Insights | March 30, 2023
Summary of the new Finnish Mining Tax Act
The Finnish Parliament has approved the new Mining Tax Act. The primary objective of the new Mining Tax legislation is not to reduce the usage of mine minerals, but to garner a reasonable amount of compensation for mineral wealth extraction. The Act enters into force on 1 January 2024.
The scope of the mining tax covers all minerals mined in Finland, i.e. both minerals processed in Finland and minerals exported for processing abroad. Correspondingly, ore or concentrate supplied to Finland from abroad will not be subject to the new tax. The Mining Tax Act (2023/314) does not apply to mining minerals obtained from gold panning.
Two types of taxation models are applied, one for metallic minerals and another for non-metallic minerals:
- Value-based royalty of 0.6 % for metallic minerals: This tax is based on the taxable value of the metal included in the following metallic minerals listed exhaustively in the appendix of the Mining Tax Act: silver (Ag), cobalt (Co), chromium (Cr), gold (Au), copper (Cu), lithium (Li), nickel (Ni), palladium (Pd), platinum (Pt), zinc (Zn), lead (Pb) and uranium (U).
- Tax for metallic minerals is payable once the taxpayer supplies the metallic mineral for enrichment for the first time.
- The taxable value of the metal is based on international market price data, obtained from sources such as the London Metal Exchange and the London Bullion Market. If such metal price data were not available, the value could be derived from the public price data relating to the product containing the metal in question, which reflects the comparable price of the processed metal. The taxable value is calculated as the arithmetic mean of daily market prices over a period of one calendar year. The Finnish Tax Administration confirms the tax values of metallic minerals for each year at the beginning of the calendar year on the basis of the previous year’s price data.
- Volume-based royalty of EUR 0.20 per extracted ton for non-metallic minerals: This tax is based on the quantity of minerals extracted. Non-metallic minerals subject to a volume-based royalty include other (non-metallic) mining minerals defined in Section 2 of the Mining Act (621/2011), such as sulphur, iron, apatite, limestone, talc and soapstone.
- Tax for non-metallic minerals is payable once the mineral is extracted.
The tax liability applies to an entity that has extracted the mineral and is required to have a mining permit for its mining activity (i.e. typically a mining company).
The Mining Tax is an additional independent tax in the Finnish tax system. The competent authority is the Tax Administration. Operators subject to the mining tax have to register as taxpayers. New operators should submit a registration notification to the Tax Administration electronically before the activity requiring registration begins. As far as concerns existing operators, the transitory provision provides that a registration notice must be filed no later than 1 March 2024.
The taxpayer is required to file a tax return each calendar year and calculate and pay the tax on its own initiative, following the tax year (i.e. no later than 12 March 2025 for tax year 2024).