HELSINKI: Some 300,000 tax cards were sent out with inaccurate taxation percentage rates for the year 2017, the Finnish Tax Administration confirmed on Wednesday. The agency says it does not plan to send out new tax cards, but will send letters to those affected with information about how to obtain a correct tax card, online. Kaj Hoffren, Senior Adviser at the Finnish Tax Administration, says that up to 300,000 taxpayers in Finland have erroneously received tax cards with the wrong tax rate. Newspaper Helsingin Sanomat first reported the mistake on Wednesday. Hoffren said a software update carried out in the spring of last year was to blame for the error, saying that the computer programme had been using 2015 data to calculate the rate for this year’s cards, rather than 2016.
Officials reportedly already noticed late last year that a small number of erroneous tax cards had been sent out. Every adult in Finland is sent a tax card around the beginning of the year. Taxpayers then send the cards to their employers, ensuring that the right amount of tax is withdrawn from paycheques. Having the correct income tax rate, in relation to salaries is important; if the rate is too high, too much money is unnecessarily withheld – and if the rate is too low, taxpayers are forced to pay back taxes at the end of the year.
