The toiminimi VAT threshold in Finland, explained

A business operating in Finland must register for VAT once its turnover for a calendar year exceeds €20,000. Below that, business activity is treated as small-scale (vähäinen liiketoiminta) and VAT registration is optional rather than mandatory.

The threshold was raised to €20,000 from the start of 2025. If you are reading older guidance that mentions €15,000, it is out of date.

The test looks at the calendar year, not a rolling twelve months and not your financial year. Turnover means your sales excluding VAT.

All of your business turnover counts, from every source, added together. This is the part people get wrong.

• If you courier for two platforms, both count towards the same threshold.
• If you courier and also do freelance work under the same toiminimi, both count.
• You cannot split activity across separate registrations to stay under the line.

What does not count is money that was never business turnover: employment wages from a separate job, benefits, or private sales of your own belongings.

From 2025, if your turnover exceeds €20,000 during the calendar year, VAT liability begins from the date you exceed the limit. Sales made before that point stay outside VAT.

This is a meaningful improvement on the older rule, under which crossing the line could pull the entire year into VAT retroactively. It also means you need to know roughly where you stand as the year progresses, because the obligation starts on a specific date and you are expected to notice.

If you can see that you are going to cross, it is usually cleaner to register in advance than to backdate the paperwork afterwards.

The graduated relief at the lower end (alarajahuojennus), which used to soften the transition, was abolished from 2025. There is no longer a partial-relief band between exempt and fully liable.

Most delivery platforms, Wolt included, require partners operating through their own company to be VAT-registered from day one. It is written into the partnership terms.

So for the majority of couriers the €20,000 threshold is academic: you register regardless of turnover, because you cannot take the work otherwise. If you are in this position, treat yourself as VAT-liable from your first delivery and file accordingly.

You can opt into the VAT register even with turnover below €20,000. Whether that is a good idea depends on who your customers are.

Registering voluntarily makes sense when:

• Your customers are businesses that can reclaim the VAT you charge, so your price rise costs them nothing.
• You have significant VAT on your own purchases (equipment, a vehicle used in a qualifying way, materials) that you would like to reclaim.
• A platform or client requires it.

It usually does not make sense when your customers are private consumers who cannot reclaim VAT, because adding 25.5% either raises your price or cuts your margin, and you take on filing obligations you did not have.

Registration is made through the Business Information System at ytj.fi, or via OmaVero, using a start-up or change notification. You give the date from which liability should begin and an estimate of turnover, which Vero uses to set your filing frequency.

Once registered you are in the system until you deregister. Being quiet for a few months does not pause the obligation, and a period with no sales still needs a nil return.

Deregistering when you genuinely stop trading is a separate notification and is worth doing promptly, because an open registration keeps generating filing obligations, and missed filings keep generating penalties.