Cooperation and partnerships
The UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 17 – partnerships for the goals – signifies strategically important targets and operating methods for us.
We develop our services in cooperation with our customers and stakeholders: we listen to our customers, aim to predict their needs, and respond to them. Together, we can ensure effortless tax services.
Our goal is to be an active member of society. We act for the good of Finnish society in accordance with the central government’s shared principles. We help build and develop public services and are an active member in the tax ecosystem.
In addition, we have an impact through international cooperation in taxation and the international exchange of information. We support the mutual exchange of information and share technological competence. We have taxation-related development cooperation projects in Africa.
Cooperation in Finland and globally
We work with our stakeholders by listening to their needs and goals, and by engaging them in the development of our services. Through stakeholder cooperation, we also aim to increase the digitalisation and automation rate in taxation and ensure that legislation supports smooth tax assessments.
International working groups and projects
In 2023, we participated in almost 150 regularly convening international working groups and projects. The cooperation forums included the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the EU, the Intra-European Organisation of Tax Administrations (IOTA) and the Nordic Agenda.
A three-year project to support the Cyprus Tax Department in the implementation of firmware was completed. We started a new development cooperation project with the Tanzania Revenue Authority, focusing on issues such as the development of control measures, the customer experience, change management and behavioural science experiments. The work builds on a previous successful project. A project to develop customer registration by the Kenya Revenue Authority had to wait a whole year for approval from the National Treasury of the Republic of Kenya, and will not start until the beginning of 2024.
All our projects focus on building institutional capacity, which means improving processes and creating standards, for example. We focus on areas where we have strong expertise and work on a peer-to-peer basis.
Finland’s efforts to strengthen the revenue base of developing countries are assessed by an objective and autonomous international team. We are one of the many parties that implemented the Finnish Taxation for development action programme in 2016–2023. One of the team’s findings was that Finland succeeded in strengthening the Tanzania Revenue Authority.
Cooperation in tackling the grey economy
We were also engaged in active cooperation with national and international authorities and stakeholders in the tackling of the grey economy. Together with other authorities or ministries, we worked on and finalised several projects included in the national action plan for tackling the grey economy and economic crime.
Examples of international activities include training on the joint Nordic risk assessment (NATA2023) and corruption offences prepared in cooperation with the other Nordic tax authorities, which can also be utilised by other national authorities. The tackling of the grey economy is also closely involved in the OECD sub working group on professional assistants, the ENFIN project to develop multi-agency supervision of organised crime and the development of the FCInet tool. The results of the international cooperation have been actively implemented in the prevention of economic crime at the national level.
Real-time exchange of information between Estonia and Finland started in 2023. An agreement and a system enable the request and receipt of predetermined register-based information in real time between the Estonian Tax and Customs Board and the Finnish Tax Administration using a gateway. We can use the information in all our taxation activities and disclose it to other authorities for the purpose of collecting taxes or investigating tax offences.
Survey highlights
79% of respondents agree that the Finnish Tax Administration has been able to change with the rest of society.
Source: The Finnish Tax Administration attitude survey 2023
Case: An ecosystem to help over-indebted people find the services they need
Over-indebtedness is a major societal challenge. To tackle the issue, we collaborated with several partners to put together an ecosystem of customer-centred services for over-indebted people.
Default in payment has become more common: more than 8% of Finns over the age of 18 have defaulted on their payments. At the end of 2023, Finns had tax debt totalling €3.85 billion.
Having identified indebtedness as a life event, we set out to study the phenomenon in more detail with the goal of reducing over-indebtedness and improving financial welfare. We wanted to identify the different types of over-indebted people and the most appropriate services for each group, as well as ensure seamless cooperation between those working on the issue.
To be successful, we needed to understand the underlying structures and patterns influencing the phenomenon. We brought together parties working on the issue to increase our knowledge and understanding of each other’s services and perspectives. We coordinated the over-indebtedness ecosystem for a total of 18 months.
Our chosen target group were over-indebted families with children who had debt under public law in distraint among their other debts. We interviewed over-indebted families and the professionals who assist them and diversified our understanding of the customers’ situations through surveys.
After gaining more understanding and summarising the issues identified, we started to brainstorm experiments. One of the experiments was a virtual financial advice service where a customer who is concerned about their financial situation can talk to several specialists at the same time. We will analyse the trials during the spring of 2024 and plan the next steps accordingly.