Data centers’ electric tax tightening is a stupid decision – without properly investigating the effects

Minister of Finance Riikka bite (ps) Ministry’s tax translation of multiple tightening of electricity taxes and mines would be a sad example Petteri Orpo (co), from the government -induced corporate taxation in one direction and another.

The general perception is that a good tax system treats people and companies equally and fairly. Now the government is creating a completely opposite tax system. For companies, the worst thing about everything is the unpredictable activity, which has a very negative impact on business operations and investments.

The electricity tax extension of data centers and mining activities, which would be implemented by changing the electricity tax class of the companies, came completely out of the bus.

The Minister of Finance first reported that the government would abandon the increase in the VAT that emerged last spring. Already, the tax proposal came to companies from behind the tree.

It is clear that over -indebted Finland needs more tax revenue to repair public finances. It is equally clear that patching must be done prudently and in anticipation of changes.

For data centers, this is far from this. Data centers were included in the reduced industrial electricity tax class over ten years ago, when Finland wanted to compete especially with other Nordic countries for data center investments.

This has been partially successful, although, for example, in the time of Pöyry, the other Nordic countries provided the centers for the centers even cheaper.

Now, numerous large data center projects are coming to Finland – according to the Alan Association for up to EUR 10 billion – in front of which Finland is raising the electricity tax before the projects have been finished in Finland.

So the bear is really skinning before it fell. Does this make sense? If politicians and, above all, the Ministry of Finance were proactive, they would then have gone to renew the tax categories of electricity tax more.

Now, almost the whole heavy industry pays the same electricity tax as data centers. Consumers and other companies pay 35 times higher in the electricity tax 1 tax.

Why are there such extremes in Finland? Couldn’t there be more tax classes? For data centers, the lower tax class could be defined for the data halls that at the same time act as heat sources of urban areas and a higher tax on those who focus on the mining of cryptocurrencies.

The Data Center Association has been hoping for a comprehensive research on the benefits of data centers to Finnish society. You can warmly agree with your wish.

Now the public debate on the tax case seems to have stalled that data center investments will come without a tax benefit and if not, so good for electricity to be available when “correct” investments come.

The government now has a place of consideration to investigate the effects of tax changes before making final decisions.