Can you trust the data in the Incomes Register?
3/16/2026In 2025, a total of 56.6 million earnings payment reports, 2.2 million employer’s separate reports and 58.4 million benefits payment reports were submitted to the Incomes Register.
The data is reported by the payers, who form a group of 270,000 operators regarding wages and nearly 700 for benefits. Although the majority of payers and other data providers perform their duties well, some of them report invalid data or no data at all.
Some of the errors are due to incompetence and indifference, but there are also deviations resulting from intentional misconduct. It has been recognised that false income data is sometimes reported to the Incomes Register for the intent of gaining a profit or even for criminal purposes.
The Incomes Register does not process the reported data but receives the data as such and distributes it to users. The volume of data reported to the Register is high and the reporting situations vary greatly, making it impossible to build an exhaustive error screening system.
According to the current provisions, the payer is obliged to correct any invalid data, but according to the data users’ experiences this is not always the case, even after requests.
As of the beginning of 2027, the Incomes Register will have increased possibilities to monitor and correct information. Next year, the Incomes Register may, at the request of the income earner, correct the data in the Register. However, responsibility for the data remains with the payer. If the payer fails to submit or correct the report as required, the Incomes Register may impose a conditional fine on the payer.
What kind of impact can invalid data have?
The data stored in the Register is widely used in society. The data is used in decision-making by 370 organisations, which received 1.7 billion data transfers in 2025.
An individual error or shortcoming may have a variety of implications for different sectors. An error can lead, for example, to the following:
- incorrect tax assessment
- incorrectly determined insurance premiums
- incorrect pension accruals
- benefit decisions based on invalid data
- customer fee decisions, pay subsidy decisions or loan decision based on invalid data.
Each sector monitors the correctness of its own decisions, and it has been established that having correct data in the Incomes Register serves everyone’s best interests.
What can be done?
In collaboration with the organisations using the data, the Incomes Register has explored measures that can be taken to improve the integrity of the data in the Register.
During 2026, we will expand the validation rules preventing the reception of income data and develop the ex-post monitoring of activities. In addition, we will measure the impact of the actions and cooperate more closely with payroll software solutions and organisations using the data.
We will focus particularly on improving the quality of the reported data in situations where the payer submits the data incorrectly either due to lack of knowledge or intentionally.
During the current year, we will also specify the long-term development targets for 2027–2028 and assess any potential needs for regulatory changes. To be implemented, our long-term development targets are likely to require legislative amendments and separate funding for both implementation and upkeep.
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Development of the Incomes Register
The responsibility of the Incomes Register for the accuracy of data will be extended in 2027