DriveHubCountry guide · Finland · 9 min
Ajopäiväkirja 2026: three regimes, and the field list that actually gets enforced
Verohallinto's per-kilometre figure is the part everyone looks up. What decides whether your claim survives is the record behind it — and Finland has three different records, depending on whose car you drive and what you are.
The figure, and why it moved down
The tax-exempt kilometre allowance for an employee driving their own car is 0,55 € per kilometre for 2026; it was 0,59 € for 2025. Both come from Verohallinto's annual decision on tax-exempt travel compensation — decision 970/2025 for 2026, 627/2024 for 2025 — which is why a mileage log cannot simply print today's number.
Which year's figure applies depends on who you are. An employee's trip is priced at the figure for the calendar year it was made in. A toiminimi prices the whole accounting period (tilikausi) at the figure for the calendar year in which that period ends.
The same decision sets a few neighbouring figures: 0,42 €/km for a motorcycle, and 0,11 €/km for an employer's car used as a limited benefit (käyttöetuauto) where the employee pays the fuel. Carrying colleagues on business adds a passenger supplement of 0,04 €/km to the own-car figure — but not to the käyttöetuauto figure, and a sole trader reaches it through the self-employed guidance rather than the employer rule. That is the kind of detail a flat "Finland: 0,55" table cannot carry.
The trap. The Verohallinto decision titled päätös ajoneuvon käytöstä pidettävästä ajopäiväkirjasta is the one most search results land on, and it is a different regime: it governs taxis, foreign-registered work vehicles and demonstration vehicles. Its per-trip odometer requirement does not reach the ordinary own-car case. Reading it as your rule means recording odometer figures nobody asked you for — and possibly missing the fields they did ask for.
Three regimes. Find yours first.
Everything downstream — which fields, which totals, which form — follows from this one question. Most disagreements about what a Finnish ajopäiväkirja must contain are two people answering it differently.
Employee, own car: a matkalasku, not a logbook. The governing text is the prepayment regulation, Ennakkoperintäasetus 1124/1996, 17 §, and what it prescribes is a travel invoice. For each trip it asks for:
- the purpose of the trip
- the destination, and the route where it is needed
- the means of travel
- the start and end time
- for the kilometre allowance, the kilometres driven and the per-kilometre rate used
Self-employed (toiminimi): a logbook, plus the year's total kilometres. The additional deduction (lisävähennys) has its own field list in Verohallinto's guidance on travel costs for the self-employed: the start and end time, the start and end place, the route where needed, the distance and the purpose. And separately, mandatorily, the record must show the total kilometres driven with the car during the tax year — business and private together, because that total is what the 50 % test is measured against.
Four conditions sit behind the figure. The car belongs to your private assets, which means non-business driving is at least half of the total. It is your own or your spouse's car, not a leased one. The rate is the one for the calendar year in which your accounting period ends. And the deduction is claimed on Form 5, part 10 — never booked in the accounts: the costs of business drives you did book stay in the accounts, and the deduction tops them up to the figure. If more than half your driving with that car is business, it stops being a private-asset car and the claim becomes its actual costs instead. How the costs, the depreciation and the private share are then handled is in toiminimi car deduction: business or private.
Company-car benefit: here the ajopäiväkirja really does bite. If the benefit is valued per kilometre, Verohallinto's benefit decision for tax year 2026 (998/2025, § 17) requires a logbook or other reliable record, and § 24 says what it must show: the kilometres driven with the car each day, and for every business drive the start and end time, the place and the route where needed, the odometer reading at the start and the end, the distance, the purpose and the car's user. For private driving, Verohallinto's guidance accepts the kilometres alone.
This is the one regime where the per-trip odometer requirement is real — and the reason a Finnish benefit-car report needs a kilometres-per-day appendix rather than a list of trips. Whether the benefit is vapaa autoetu or käyttöetu, and when the per-kilometre value pays, is in vapaa autoetu or käyttöetu in 2026. If the car belongs to your own osakeyhtiö, a car in your own osakeyhtiö covers the conditions an owner has to meet.
The field list is enforced
It is tempting to treat the list as cosmetic — the distance is the money, the rest is bookkeeping manners. Verohallinto's own guidance for the self-employed argues otherwise. Its § 4.6 describes a taxpayer who claimed 238 days of travel deductions, 10 710 €, from a travel log that recorded no start or end times and only vague destinations such as "Turku". Verohallinto accepted 1 760 € and added a tax increase on top.
That example is about the per-day deduction for increased living costs rather than kilometres, but the lesson carries straight over to a mileage log: the times and the places are what this authority checks. A log that prints a date but not a clock time, or a region instead of an address, is missing the fields it acts on.
How long to keep it
Finland runs several retention clocks and the mileage rule sets none of them. For a sole trader, the practical answer is six years from the end of the calendar year in which the accounting period ends — the accounting act's clock (kirjanpitolaki 2:10 §, 2 momentti), not a mileage-specific one. Keep the exported report, not just the app: a retention obligation that depends on an installed app is not a retention plan.
Before you file
- Every business trip carries a purpose, a start and end place, and a start and end time.
- An employee's trips are priced at the figure for the year each one happened in; a toiminimi's whole accounting period at the figure for the year it ends in.
- A toiminimi has the tax year's total kilometres, private included, and knows the business share is under half.
- A benefit car valued per kilometre has a per-day kilometre figure and odometer readings on each business drive.
- Nothing in the period is still sitting unchecked in the review queue.
- The lisävähennys goes on Form 5, part 10 — and is not booked in the accounts.
What DriveHub does with this
In Settings → Rate & units, DriveHub asks how you use the car, and asks a Finnish toiminimi when their accounts start. The answer changes the report: the tax-year window becomes your tilikausi, every trip in it is priced at the figure for the calendar year that period ends in (or at its own year's figure, if the later one is not published yet), a report for one company car gets the kilometres-per-day appendix, and a toiminimi's report states the ownership condition and that the amount belongs on Form 5, part 10. A toiminimi's report also has a Distance, tax year block: the total driven between the odometer readings you enter at each end of the tax year, private kilometres included, and a note when a reading is missing. On a report for one car, when more than half of its recorded distance is business, the report warns that in Finland a car driven more than half for the business belongs to the business.
Sources
- Verohallinnon päätös verovapaista matkakustannusten korvauksista — 970/2025 § 9 (2026) and 627/2024 § 9 (2025).
- Ennakkoperintäasetus 1124/1996, 17 § — the matkalasku field list.
- Verohallinnon päätös luontoisetujen laskentaperusteista, 998/2025 §§ 17 and 24 — the company-car logbook.
- Verohallinto, Liikkeen- ja ammatinharjoittajien sekä maataloudenharjoittajien matkakustannusten vähentäminen, §§ 3.3.5, 3.4, 4.6, 5.3 and 5.4.
- Verohallinnon päätös ajoneuvon käytöstä pidettävästä ajopäiväkirjasta, VH/7370/00.01.00/2020 — the taxi and demonstration-vehicle regime.
Read at finlex.fi and vero.fi; figures verified September 2026. This is a summary written by the person who built the app, not tax advice — confirm your own case with Verohallinto or your adviser.
Do it in DriveHub
Country, official rates, your own rate and when a change applies.
The full rule for Finland, with the instruments it comes from: mileage log requirements in Finland.