More than 4,000 Finnish citizens earning more than 100,000 euros per year have asked that their income and tax information be omitted from a list provided to the media by the Finnish Tax Administration.
The figure is a sharp increase on the 986 applications the administration had received by the middle of August.
The deadline for making a request to be removed from the list expired on Thursday, 1 October and in total nearly 4,600 people sought to avail of the opportunity, with the administration confirming that 4,087 of the requests have already been accepted.
Last year, there were about 600 such requests, but the majority were received after the deadline. Therefore, only 231 were accepted.
The total number of people living in Finland that earn more than 100,000 euros per year is estimated to be about 70,000.
Since last year, the tax authority has allowed individuals to request that their tax information be removed from the media list if there is a valid reason, in line with the terms of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Inspector General of the Tax Administration, Noora Kontro, told Yle that reasons given for removal of information from the list include health or security concerns, social relations and self-employment.
"One of the most common is various security-related grounds that are feared or because the individual has already been the subject of harassment, threats or scams," Kontro said.
The Tax Administration considers the collection and disclosure of information about high-income earners to the media as an additional service and not a statutory obligation. Therefore, under the Data Protection Regulation, an individual has the right to object to the disclosure of their information.
However, such information is still available from the tax office by request, as it is public record.
Professor: Restriction of fundamental rights
Professor of Administrative Law Olli Mäenpää said he believes the Tax Administration has breached a fundamental right with its offer to allow individuals the opportunity to remove their details from the list.
"I consider it a rather significant restriction on the principle of public information and also a restriction on the freedom of speech and freedom of the media. Both are fundamental rights belonging to the rule of law, and that this is not a small matter," Mäenpää told the news agency STT.
Mäenpää added that, contrary to the interpretation of the Tax Administration, it has no statutory right to apply such a procedure in the distribution of tax data.
He said that because Finland specifically wanted to preserve the media's right to receive and publish this type of information, there is an explicit section on this in both the Data Protection Act and the Data Protection Decree.
"And according to this article, such an objection process may not be used or is not valid when public information is used for journalistic purposes," Mäenpää said, adding that he believes that the Tax Administration cannot unilaterally change this practice and deviate from the law with its own policies.
Data for the 2019 tax year is scheduled to be released to the media on November 3.
