Finnish Customs collects €274m taxes in 2019

Finnish Customs collected a total of around 274 million euros in taxes, duties and charges in 2019, said an official press release.

The arrears of the taxes and charges collected by Customs amounted to 1.3 million euros and the tax arrears rate was 0.47 %.

The total amount of customs duties collected was 188 million euros in 2019. Finnish Customs remitted 150 million euros in customs duties to the EU and 38 million euros in collection costs to the Finnish state. The state retains an annual collection fee of 20 % of the customs duties.

The amount of fairway dues collected by Customs in 2019 rose to 52 million euros, which is three million euros more than in the previous year.

At the start of 2018, the main part of import VAT collection was transferred to the Finnish Tax Administration.

Because of the transfer, the amount of VAT collected by Customs reduced by 229 million euros in comparison with the previous year.

In 2019, Finnish Customs collected around 31 million euros in VAT from both registered and non-registered parties liable to pay VAT in cases where they had breached the provisions governing the customs procedure.

The amount of service charges collected was the same as in 2018; that is, three million euros. In 2019, tax arrears amounted to 1.3 million euros and their relative share of the collected taxes was 0.47 %. The year before, the corresponding figures were two million euros and 0.41 %.