Taxation and the New Year

Topics

• Income security

The tax year also changes at the turn of the year. This may also have some impact on your earnings-related daily allowance.

December daily allowances on the January tax card

Taxation is based on the payment date. At the same time, daily allowances are always claimed retroactively, which in practice means that the daily allowance paid is for the previous month. In January, we therefore pay daily allowances for December. The payment date is in January, so taxation is based on January’s tax information, even though the earnings-related daily allowance is for December.

The tax rate may change

The tax card is automatically renewed at the turn of the year. We receive this tax information directly and use it for the taxation of earnings-related daily allowances, unless otherwise specified. However, this automatically provided tax information is calculated for salary purposes. According to the tax authority’s guidelines, the withholding tax rate must be at least 25% if the tax rate provided for salary purposes is used in the payment of earnings-related daily allowance.

If you wish, you can order a new tax card from the tax authorities that better reflects the use of the tax percentage in the taxation of earnings-related unemployment benefits. This can be done through the tax authorities’ service. When you order a new tax card, please provide an estimate of your future earnings-related daily allowances. At the same time, please designate us, YTK Unemployment Fund, as the recipient of your tax information. The tax authorities will then send us a new tax rate calculated for the taxation of earnings-related daily allowances.

Tax deduction for membership fees

Unemployment fund membership fees are still tax deductible. However, they will no longer be directly marked on the new tax card. This is related to a change concerning the removal of the tax deductibility of trade union membership fees.

It is not necessarily necessary to make a change to the tax card just to report unemployment fund membership fees, as this often does not affect the tax rate. We will report the membership fee information to the tax authorities for the 2026 pre-filled tax return, in which case the tax deduction for the membership fee will be taken into account in the final taxation in any case. If you need to apply for a revised tax card for other reasons, you can add your unemployment fund membership fee to it at the same time. It is also worth checking the pre-filled tax return for the fund’s membership fee.

Electronic tax information does not affect the processing schedule

If we are processing your first application, the change of tax card will not affect the processing time. In the case of a follow-up application, new tax information received electronically will not affect the processing time.

However, if you send us your amended tax card separately, it may affect the processing schedule for your follow-up application. When you order a new tax card from the tax authorities, please notify YTK Unemployment Fund as the recipient of the tax information. This will allow us to receive the tax information electronically directly into our system, and it will not affect the processing schedule.