Data sources used in the production of Short Term Business statistics

1
Data sources used in the production of Short Term
Business statistics
2
Finnish tax system
Value added taxation

• Tax liability
• Commercial selling of goods and services,
  imports, farms
• Exemptions
• Small scale activity annual turnover lt EUR 8,500
• Health care, social welfare, education, financial
  and insurance services, real property, lotteries
  and money games, performance fees

3
Value added taxation

• VAT rates
• 22 general rate
• 17 food and animal feed
• 8 passenger transport, accommodation,
  medicines, books, public broadcasting, cinema
• Tax-exempt turnover
• Subscriptions to newspapers and periodicals,
  printing services for membership publications,
  international trade to non-EU Member States

4
Employer payments

• All employers paying wages and salaries are
  obliged to withhold earned income tax from wages
  and salaries and to pay social security
  contributions
• Regular wage and salary payer
• Two or more regular employees or simultaneously
  at least six employees
• Non-regular wage and salary payer
• At maximum one regular employee or temporarily a
  maximum of five persons

5
Periodicity

• VAT return
• Primary producers and visual artists annual
  reporting and payment
• Others monthly tax return and paymentDue on the
  15th of the second month following the reference
  month
• Return for employer payments
• Regular wage and salary payers monthly tax
  return and paymentDue on the 15th of the month
  following the reference month
• Non-regular wage and salary payers annual
  reporting and payment

6
Monthly tax return

• Data used in the production of Short Term
  Business Statistics
• VAT timetable (mmonth, dday) 1 m 15 d monthly
  tax return to Tax Administration 2 m data
  input and sending to Statistics Finland 2 m 5
  d data combined and partly checked
• Employer payments data one month faster

7
Monthly tax return data

• Arrives at Statistics Finland once a month in 2
  text files from the National Board of Taxes
• Every file contains data for 6 months the
  reference month and 5 previous months. Therefore
  the indicators for turnover and wages and
  salaries may revise 5 months after the first
  publication
• The first delivery contains about 90 of the
  total sum of turnover/wages and salaries.
• Files also contain additional variables branch,
  place of assessment, actual amount of taxes paid
  by bank transfer

8
Problems with monthly tax return data

• Some enterprises are not tax liable or are not
  required to report monthly (small scale activity,
  health care, etc.)
• Human errors in filling the forms, errors in the
  optical reading
• Overall quality fairly good

9
Direct data collection

• Direct data collection is necessary when
  producing more timely indices (delay less than 75
  days in turnover).
• In some cases direct data collection is more
  reliable.
• Large enterprises doing business in several
  branches are divided into kind-of-activity units.

10
Direct data collection

• Turnover inquiry for the largest companies of
  their branches (about 2000 enterprises)
• Wages and salaries inquiry only for the
  kind-of-activity units (about 93 kind-of-activity
  units)
• Option inquiry for the enterprises having option
  programs (about 250 enterprises). Options are
  eliminated from wages and salaries indicator.

11
Direct data collection

• Companies may answer to the inquiry via mail,
  fax, e-mail or on the Internet.
• Electronic data collection on the Internet
• Simplifies the data collection process
• Reduces need for human resources
• Reduces other data collection costs
• Speeds up the data accumulation
• Enables direct individual feedback for
  respondents
• Enables previously submitted data browsing
• 75-80 of the companies use electronic data
  supply

12
(No Transcript)
13
(No Transcript)
14
(No Transcript)
15
(No Transcript)
16
(No Transcript)
17
Background information on enterprises

• Background information for the enterprises is
  acquired from Business Register
• Branch (NACE code), institutional sector,
  address, legal form
• Main data source for Business Register is data
  supplied by the Tax Administration. Direct data
  collection is also important source.