News 7 Oct 2019
Interruption in releasing of statistics on prices of dwellings in housing companies in November to December due to reporting changes of the asset transfer tax
The statistics on prices of dwellings in housing companies will not be published in November to December, because no data will be accumulated for approximately a five-week period due to the implementation of an amendment to the act on the asset transfer tax and the Tax Administration's data system renewal. The change will affect the 31 October release as no data will be accumulated from asset transfer tax notifications throughout the usual period for monthly data and the data are thus not, especially in terms of numbers, comparable with earlier data.
The amendment will enter into force on 1 November. As a result, payment of asset transfer tax becomes taxpayer-specific and notification of the tax becomes mandatory. In addition, corporate customers and real estate agents must, in future, notify of asset transfer tax payments electronically.
The Tax Administration will not feed asset transfer tax statements into its system between 1 October and 8 November 2019. Due to the system renewal of the Tax Administration, Statistics Finland will receive the asset transfer tax statements reported during this period only in December.
Based on current information, publication of the price index of dwellings in housing companies will continue again in January 2020. Before this, Statistics Finland has to revise the production process of the statistics. As the notifications will now be made taxpayer specifically, data must be combined so that the purchase price per dwelling is derived from several buyers of shares in the housing company. On the other hand, after the changes, the statistical data will be accumulated closer to real time.
Learn more about the legislation amendment on the Tax Administration's site (in Finnish).