payment amount or the value of units (534)

Value of fund units or UCITS units for purposes of comparison (electronic filing required)

Enter the amounts as gross amounts, do not subtract tax. When indicating the value of fund units or UCITS units, do this fund-by-fund. The comparison value (previously “the taxable value”) equals 70% of fair market value.

Amount withheld (535)

Indicate how much was withheld if the payor withheld an amount of tax upon payment. If you are giving details on aftermarket bonus compensation related to foreign bonds and debentures under the 2E codes, there may be taxes withheld on them in the foreign country concerned. You must use this data element (no 535, Amount withheld) to report what has been withheld.

Tax collected abroad (536)

Indicate the totals of foreign tax withheld in the foreign country in connection with 3J, 3K, 3M and 3N types of payment.

Country code (537)

Indicate the 2-character country code, under the ISO 3166 standard, to denote the country where the security was issued when reporting types of payment and types of assets related to foreign countries. For foreign types of payments and assets, you cannot enter FI (Finland) as the country code.

• Look up all the ISO 3166 country codes (www.iso.org)

Do not include the FI country code when you report Finnish payments and assets.
Note: the country code must also accompany the reporting of secondary-market (aftermarket) bonus payments connected with foreign bonds and debentures, codes 2E or 2F.

The instructions below are only for information returns submitted electronically:

Name of the mutual fund, investment fund, UCITS (540 – Name of investment fund or other investment)

Give the fund’s name in connection with the 2B and 2G payment and asset types for Finnish funds; and 3J and 3L for foreign funds. The name is among the identification information, and it is imperative that the payments falling under different types must be kept apart. If necessary, you can integrate the ISIN code as part of the name.

When you have made payments of other types, you should also indicate the ISIN code as appropriate or specify a name in order to identify the “product”. Such a name can be “Robert’s subordinated loan no 1” in some circumstances. The goal is to identify and differentiate the “product” i.e. the subordinated loan in this case. Other loans may have been given by other shareholders besides Robert.

This data element is mandatory and must be populated in connection with all types of payment.

Business ID of investment fund (541)

Indicate the Business ID in connection with the Finnish 2B and 2G payment and asset type codes.

Quantity of fund units or units in UCITS in the case of 2G and 3L asset types (542)

Indicate how many units there are in the fund or in the UCITS when reporting asset types 2G and 3L.

Business ID of the account operator (080) or Business ID of other third-party filer that submits the return

This field is only for those who submit the annual information return on behalf of another organisation, the payor.

Filer's role (158)

Indicate whether the party that submits the return is an account operator (1), a central securities depository (2) or other foreign filer of reports (3). The “other foreign filer” selection means a third-party filer who submits the return on behalf of a foreign company, etc.

Name of the central securities depository where the stock security was issued (067)

Fill in the central securities depository’s name (depository may be in Finland or elsewhere) that has handled the issue. If you give the central securities depository’s name, you must also indicate its ID code (068).

ID of the central securities depository where the security was issued (068)

Fill in the central securities depository’s ID code (depository may be in Finland or elsewhere) that has handled the issue. If you give the central securities depository’s ID code, also give its name (067).

Transaction code or other identifier

The same annual information return may not contain two or more itemisations with identical identifying details. If you submit such a file, the itemisations with identical details for identification would be replaced, and only one of them would remain in force. If the identifying details of some itemisations are similar in all other respects, you can prevent unwanted replacement by giving the itemisations different transaction codes or other identifiers. The “other identifier” can be any string of alphanumeric characters that you create for this purpose.

Making corrections, completing the data elements for identification

If you have detected any errors in the annual information return, make the necessary corrections as soon as you can.

For more information, see How to make corrections to an annual information return.

In general, if you detect an error in an annual information return that you have already submitted, you must replace the return. In accordance with the replacement procedure, every time you send a new return it replaces the return you had submitted earlier under the same identification information. For one beneficiary, there can be no more than just one return submitted with the same identification. If the data elements related to identification contain an error, the data must be reset to zero and replaced.

The identification items relating to the VSTVERIE information return are:

• The identifier of the return, i.e. the “flow” (only when you submit electronically)
• Type of payment or type of asset
• Payment year
• Business ID or personal ID of payor or intermediary
• Beneficiary's personal ID or Business ID
• Name of investment fund or other investment
• Business ID of investment fund (in the case of types 2B and 2G of payment and only if the ID has been issued)
• Country code (only if the code has been issued)
• Name of beneficiary (only if this information is given)
• Business ID of the account operator or other third-party filer that submits the return (only if the ID has been issued)
• ID of the central securities depository where the security was issued (only when you submit electronically; only if this information is given)
• Transaction code or other identifier (only if this information is given)
• Identifier of the software that generated the file (only when you submit electronically)