The Finnish Tax Administration in brief
The mission of the Finnish Tax Administration is to collect the right amount of tax at the right time to ensure funding for public services. Each month, we allocate collected taxes to parties that maintain public services: the state, municipalities, the Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela), parishes and forest management associations.
Our customers include both private taxpayers as well as companies and organisations. Our goal is to help our customers take care of their tax matters independently and correctly. The MyTax service is our primary electronic service channel.
At the end of the year, we employed 5,183 people. The three main units of the Finnish Tax Administration are the Taxation Unit, the Customer Relations Unit, and the Product Management Unit. Tax offices and our customer service belong to the Taxation Unit, which employs some 4,100 people. The Finnish Tax Administration has offices in 55 locations across Finland.
We are customer-driven
Our operations are based on genuine customer orientation: we use customer understanding in operations, guidance and development to make customers’ tax transactions easier and ensure the tax revenue.
We want to be even more customer-driven and make tax transactions as simple and easy as possible for our customers. Our customer-driven operations are based on three principles: improving the customer experience, reducing the need for services, and ensuring the tax revenue.
We improve our operations continuously
We continuously renew our competence and focus on comprehensive customer understanding. We work in close cooperation with companies, stakeholders and the public administration, and we are open to new ideas for improvement. We allocate our resources based on verified effectiveness. We utilise management by objectives, knowledge and coaching. We improve the agility of our operations by increasing self-direction and utilising models of agile development.
We ensure the tax revenue
In 2022, we collected record-breaking €81.4 billion in taxes for society.
At the end of the year, unpaid taxes totalled €3.73 billion, roughly at the previous year’s level. Similarly, the VAT gap, meaning the unreceived share of the legal VAT revenue, remained stable and was low on an international scale at around 3%.
Basis of our sustainability activities
Our sustainability activities are based on our statutory tasks and strategy. Our handprint can especially be seen in the area of financial sustainability.
Sustainability is an integral part of our strategic goals: positive customer experience, fair taxation, and ensuring tax revenue.
Building trust, working together and embracing new ways of working are values that guide our activities. We develop our services in cooperation with our customers and stakeholders: we listen to our customers, aim to predict their needs, and respond to them. We act for the good of Finnish society in accordance with the central government’s shared principles. We play an active role in building and developing public services.
Our strategy and activities have a specific impact on the achievement of the four selected UN Sustainable Development Goals: decent work and economic growth (SDG 8); reduced inequalities (SDG 10); peace, justice and strong institutions (SDG 16); and partnerships for the goals (SDG 17).
Finnish Tax Administration's sustainability report 2022 (pdf)