Summary on tax payment status
This guidance is for both individual and corporate taxpayers.
Your summary is a statement containing information about your taxes and payments for the past month. You receive a summary if you have left taxes unpaid. However, if the unpaid amount is small, the summary is not sent. You can log in to MyTax to check whether there is any information about taxes you need to pay.
You also receive a summary in situations where a tax refund has been applied on an unpaid tax, or if the Tax Administration has imposed a penalty charge for late filing or late payment of self-assessed taxes.
Companies and organisations and other corporate taxpayers also receive a summary when the Tax Administration has applied an amount the corporate taxpayer has paid to the Tax Administration on any of the corporate taxpayer’s taxes.
The summary reminds you of overdue payments
If your taxes are overdue, there will be a reminder text included in the summary. In other words, the Tax Administration no longer sends out reminder letters concerning a back tax or a real estate tax that a taxpayer has failed to pay. The Tax Administration will instead send you a summary containing the reminder message 1 to 3 times, before transferring the unpaid taxes to the National Enforcement Authority for enforced recovery. The number of times you get such a reminder depends on whether you have other taxes that are unpaid, on whether some of them are currently undergoing enforced recovery, and on other circumstances.
If you have activated Suomi.fi messages, you find the summary and the reminder about your unpaid taxes in MyTax only. You will be notified of it by email.
Unpaid taxes may be sent to the Enforcement Authority
If your summary has displayed a reminder message but you have not paid your tax, the Tax Administration may transfer the tax debt to the National Enforcement Authority for enforced recovery. However, you will be informed of it on the summary before this step is taken.
If you have activated Suomi.fi messages and receive messages from public authorities electronically, you will receive the information only in MyTax: you find the summary and a notification saying that your unpaid taxes are transferred to enforcement in MyTax.
You can still avoid enforced recovery if you pay the tax as instructed by the summary. The last acceptable date of payment is stated on the summary that contains the information concerning transfer to enforcement.
If you cannot pay the tax by that date, you can submit an application for a payment arrangement. Apply for a payment arrangement by the last payment date stated on the summary. Read more about payment arrangements and related requirements.
If you cannot pay the tax by the last payment date stated on the summary and you have no payment arrangement in force, we will automatically transfer the tax to enforced recovery. After this, you must pay it to the National Enforcement Authority.
Check the summary
Always check the information displayed on your summary. If you have submitted a tax return for self-assessed taxes and made payments that are not showing on the summary, please go to MyTax to make sure that you have:
- Submitted the return for the right tax period.
- Entered the bank account numbers and reference numbers without errors.
When receiving the summary, check whether an amount that would otherwise be refunded is used for covering some of your taxes.
The summary tells you how a refund is used
If the Tax Administration has converted your tax refund into coverage of unpaid taxes, the summary will inform you of it. You can log in to MyTax to read your summary. See the instructions: How to find letters, tax decisions and tax certificates in MyTax.
For example, if the Tax Administration completed your tax assessment in August, and the result was a refund to be sent to you in October, the amount can instead be applied on your taxes as follows:
- up to the 4th of the following month for individual taxpayers (in this example, up to 4 September); or
- up to the 18th of the following month (18 September) for corporate taxpayers.
If any taxes remain unpaid – the due date has already passed – the Tax Administration will cover them with your refund money immediately on the date when your tax assessment is completed. After that, the refund will also be applied on upcoming taxes, on the due dates of each tax one-by-one, even if you make a payment to the Tax Administration on one of the due dates. We recommend that you keep this rule in mind if you intend to pay taxes exactly on their due dates.
You can see the end date for your tax assessment in MyTax or on the tax-assessment decision you received. Using MyTax, you can also see how much of your tax debt the refund has covered. See the instructions: How to see if your tax refund was applied on unpaid taxes.
Unused paid-in amounts and refunds
In addition to the above, the tax summary also shows any refund amounts and amounts you have paid to the Tax Administration, which are not yet used or not yet refunded to you.
If you are a business taxpayer, it may be that the amounts on your company’s tax summaries show a few cents of difference compared to your accounting books. The reason is the credit interest that your company has earned, and also the fact that summaries only display payments, refunds, and interest relating to the current month, not the month before or the month after.
For more information on credit interest and how it can be used, log in to MyTax.
For further guidance about accounting, see: the Accounting Standards Board guidance on how self-assessed taxes should be booked in company accounting (available in Finnish and Swedish, link to Finnish)
Frequently asked questions
Your summary not only contains a list of your overdue taxes; it can also inform you that an unpaid tax has become covered by an amount that would otherwise have been refunded to you. In general, starting on the date when your tax assessment is completed, the Tax Administration uses refund money on any unpaid taxes for which the due date is the 4th of the next month (if you are an individual taxpayer) or for which the due date is the 18th of the next month (if you are a corporate taxpayer). If the due date has already passed, the Tax Administration covers the tax debts with your refund immediately on the end date of tax assessment. If the due date has not arrived yet, the Tax Administration will wait until the due date before covering taxes with a refund.
If you paid your tax on the due date but at the same time, the Tax Administration used a refund to cover the tax, the payment you made will be paid back to you in approximately one week. This requires that we have your bank account number on record, and that no other amounts are due – no upcoming instalments of the same tax and no other types of taxes you would need to pay.
If the tax you paid was a self-assessed tax, the way you receive your payment back depends on what you have selected as your ‘refund time’ and ‘refund limit’ in MyTax. Read more about refunds of self-assessed taxes. If you have selected that your payments should be used to pay for upcoming self-assessed taxes, you can request your payment to be paid back to you. See the instructions: How to change selections relating to refunds of self-assessed taxes in MyTax.
Keep yourself updated on your taxes and payments in MyTax.
You have received a summary if, for example, there is a tax left unpaid, or if the Tax Administration has settled your tax debt with a refund. Companies and organisations with an ongoing business activity also receive summaries regularly.
Example: The due date for an individual taxpayer’s real estate tax had been 6 August. The individual taxpayer forgets to pay it by the due date. Because the real estate tax was not paid, the Tax Administration sends the individual taxpayer a summary, by letter, at the beginning of September. The summary displays a reminder message referring to the unpaid tax. The summary also contains instructions for payment. The taxpayer can see the summary immediately on 1 September in MyTax.
Taxpayers who use Suomi.fi messages only receive the summary in MyTax. No paper summaries are sent to them by letter.
If you are having financial difficulties, you can ask for a payment arrangement to be made.
Read more: I already have a payment arrangement. Can my new tax debts be added to it?
- The summary is generated on the last day of the calendar month, and it is available in MyTax at the beginning of the following month.
- No summaries are created for calendar months when you have no transactions i.e. no payments, no taxes that would fall due.
- If your VAT period is the calendar year, or if you are a payer of pharmacy tax, the system creates only one summary for every year, on 4 March. If 4 March falls on a Saturday, Sunday or public holiday, your summary is created on the next business day. After that day, the summary will be in MyTax.
You can view the information in MyTax already before the summary is created.
Your summary can include the following:
- the details you need for paying your taxes, such as the bank account number and reference number
- payment reminder concerning unpaid taxes (also displayed on your MyTax home page)
- details on how your payments and refunds have been used
- notification that your unpaid taxes may be sent for recovery by enforcement and published on the protest list and in the tax debt register
- reminders on any tax returns and notices that you have not yet submitted
- details on late-filing charges on self-assessed tax returns
- details on other penalty fees
If you have made a payment or submitted a tax return on one of the last days of the month, the paid-in amount or the submitted return may not be included. For example, you may have submitted a paper tax return for self-assessed taxes, and its processing may take some time.
Check the status of your tax returns, payments, and other transactions in MyTax.