Survival of the Richest

Finland
Ownership transparency
Finland does not currently have a public register of the
beneficial owners of companies or similar entities, but a
proposal for transposing the 4th Anti-Money Laundering
Directive into national legislation was given in November. 361
A government-led working group has suggested that
the registers would be made public in accordance with
data protection legislation. This is due to the fact that the
information would be held as part of the national trade register
that holds public data. 362 The Finnish legal system does not
recognise trusts, but the draft bill requires that the Finnish
trustee of an express trust registers the beneficial owners
in Finland. The draft bill proposes that beneficial ownership
information is included in the existing online Business
Information System, which can be accessed free of charge. 363
According to the 2015 Financial Secrecy Index, Finland
has the lowest level of financial secrecy out of all the 18
countries included in this report (ranked at number 90 at the
global level). 364 In other words, Finland has very low levels of
financial secrecy.
Harmful tax practices
According to a study on aggressive tax planning structures,
Finland exhibits 12 indicators of structures of aggressive tax
planning, which makes it the country with the eighth highest
number of indicators in the EU (tied with Croatia). 369 Finland
does not have a patent box and there were no other active
indicators found. 370
According to data from the European Commission, Finland
had 21 advance pricing agreements (or ‘sweetheart deals’)
in place with multinational corporations by the end of 2013.
The number dropped to 15 in 2014, but increased to 24 by
the end of 2015. 371
When the European Commission presented its proposal for
an Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive, the government’s position
was lukewarm. While stating that it was in support of
most of the Commission’s proposal, the government also
underlined the importance of protecting the competitiveness
of EU corporations, and expressed concerns as to whether
similar regulation would be imposed on multinational
corporations outside the EU. 372
Taxation
Tax treaties
Tax treaties concluded by Finland have articles along the lines
of the OECD model treaty as well as along the lines of the UN
model treaty. All tax treaties are subject to approval by the
parliament. Finland is not planning to assess the spillover
effects of its tax treaties with developing countries. 365
Although in the past an anti-abuse clause has not been
systemically included in tax treaties, several treaties do in
fact include such a clause, and the government is planning
to review its approach. 366
In total, Finland has 36 tax treaties with developing countries,
which is below the average (42 treaties) among the countries
covered by this report. The average reduction of developing
country tax rates within those treaties – 4.8 percentage
points – is, however, significantly above the average (3.8
percentage points) among the countries covered by this
report. 367 This means that Finland’s treaties have a relatively
high negative impact on the tax rates of developing countries.
While the average reduction of tax rates is high, Finland does
not have any tax treaties that stand out as ‘very restrictive’. 368
Survival of the Richest • 63