Need help immediately! Permanent address in Finland

[chiakijohnson]

Hi-

We need to figure this out within two days. Otherwise we will have to pay US $750/month to the insurance company for the coming year...

We moved to Finland 2 months ago and are having such a hard time sorting things out with Maistraatti. We finally got our registration ID numbers from them a couple of days ago, but now Kela office says we cannot receive any benefits including healthcare and child care from the government because we have no permanent address listed in our personal information in "extract from the population information system in Finland". Our work contract is for 1 year, and we will have to pay the full tax amount to Finland. This makes us feel we are entitled to receive the health care and child care benefit from Kela. Is this not true?

In this document, our current address is listed as temporary address. Our permanent address is listed as "no information in the population information system" and under the municipality of residence it says "no municipality of residence". Apparently we will have to put our current address there, and get the municipality of residence also recorded in order to receive the benefits from Kela.

How can we change our permanent address under the circumstances? Which office do we need to go to make the change? We already talked with Maistraatti, and they said they do not know how to change this for us. Please help!!

[onkko]

Get work with atleast 2 years or "from now on" contract. You are temporarily here.

[Adrian42]

Get work with atleast 2 years or "from now on" contract. You are temporarily here.

But with a 1 year work contract they are eligible for healthcare coverage from Kela for themselves.

2 years would be required if they'd also wanted healthcare coverage from Kela for their children.

"no municipality of residence" sounds extremely odd, since Vero needs that information for determining the tax rate.

[chiakijohnson]

Thank you for your messages!

Yes, that is what we were told that with 1 year of contract we are considered to be temporary. So, the person who has the work contract can receive health care coverage but not the family? Is this correct?

[Pursuivant]

Maistraatti has the person in charge, the "registrar of lives", who makes the decision, so if the Maistraatti told you they "do not know" they actually do know because they do it. To be "domiciled" you need to be "permanent" and thats not a resident what it says in the RP, but "permanently domiciled resident" in the county. It seems the 1-year contract is one key to the issue - under 2 years is considered "temporary" as theres a date when you are going... (see now why having an end date is a bad thing?).

It also may be that if you just got here, the KELA hasn't gotten the system updated from the maistraatti, but at the end of the day, its the maistraatti that does the registering and the other offices believe only them.

[Rip]

Get work with atleast 2 years or "from now on" contract. You are temporarily here.

But with a 1 year work contract they are eligible for healthcare coverage from Kela for themselves.

I guess they should go to the KELA office with that work contract (and not accept the first "no" answer). I think maistraatti has acted within their rules.

[betelgeuse]

The relevant law is here:

http://www.finlex.fi/fi/laki/ajantasa/1994/19940201

Maistraatti considers you permanently here under the following conditions (4 §):

1. Finnish citizenship
2. continuous or permanent residency permit
3. EU,ETA + Switzerland citizenship who has registered being here
4. family membership who already has such status
5. temporary at least one year permit and as a whole intention to stay here permanently

It goes then to explain factors at among other things have to be taken into account for 5 none of which seem to help here. There's for example the two year min for the work contract. Basically you would have to find a way to prove to them that you will not be likely leaving once the work contract is over.