Selling a residential property – how to declare the sale and pay the taxes

Select the type of assets sold: Shares in a housing company or alternatively, a unit of real estate (a house).

MyTax will automatically display the apartments or real estate units that the Tax Administration has on record. Select the apartment or real estate.

If you do not see the apartment or real estate that you sold, select Other unit or Other real estate and enter the information yourself.

Write the buyer’s name and personal identity code or Business ID into the fields. If the buyer is non-Finnish having no Finnish personal identity code nor Business ID, write the buyer’s date of birth.

Enter the date when a binding final contract, deed of sale or other agreement was signed.  

You can see the selling price on the contract of sale or on other documentation.

If you sold a housing-company apartment which is subject to a housing-company debt, enter the amount the buyer paid you under Selling price, without any part of the housing company loan. 

Example: Bertha sold an apartment. She had owned it for purposes of investment. The housing-company shares entitling Bertha to the apartment are subject to a housing company loan, the share of which equals €40,000. The debt-free selling price agreed with the buyer is €200,000. For capital gains taxation, Bertha will enter a selling price of €160,000 into the tax return.

MyTax will automatically suggest Yes.

Select No if you are only selling a part of the property. Indicate the percentage or fraction as appropriate, as in 50% or ½.

Select Yes and enter the start and end dates of the time when you or your family lived in the house or apartment continuously using it as your permanent home during your period of ownership. “Family” here refers to your spouse and children under 18.

Select No if the sale does not meet the conditions for tax exemption for a permanent home. Look up the conditions for tax-exempt selling.

If you are reporting a tax-exempt sale of your home, only enter the date when it was bought or acquired. You do not need to give the other details having to do with its purchase or acquisition. If the sale is later found to be subject to tax, you will receive a letter with an information request. When replying to the letter, you must give the remaining details about the purchase or acquisition.

This field will appear in MyTax when you report that you sold your permanent home.

Enter the total surface area, the part used as the permanent home, and the start and end dates of the time when you or your family lived in the house or apartment permanently and continuously.

MyTax will automatically suggest No.

Select Yes if the sale was made to a family member, or if there is a non-deductible capital loss, or if the sale was another tax-exempt sale.

Enter the date when you bought or acquired the property.

If you inherited it, enter the deceased person’s date of death as the acquisition date. If you received it as a gift, enter the date of the gift.

MyTax will automatically suggest No. 

Select Yes if the apartment you sold had been acquired by inheritance or gift. Also enter the name and the personal identity code of the deceased or the donor.

Write the other information into the appropriate fields as requested, including the taxable value confirmed for inheritance or gift tax purposes.

Enter the original acquisition price of the apartment or house in euros. In most cases, the acquisition price will equal the purchase price.

However, if you had acquired the property by inheritance or gift, enter its inheritance tax value or gift tax value instead.

If you sell a unit of real estate property and have claimed depreciation expenses during your period of ownership, enter the remaining undepreciated acquisition cost at the start of the tax year of sale. It may be that you had claimed depreciation expenses during the years when the building was rented out, and the building’s cost of acquisition had been diminished as the depreciation expenses were deducted from rental income.

If you do not know your property’s acquisition cost or tax value, or if you wish to apply a calculation based on a deemed cost for the capital gains tax, enter 0 as the cost of acquisition and do not report any other expenses. MyTax will calculate the taxable capital gains automatically based on a deemed acquisition cost.

If the property you sold is housing company shares entitling you to an apartment, enter the portion of the capitalised housing company loan that you paid to the housing company.

You can deduct the housing company loan portion you paid during your period of ownership if your payments are capitalised on the housing company’s accounting books. Contact the manager of the housing company to find out how the payments from you are recorded on the books.

In contrast, if the loan share is recorded as revenue, it cannot be deducted in the calculation of capital gains. An exception to this rule is when you pay the housing-company loan as a lump sum when buying or selling an apartment. If the apartment has several co-owners, everyone must repay the apartment’s portion of the housing company loan.

Read more in the Tax Administration’s detailed guidance about the lump-sum repayment (available in Finnish and Swedish, link to Finnish)

Note: No monthly maintenance charges nor charges previously deducted from rental income must be included.

Enter the transfer tax you paid when you bought the apartment or house.

Enter any direct expenses paid when you bought the apartment or house, such as brokerage, pre-purchase inspection, valuation and legal fees including the Residential and Commercial Property Information System’s registration charge.

Enter the costs of improvements you made to the apartment or house during your ownership.

An improvement means upgrading the standard of equipment or building materials such as a complete bathroom or kitchen renovation, an extension, or an improvement of the heating and ventilation systems.

You can also deduct annual repair expenses if you had paid the expenses when renovating the property for sale.

If you had deducted these examples from rental income previously, in the form of depreciation or otherwise, you cannot deduct them again when you sell. You can only deduct the part not deducted before.

Enter the expenses caused by the sale of the apartment, house, or other residential property. These expenses may include a pre-listing inspection fee, a brokerage fee, the documents required for the sale including a building manager’s certificate (isännöitsijäntodistus; disponentintyg) or a deed of title.

Do not include maintenance charges or charges already deducted from rental income in the past as selling expenses.

You can only treat the paid maintenance charges as selling expenses in exceptional circumstances. This is possible if the house or apartment was vacant during the time when it was listed for sale, or during repairs carried out in preparation for the sale.