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Deductions a sole trader forgets in Finland (2026)

Published 3 October 2026

A sole trader (toiminimi) deducts the costs of earning the business income, and the ones that arrive as an invoice rarely get missed. The deductions that slip are the ones without a bill, and a few that are easy to put in the wrong place: your travel days, the room you work in, the share of your phone the business uses, your YEL contributions. Here they are for tax year 2026, with what changed this year.

Your YEL contributions

YEL, the self-employed person's pension insurance, is deductible, and you choose where: in the business tax return, in your own personal tax return or in your spouse's, but in only one of them. From business income, only compulsory pension insurance contributions can be deducted. Deducted in your personal return, the benefit equals your earned-income tax rate, the Tax Administration says. Our article on YEL in 2026 explains the insurance itself.

Travel you did for the business

You cannot pay yourself a per diem, but on a business trip you can deduct the increased living costs, the so-called extra deduction (lisävähennys), up to the per diem amounts. For 2026 they are 54 euros for a trip of more than 10 hours and 25 euros for more than 6 hours, when the destination is more than 15 kilometres from where the trip starts, usually home or your regular place of work. Kilometres driven for the business in your own car, one that is not among the business's assets, are deducted at the rate in the Tax Administration's decision for the year, 0.55 euros a kilometre in 2026, less any car costs already in your books. Keep a log of dates, places and kilometres. The full conditions and rates are in our article on mileage and per diems, and the car rules in our article on the car in the business or in your own name.

The room you work in

The home office deduction for 2026 is 980 euros if you use your home for the business continuously and full-time, or work there on more than half of the year's working days. It is 490 euros if you use it continuously part-time, or work there on at least a quarter and at most half of them, and 245 euros if you do so only now and then but repeatedly. From 2026 it no longer applies to wages, but it still applies to business income. Our article on the home office deduction covers the conditions.

Phone, computer and small purchases

Phone and computer costs go in the business tax return. If a business phone is also used privately, the private share is reported as income.

An item costing up to 1 200 euros, without VAT if you are in the VAT register, is a small acquisition and can be deducted at once, up to 3 600 euros a year in total. The Tax Administration's own examples are a phone for 295 euros and a computer for 795 euros. Movable equipment with a probable economic life of three years or less can also be deducted at once, whatever it costs. Other machinery and equipment is depreciated, at most 25 % a year of the remaining balance.

Four more that slip

• Training that maintains or adds to the skills you need in your current business is deductible. Basic education and retraining for a new profession are not.
• Voluntary accident insurance you take out for yourself as an entrepreneur is a deductible business cost.
• Interest on business loans is deductible, but not interest on a loan used to finance private withdrawals.
• Protective clothing the work requires is deductible. Ordinary clothes are a living cost, even if you wear them only at work.

Entertainment is different again: 50 % is deductible in income tax and the VAT not at all. Our article on entertainment and staff events has the rules.

What changed in 2026

Membership fees to labour-market organisations. From tax year 2026 a business can no longer deduct fees to organisations whose rules say they carry out labour-market activity, even if the fee also buys other services. The test is the organisation's rules, not what it actually does, so check your organisation's rules. In personal taxation, trade-union fees are no longer deductible from 2026 either; unemployment fund fees still are.

Raised depreciation. The temporary 50 % depreciation on machinery and equipment covered tax years 2020 to 2025. Depreciation is still deductible, but from 2026 the normal maximum of 25 % applies again.

Keep the evidence

A deduction needs a voucher or a record behind it: a receipt, an invoice, a travel log. Vouchers are kept for six years from the end of the year in which the financial year ended; our article on receipts and record keeping has the details. Most of these go in the business tax return, which a sole trader files by 1 April; our article on the sole trader tax return shows where.

If you want an accounting company in Finland to record these as you send in the receipts and logs through the year, so nothing waits for April, ask us.

Sources

• Tax Administration: YEL contributions as a deduction (in Finnish)
• Tax Administration: completing the business tax return of a sole trader (in Finnish)
• Tax Administration: decision on tax-free travel allowances in 2026 (in Finnish)
• Tax Administration: temporary business trips and the extra deduction (in Finnish)
• Tax Administration: decision on the home office deduction for 2026 (in Finnish)
• Tax Administration: depreciation and small acquisitions (in Finnish)
• Tax Administration: training costs in personal taxation (in Finnish)
• Tax Administration: voluntary risk insurance taken out by an employer (in Finnish)
• Tax Administration: labour-market organisation fees not deductible from 2026 (in Finnish)
• Tax Administration: raised depreciation in tax years 2020–2025 (in Finnish)

Please note: this is general information about Finnish rules, not advice for your own situation, and the rules change. Ask us before you act on it.

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