In English

An English-speaking accountant in Helsinki

Your business is yours. The rules around it are Finnish. I keep the books, file the returns in MyTax and the Incomes Register, and explain all of it to you in English or Hindi.

You can run a company in Finland without speaking Finnish, and thousands of people do. What you cannot do is ignore the Finnish parts: the returns, the deadlines and the letters that arrive in a language you are still learning. That is the part I take over. I am a Helsinki accounting firm working online, so it makes no difference whether you are in Espoo, Tampere or Rovaniemi.

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What working in English actually means here

Not a translated invoice template. It means every part of the job you touch happens in your language:

• You write to me in English or Hindi, and get an answer in the same language, from the person who does your books.
• The filings are made in Finnish, because MyTax (OmaVero), the Incomes Register and the Trade Register require it. You never have to touch those systems yourself.
• Finnish letters get translated in substance, not word by word: what the authority wants, whether it is urgent, and what I am doing about it.
• Your agreement and your reports are in English, so you always know what you signed and what your business actually earned.
• Finnish terms are explained, not hidden: you will learn what toiminimi, ennakkovero, tilinpäätös and YEL mean, because you will meet them for as long as you run a business here.

The things that catch people out

These are the questions I answer most often for founders who did not grow up with the Finnish system. Every one of them has cost somebody money:

• VAT registration. You must register once turnover passes 20 000 euros, and the test looks at the current and the previous calendar year. How the VAT return works.
• The quiet month still needs a return. The most common letter from the Tax Administration is not about unpaid tax; it is about a return nobody filed.
• YEL, the entrepreneur's pension. It is compulsory above a low income limit, it is not optional because you are young or foreign, and its cost surprises people more than tax does.
• Invoices from Google, Meta and Adobe. They arrive with no VAT, and you owe the Finnish VAT yourself. Reverse charge, explained.
• Toiminimi or Oy. The answer moves with your profit, your withdrawals and your net worth, not with a rule of thumb from a forum. The comparison.
• Receipts. A card slip or a bank line is not a receipt, and a missing one costs you the deduction. What a receipt must show.

How we start

1. A free introduction. Half an hour online in English or Hindi about what your business does, how the receipts arrive today and what is worrying you.
2. A written scope and price. You get the fee in writing before anything starts, and I verify your identity, which Finnish anti-money-laundering law requires of every accounting firm.
3. Access, not paperwork. You approve a Suomi.fi mandate so I can file for you, and give me the bank statements. The mandate takes about five minutes.
4. The month starts running. Receipts by phone as they arrive, bookkeeping during the month, and the amount to pay told to you before the due date.

What it costs

A sole trader pays 69 euros a month, a company 199 up to 240 000 euros of turnover and 249 above it, and payroll is 15 euros per run. Those prices include the accounting software and the year-end financial statements and tax return, and there is no charge per receipt. All prices are without VAT.

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