Trust is measured in a customer annual survey to either individual or corporate taxpayers every 2 years (1000 phone interviews conducted by a research company). The survey is conducted with a third-party provider.
The questionnaires have been kept quite alike during the years so the Tax Administration can understand the results better. The results have mainly been used by our Communications department. They use results of single questions for example in social media (see attached picture for twitter and a use of it after the text. It is from the smaller TaxFinland-account and still it got 114000 hits).
For example, in the most recent survey done during the year 2019, 80% of Finnish customers agreed that the customers can trust the Finnish Tax Administration and its operations. More than 60% agreed that the operations of the Finnish Tax Administration are transparent. The target group in the corporate research is all sized corporations. Small corporations are much more critical to Finnish taxation than the larger ones. However, there is no difference in the answers when corporates evaluate the success of Finnish Tax Administration.
In the understanding of the Finnish Tax Administration, Tax Administrations have only limited tools to effect taxpayer attitudes. That is why attitudes towards the Tax Administration and taxation are measured. In the beginning of the questionnaire the Tax Administration "calibrate" the attitudes of taxpayers towards the public sector as a whole. The Tax Administration believe that if taxpayers feel negative about public sector there is a great chance they dislike us as well. During the period 2013-2019 taxpayers’ attitudes towards public sector have moved in more positive direction every year. And so have the results.
The tax administration have had good reviews. As is evident from the results, the Finnish Tax Administration has evolved from a control administration into service administration. From the business point of view taxpayers see that Finnish Tax Administration serves all the different segments equally. Even if their opinions of taxation are quite different in different company sizes, the smaller the company the more negative attitude towards taxation.
One of the most published and most controversial argument about taxation in the survey is: "I'm happy to pay my taxes" Taxpayers agreeing with the argument have risen from 69% in 2013 to 80% on 2019. In the understanding of the Finnish Tax Administration, not all taxpayers are happy to pay taxes, but at least they feel quite neutral. Later in the survey 31% of taxpayers say they are often angry or frustrated about the level of taxes. The Finnish Tax Administration also monitor taxpayers’ attitudes towards different tax types. In the opinion of the taxpayers, inheritance tax is viewed as the most unfair tax.
The Finnish Tax Administration believe that it is important to bring these positive attitudes into the public since often the most critical tones get more space in headlines. Taxpayers often say that they pay their taxes as long as tax administration sees that everybody pays their taxes. In this case, the Finnish Tax Administration would like to tell all the "positive tax payers" that they are not alone.
Trust & Compliance
