Taxation of benefits
Earnings-related daily allowance, mobility allowance and restructuring protection allowance are taxable income.
On this page, you will find
How are benefits taxed?
Earnings-related daily allowance, mobility allowance and restructuring protection allowance are taxable income. We withhold tax from these benefits and remit it to the Tax Administration. No tax is withheld from the expense allowance.
The amount of tax withheld depends on your tax card. If you have been a member of our fund since the beginning of the current year, we usually receive details of your salary tax card, effective from the beginning of the year, directly from the Tax Administration.
When we use your salary tax card:
- We always withhold a minimum tax of 25% for your earnings-related allowance and mobility allowance, even if the base rate on your salary tax card is lower.
- For restructuring protection allowance, we withhold tax in accordance with the additional rate on your salary tax card.
If you do not want tax to be withheld based on your salary tax card, you can request a revised tax card for benefits from the Tax Administration.
When we receive your revised tax card for benefits:
- We withhold tax for earnings-related allowance, mobility allowance and restructuring protection allowance in accordance with the rate indicated on the tax card.
Please note that your tax rate does not necessarily decrease from the salary you received when you were employed, even if your income is lower during unemployment. This is because some of the tax deductions available for salary income do not apply to earnings-related allowance.
Please also note that we cannot use the following tax cards:
- tax card for pension income
- tax card for seafarer’s income
Follow these steps to request a tax card for benefits:
- Request a new tax card as usual via the Tax Administration’s MyTax service.
- Enter an estimate of your earnings-related allowance in the benefits section. If you have not yet received a formal decision on your earnings-related allowance, you can estimate the amount with our daily allowance calculator
- Select Open Unemployment Fund A-kassa as the payer of the benefit. The tax card will then be delivered directly to us within 1–2 business days in an electronic format.
You are not required to personally provide a printed or an electronic copy of your tax card, as the Tax Administration delivers these details directly to the fund.
For further information, see the Tax Administration’s instructions on submitting a revised tax card to an unemployment fund.
If you work in the maritime sector, the Tax Administration will not deliver your tax information to us, because a tax card for seafarer’s income cannot be used for the purpose of benefit payments. Therefore, you should request a tax card for benefits via the MyTax service when applying for benefits from your unemployment fund.
If tax information is missing entirely and the applicant does not submit a tax card, we withhold tax from the daily allowance in accordance with Tax Administration’s annual decision. Each year, the Tax Administration issues a decision regarding the amount of tax to be withheld from daily allowances of varying sizes.
A 2025 example: if your daily allowance is between 51.01 and 66 euros, the tax withheld is 35%, and if it is between 66.01 and 100.00 euros, the withholding rate is 40%.
The unemployment fund membership fee is always tax-deductible.
The unemployment fund membership fee is not shown on the tax card, even though the fee is tax-deductible. According to the Tax Administration, you do not need to order an amended tax card even if the membership fee is not shown on the tax card.
A-kassa automatically reports the information on the membership fees you have paid to the Tax Administration. This information will be taken into account in the pre-completed tax return, so you do not need to do anything yourself.