HELSINKI: The tax administration communications planner Harriet Mallenius said that the tax man’s road show will take to the streets of 18 cities across the country during the month of April to initiate income earners into the dark arts of filing their tax returns online. The tour bus made its first stop in Vantaa on Thursday. “It’s definitely the most secure way to file a tax return,” said Harriet Mallenius.
The tax officials’ goal is to lower the general threshold to experiment with and use their online services. The tour bus will give individuals face time with real tax officials and pose questions about their tax return dilemmas.
However the online tax return service is only available in Swedish and Finnish. Income earners who aren’t comfortable navigating taxation issues in Finnish or Swedish will have to stick to the filing the return on paper and via snail mail. Even so, the service requires users to authenticate using online banking codes, which some foreigners in Finland struggle to acquire.
Roughly 1.4 million people in Finland file annual tax returns; last year just under half of them were submitted online.
