Personal Tax Records

[BigStack]

Is it really true that everybody's tax records are considered to be in the public domain and therefore accessable to all?
If so, how does one, ahem, go about viewing such details? Purely in the interest of research you understand

[Beep_Boop]

Yes.

Go to a Vero office, ask any employee there about the terminal where you can search tax information, they tell you. You go, sit, type the names, get the information. Make sure to call your local Vero office to get a list of the offices near you that have those terminals as not all of them have them.

[betelgeuse]

Go to a Vero office, ask any employee there about the terminal where you can search tax information, they tell you. You go, sit, type the names, get the information. Make sure to call your local Vero office to get a list of the offices near you that have those terminals as not all of them have them.

They also have a phone line for the records. If it's only a single person, it's more handy than travelling there.

http://www.vero.fi/fi-FI/Tietoa_Verohal ... set(29117)

Is it really true that everybody's tax records are considered to be in the public domain and therefore accessable to all?

It's only the end results of the taxation, not the full tax returns.

http://www.vero.fi/fi-FI/Syventavat_ver ... osi(38561)

Muita julkisia tuloverotuksen tietoja ovat valtion verotuksessa verotettava ansiotulo ja pääomatulo, kunnallisverotuksessa verotettava tulo, tulovero, kunnallisvero, maksuunpantujen verojen ja maksujen yhteismäärä, ennakoiden yhteismäärä sekä veronkannossa maksettava tai palautettava määrä eli jäännösvero tai veronpalautus.

[Pursuivant]

"Back in the day" - up to 70's they published a "tax calendar", per county that was like a telephone book. It had the person's name and 'taxable äyri' (old carryover from ancient Swedish), so dads could check the potential suitors

Rest assured, it is a "Finnish thing", which Mrs Alex Tweedie in her travelogue "Through Finland in Carts 1897" observes:

Few persons are rich in Finland according to English lights, but many are comfortably off. It would be almost impossible there to live beyond one's income, or to pretend to have more than is really the case, for when the returns are sent in for the income tax, the income of each individual is published. In January every year, in the Helsingfors newspapers, rows and rows of names appear, and opposite them the exact income of the owner. This does not apply if the returns are less than £200 a year; but, otherwise, every one knows and openly discusses what every one else has.
Very amusing to a stranger, but horrible for the persons concerned. Fancy Jones saying to Brown, "Well, old chap, as you have £800 a year, I think you could afford a better house and occasionally a new suit of clothes;" and even if Jones didn't make such a remark, his friend feeling he thought it!
It is the fashion for each town to select a committee in December for the purpose of taxing the people. Every one is taxed. The tax is called a skatt-öre, the word originating from the small coin of that name, and each town decides whether the öre shall be charged on two hundred or four hundred marks. Let us take as an example a 400-mark[174] öre (tax). The first four hundred marks are free; but payment is required on every further four hundred, and so on. For instance, if a man has 16,000 marks, he pays nothing on the first four hundred, and has therefore thirty-nine sets of four hundred to pay for, which is called thirty-nine skatt-öre. If overtaxed, the aggrieved person can complain to a second committee; and this sometimes happens. The tax varies very much; in some of the seaport towns, which receive heavy dues, the öre, which includes parochial rates, is very low. In Wiborg they have had to pay as much as fifteen marks on every four hundred; but as a rule it is less.
The habit of publishing the returns of all the incomes began about 1890, and is now a subject of much annoyance