From the beginning of next year, people in Finland will no longer be able to prevent the media from accessing their tax data, following a recent ruling by the Supreme Administrative Court.
According to a report by Finnish news agency STT, the court ruling held that the Finnish Tax Administration had misinterpreted the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Each autumn, the tax administration provides the media with a list of those whose earnings totalled 100,000 euros or more. Citing the EU law, the office has since 2019 granted requests from many high earners not to appear on the list. Their tax information was however still retrievable if requested by name.
The new court ruling further obliges the tax authority to produce and provide the data upon request by law. The provision of the list of the wealthiest people in Finland was previously provided on a more customary basis.
”It is good that we now have a judicial decision from the Supreme Administrative Court on the interpretation of GDPR. We will correct our own procedures in line with the court's ruling. We want to continue to support the public debate on taxes," the office's legal affairs director Matti Merisalo said in a press release.
This autumn's list saw a 'typo' inaccurately declare a man to be Finland's biggest earner. The man is the founder of a firm called Goofy Unicorn, who said that a "brain fart" made him file fictitious cryptocurrency earnings into a tax form. Read the full story here.
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