OmaVero and Vero.fi: Finland's Tax Portal for Foreigners

Almost every tax task in Finland happens in one online service: OmaVero (English: MyTax), run by the Finnish Tax Administration (Verohallinto) at vero.fi. You order your tax card there, you check and correct your annual tax return there, you claim deductions there, and you give the bank account where your refund lands. For newcomers, the hard part is rarely the tax itself — it is getting in the door, because logging in depends on Finnish electronic identification that you may not have yet. This guide walks through both: how foreigners actually get into OmaVero, and what to do once you are inside.

What OmaVero (MyTax) Is

OmaVero is the Finnish Tax Administration's e-service for personal and business tax matters. The English version is labelled MyTax; OmaVero and MyTax are the same service, and you will see both names used interchangeably. It is the official channel for individuals — there is no separate app or third-party portal you need.

Inside OmaVero you can, among other things:

• Order or change your tax card (verokortti)
• View and correct your pre-completed tax return
• Claim deductions
• See your tax decision (verotuspäätös) and the dates for any refund or back taxes
• Give or update the bank account number where refunds are paid
• Read and send secure messages to the Tax Administration

One practical detail worth knowing early: according to the Tax Administration, when you log in to MyTax on 1 June or later, your official tax letters switch from paper to electronic form automatically. After that, your tax decisions and notices arrive in OmaVero rather than in your mailbox, so checking the service becomes something you actually have to remember to do.

How Logging In Works — The Real Hurdle for Newcomers

OmaVero does not have its own username and password. It relies on Finnish strong electronic identification, the same system that protects your bank and other government services. According to vero.fi, you can log in to MyTax with:

• Online banking codes (pankkitunnukset) from a Finnish bank
• A mobile certificate (mobiilivarmenne) tied to your Finnish phone subscription
• A certificate card
• The Hightrust.id application

For most residents, online banking codes are the default route. The catch is that to get Finnish bank credentials you generally need a Finnish personal identity code (henkilötunnus) and a Finnish bank account — and getting those is itself one of the first tasks of moving here. That creates the classic newcomer loop: you need OmaVero to sort your tax, but the easiest way in depends on things you set up around the same time.

There are two ways around it while you wait for Finnish bank IDs.

Option 1: eIDAS — log in with another EU country's ID

If you are an EU/EEA national, you may already hold a recognised electronic identifier from your home country. According to vero.fi, you can log in to MyTax if you have an eIDAS identifier — for example, online banking codes or another electronic identifier from another EU country. On the MyTax login screen you choose Identification methods for foreigners, select your country, and authenticate through your own country's service. This lets many EU newcomers use OmaVero before they have a single Finnish credential.

Option 2: UID and the Finnish Authenticator app

If you do not have an eIDAS identifier — common for non-EU arrivals — the Tax Administration offers a Finnish route built for foreigners. You register in the foreign individual's e-identification service to get a personal UID (a foreign individual's unique identifier), then download the Finnish Authenticator app to your smartphone. According to vero.fi, you verify yourself in the app by taking a selfie and a photo of an identity document such as your passport. The UID plus the app then let you request Suomi.fi authorisations and log in to e-services such as MyTax.

What you can do before you have strong identification

Even with no strong identification at all, you are not completely locked out. The Tax Administration notes that foreign individuals can use MyTax to send a contact request to start a tax matter — for example, requesting a tax card, registering as a person working in Finland, or asking about paying Finnish taxes. The trade-offs: you cannot change a request after sending it, and the Tax Administration responds in roughly a week. It is a fallback, not the full service, but it gets your file moving while your identification catches up.

Ordering a Tax Card in OmaVero

In Finland your employer cannot withhold the right amount of tax without your tax card, which states your personal withholding rate. The card is created in OmaVero from the income and deductions you report.

Once you can log in, ordering one follows a simple shape:

1. Open OmaVero and choose the option to request a new tax card.
2. Give your estimated annual income for the year and any deductions you expect to claim.
3. OmaVero calculates a withholding rate and produces the card.
4. Deliver the card to your employer, or let the Tax Administration send your details to the employer directly.

The Tax Administration issues a new tax card for everyone around the turn of the year, but your circumstances change — a new job, a raise, a side income — and the rate that was right in January may be wrong by summer. A useful feature of OmaVero is that you can change your tax card as many times as you need during the year. If you find your withholding is too high (you are over-paying every month) or too low (you risk back taxes), you simply revise the estimate and order a fresh card.

If you have not yet got into OmaVero with strong identification, see the contact-request route above, and for the wider mechanics of withholding rates and giving the card to your employer, our dedicated guide to the Finnish tax card goes deeper.

The Pre-Completed Tax Return

Finland does not make most employees fill in a tax return from scratch. Instead, the Tax Administration gathers data from your previous year's tax card and from your employers, pension providers and banks, and assembles a pre-completed tax return (esitäytetty veroilmoitus) for you in OmaVero. According to vero.fi, this is ready by the end of March.

Your job is to check it, not write it. The principle is simple:

• If every figure is correct, you do not need to do anything. The return stands as it is.
• If something is missing or wrong — income not reported, a deduction you are entitled to, a bank account to update — you make the correction in OmaVero.

When you open the return in OmaVero, work through it section by section: your background details (name, address, home municipality, bank account in IBAN format, family status), then your income (wages, benefits, pensions, rental income, capital gains, dividends, interest, and any foreign income), then deductions. If an employer's reported wages look off, you can edit that payor's entry; if an income source is missing entirely, you add a new payor.

The deadlines that matter

If you make corrections, they must reach the Tax Administration by the due date printed on your own return — one of 1, 14, 21 or 28 April 2026 (the exact date varies by taxpayer, so check yours in OmaVero). Online corrections made in OmaVero must arrive by 23:59 on that date; if you use paper forms instead, they must arrive by 16:15 on the printed due date. Miss the deadline and you may face a late-filing penalty, so it is worth opening the return as soon as it appears in March rather than leaving it.

After corrections, you may receive a new tax decision by the end of October. That recalculated decision can change when your refund is paid or when back taxes fall due — and the dates can also shift if your spouse corrects their own return.

Claiming Deductions

Deductions are where actively using OmaVero can put money back in your pocket, because the pre-completed return only knows what third parties reported — it does not know what you spent. Common ones for employees, all entered in OmaVero, include commuting costs, union membership fees, the household expenses credit (kotitalousvähennys) for work like cleaning or renovation, expenses for the production of income, and remote-working costs.

Two figures are worth knowing because they are thresholds, not allowances:

• Commuting expenses carry a personal-liability threshold of €900 (as of 2025–2026 — check the current figure at vero.fi). You only benefit on the amount above €900, up to a maximum deduction of €7,000, so the full benefit kicks in once your yearly commuting costs reach about €7,900. Important: report your total commuting cost in OmaVero and let the system subtract the threshold — do not subtract it yourself.
• For commuting by car, the deduction is €0.27 per kilometre for 2025 and 2026, used only where public transport is not a realistic option under the rules.

These euro figures are set by year and can change, so treat them as a guide and confirm the current numbers on the deductions pages of vero.fi before you file.

Refunds and Back Taxes

After your return is processed, the Tax Administration compares the tax you actually owed against what was withheld during the year. Overpay, and you get a refund; underpay, and you owe back taxes (jäännösvero).

For refunds, the Tax Administration needs your bank account number, given in IBAN format in OmaVero — without it, a refund cannot be paid to you, so this is one of the first things to check inside the service. The precise payment dates for refunds and the due dates for back taxes appear on your personal tax decision in OmaVero rather than being the same for everyone. As noted above, if corrections lead to a new tax decision by the end of October, those payment and due dates can move.

Resident or Non-Resident: Why It Changes Everything

How you are taxed — and how much of OmaVero applies to you — turns on whether you are a tax resident of Finland. According to InfoFinland, if you stay in Finland longer than six months, you are generally treated as tax-resident and taxed on your worldwide income, with the full pre-completed return and deductions system applying to you. This is the situation most people moving to Finland to live and work will be in.

If you stay six months or less, you may instead be a non-resident taxpayer. In that case a flat tax at source of 35% can apply to Finnish wages. According to vero.fi, a deduction of €510 per month (or €17 per day for shorter periods) is first subtracted before the 35% is applied — and to use that deduction you need it noted on a tax-at-source card, which non-residents apply for separately. Residents of EEA countries or treaty countries can often request progressive taxation instead, which may work out cheaper. If your stay is short or you are unsure which category you fall into, check your status on vero.fi before assuming the standard resident flow applies to you.

Getting Help with OmaVero

OmaVero is mostly self-service, but you are not on your own:

• Secure messages and chat in OmaVero — once you are logged in, you can message the Tax Administration directly about your own case.
• Tax Administration phone service — vero.fi lists English-language service numbers for individuals; call volumes are heaviest around the spring tax-return deadlines, so call early in the period if you can.
• International House Helsinki (ihhelsinki.fi) — a one-stop service point for Helsinki-area newcomers that covers tax matters alongside DVV registration and Kela, useful if you would rather sort several things in person at once.
• Your employer or university — many organisations that hire or enrol international people have staff who routinely help with tax cards and OmaVero login.

The single most useful habit is to log in to OmaVero early — to order your tax card before your first payday and to open your pre-completed return the moment it appears in March. Almost every avoidable tax problem for newcomers comes from waiting until after a deadline to discover they could not get in.