Smooth and equal services
A positive customer experience is created when customers can take care of their tax matters smoothly, are satisfied with services, and feel that they are treated equally.
The use of electronic services continued to increase
Our aim is to improve the customer experience by developing more customer-driven electronic services and increasing their use.
In 2022, we made progress in the targeted direction:
- MyTax was used by some 3.3 million customers (2021: 3.1 million). The service had 32 million logins (2021: 28 million), and 5.5 reports were submitted in it (2021: 5.8 million).
- Changes to tax cards or prepayments were requested roughly 2.5 million times, of which MyTax accounted for 77% (2021: 76%).
- Some 1.3 million individual taxpayers made changes to their pre-completed tax return, of which 89% made their changes in MyTax (2021: 88%).
- By the end of 2022, roughly 319,000 employers had registered in the Palkka.fi service, which makes the payment of wages easier for small employers (2021: 299,000). The amount of wages and fees calculated through the service increased to more than €2.4 billion (2021: €2.3 billion). Through the service, employers submitted some 1.4 million earnings payment reports and 0.44 million separate reports to the Incomes Register.
The processing status of advance rulings requested by customers for taxation and the estimated processing time were added to MyTax as a new feature. It will be expanded to claims for adjustment and other applications during 2023.
Interfaces make the payment of taxes easier
Our vision is that taxation will be a seamless part of the everyday life of people and businesses in the future, as the information required for taxation will be generated automatically during each tax transaction. Here, application programming interfaces (APIs) are at the core, as they form a link between the Tax Administration’s systems and the financial management software used by companies or their accounting firms.
The number of the Tax Administration’s APIs nearly doubled during the year. By the end of the year, our Vero APIs had been used a total of 122 million times.
APIs also provide companies with opportunities to develop their activities and also make life easier for taxpayers. In 2022, the new API for tax credit for household expenses was completed, through which the Tax Administration obtains the information required for the tax credit directly from the company that carried out the work in question. This has a significant potential in making people’s lives easier, as one of the rare reports still requiring people’s own initiative is about to be eliminated.
Customers are satisfied with the telephone service
In our telephone service, the answering rate has been high at around 80% throughout the 2020s. The number of answered calls was roughly two million. Approximately half of all calls were answered within two minutes (2022: 47%; 2021: 57%). We have systematically collected feedback on our telephone service, according to which our customers have been very satisfied with the service.
Communication to different target groups
Communication helps build interaction with customers, lower the threshold to take care of tax matters, and encourage customers to take the correct steps at the correct time to ensure the tax revenue. Communication has also contributed to the increase in the use of MyTax. Clear and current customer instructions and other content, combined with interaction on social media, also aim to create a positive customer experience. Communication addresses the needs of different customer groups and provides abundant information not only in Finnish and Swedish, but also in English.
Internal and external communication channels include vero.fi, newsletters, online information, social media, and communication in media services and the working community. The vero.fi website offers comprehensive instructions for taking care of tax matters and using MyTax. In 2022, vero.fi pages were loaded a total of 88.5 million times (2021: 86.5 million). Of this figure, Swedish pages were loaded 5.2 million and English pages 3.8 million times. As roughly half of all visitors landed on the website through search engines, search engine optimisation plays a key role in helping customers find their way to correct instructions.
In social media channels, the number of followers and interactions showed variation from one channel to the next in 2022. The channels had 222,000 followers (2021: 177,000). Content was displayed roughly 19.4 million times (2021: 22 million), and the number of different reactions was 1.3 million (2021: 1.2 million).
The Tax Administration’s media service was used by 356 media representatives in 2022 (2021: 399). In the business communication 2022 survey conducted by Taloustutkimus, the Tax Administration’s media service was given the score of 3.65/5.0 (2021: 3.67). The Tax Administration’s communication was ranked the third best in the public sector.
Communication in the working community strongly supported our modernisation which was also reflected in improved scores in VMBaro’s job satisfaction survey. The areas of interaction, knowledge of the Tax Administration’s values, communication, and the internal employer image showed positive development. The intranet site and internal social media channels were developed further to be more interactive and serve the working community better.
Case: Customer-driven development recognised with the Ornamo Award
The design community Ornamo gave the Finnish Tax Administration a significant recognition for the use of design in the development of customer-driven services.
According to the jury, we have applied the advantages of design in an innovative way that increases the trust shown by citizens, companies and associations towards society.
We have invested not only in technically smooth and logical e-services, but also in a clear and understandable content. We have become a genuine service organisation which makes the payment of taxes easy. Our customer-driven services range from the vero.fi website and MyTax to telephone and in-person services.