Filing Form 5 yourself: a 2026 walkthrough
Form 5 (lomake 5, elinkeinotoiminnan veroilmoitus) is the document Finnish sole proprietors file every spring. Verohallinto’s UI in OmaVero walks you through it, but if you’ve never seen it, the field labels can read like another language. Here’s a plain-English line-by-line for the 2026 filing (covering tax year 2025).
Before you start
You’ll want, at hand:
- Your annual receipts, categorised. (If you’ve been using Tiny Books, this is the export.)
- Your bank statements for the year (sanity check).
- Your YEL decision if you have one.
- Your Y-tunnus.
Section 1: Identifiers
Pre-filled by OmaVero. Verify your Y-tunnus and the tax year. If the address is wrong, fix it before proceeding — corrections in OmaVero update everywhere.
Section 2: Business income
Total revenue from your business activity. If you have multiple streams under one Y-tunnus, this is the combined number; the per-stream breakdown is for your own records, not for Verohallinto.
Example. Tatuointi work brought in 8 200 €, psychology consulting brought in 3 100 €. Section 2 is 11 300 €.
Section 3: Operating expenses
This is the big one. Lines are grouped by category — supplies, rent, equipment, depreciation, etc. Each line is a sum of receipts in that category for the year.
Categories that commonly trip people up:
- Office supplies vs. equipment. A 30 € notebook is supplies. A 1 400 € tablet is equipment, and is depreciated — not expensed in full the year you buy it.
- Mixed-use phone. If you use your phone 60% for business, deduct 60% of the bill — not the full amount, not zero. Keep a note for the audit trail explaining how you arrived at 60%.
- Subscriptions. Squarespace, booking software, accounting tools. Yes, including this one. Recurring charges go in their own line by category.
Section 4: Depreciation
For equipment over the threshold, depreciation runs for several years on a fixed schedule (menojäännöspoisto). Verohallinto’s instructions in OmaVero are explicit; if you bought a 1 400 € tablet in 2025, you don’t deduct 1 400 € in 2025 — you deduct a percentage and carry the rest forward.
Tiny Books note. Depreciation is one of the few places where a tool genuinely saves you spreadsheet time. Once an asset is registered, the schedule is automatic.
Section 5: Result
Income minus expenses minus depreciation. This is your business result. It’s not your taxable income yet — it flows into your personal veroilmoitus where the rest of your earned income lives.
Section 6: Capital vs. earned income split
A piece of the Form 5 that catches first-timers. The result from Section 5 is split — by default — into pääomatulo and ansiotulo. The split is calculated from your business net assets (nettovarallisuus) at year-end. You can choose alternative split percentages but the default is fine for most side-hustlers.
Section 7: Sign and submit
OmaVero handles the actual submission. Once submitted, you get a confirmation. The decision (verotuspäätös) lands later in the year.
Common mistakes
- Forgetting subscriptions. Annual SaaS bills hide in inboxes from October.
- Capturing the wrong amount. VAT-inclusive vs. VAT-exclusive matters. If you’re not VAT-registered, the deductible is the gross amount you paid.
- Skipping depreciation. Expensing a 1 400 € tablet in full is a flag.
- Missing the deadline. Late filing is a separate, automatic penalty. Set a calendar reminder for late February.
You don’t need a tilitoimisto for this
If your toiminimi is in the under-20 000 € band, no payroll, no VAT, one to three streams — you can file Form 5 yourself in a single afternoon, provided your receipts are already categorised.