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A guide to freelancing in Finland
- GhostKnight 7y agofinland doesn't exist
- dang 7y agoCould you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?
- nizmow 7y agoThis is a fantastic and detailed guide. I'd love something similar for Australia.
- Outpox 7y agoThanks for sharing!
- lawlorino 7y agoThis is really great, thank you. Maybe I missed this bit but I noticed the guide doesn't touch on language issues at all, how hard is the transition for someone who doesn't speak Finnish?
- tsukurimashou 7y agoGood question, I was wondering exactly the same
- aspirin 7y agoIn professional contexts as a software developer you will manage just fine with just English. Free time context and true integration to society will require learning Finnish. But you can take your time with that. I’m a Finn.
- mongol 7y agoI think the challenge with going freelancer will be with the things that are required of you as a corporate entity. Such as, reading up on legislation, accounting rules, dialog with tax office etc.
- ryanlol 7y agoYou can do all of those in English without any issues.
- sam_hosseini 7y agoNot everything is in English. Prime example of that is establishing a limited liability online. Nothing impossible to tackle, but just that if things were in English and smooth, maybe I wouldn't have bothered with writing the guide :) It is troubling at times, which is why I wanted to smoothen it out as much as possible.
- mongol 7y agoI seriously doubt it. Now these are not a finnish examples, but Swedish, but I challenge anyone only knowing English: What is the salary tax breaking point for 2020? When do you need to have declared and paid VAT during 2020 if you are one a 3 month schedule? These are basic knowledge questions for a freelancer with a Swedish Aktiebolag, easily googleable in Swedish but challenging if you don't know it.
- krageon 7y agoFinnish is an absolutely atrocious language to learn for most people (unless you are already familiar with learning a language with a completely different root, and even then). That part will be hard. I can't comment on the practicality of surviving with only English (or even Swedish, which most of them speak due to historical factors that I will politely gloss over), because I haven't tried.
- stevekemp 7y agoIt is possible to survive in Helsinki with only minimal Finnish, and work in the IT-industry. In smaller places it might be more difficult, but certainly people here are willing and able to converse in English. Of course I would like to learn more Finnish, but daily life and childcare interferes with regular lessons. (Of course being able to work in English also means that speaking Finnish at work is also difficult.) Since moving to Finland four years ago I've bought a couple of flats, found a job, filed taxes, visited doctors, dentists, and similar things all in English. I understand a lot of Finnish, I just speak less. Ordering food, etc, is something I'd usually do in Finnish although it has to be said a lot of people will either initially greet me in English, or reply to me in English which is a bit frustrating.
- hopia 7y agoI know British IT consultants living and working in cities with ~100,000 inhabitants in Finland, working in high profile IT consultant agencies. Knowing no Finnish whatsoever. It seems definitely doable.
- Hamuko 7y ago>Ordering food, etc, is something I'd usually do in Finnish although it has to be said a lot of people will either initially greet me in English, or reply to me in English which is a bit frustrating. I have noticed some establishments to quickly make a judgement call on what kind of language skills you have. I was once in a restaurant, reading over the Finnish menu and the waiter came and asked me if I needed any help translating the menu. I am 100% Finnish (some branch of my family tree extends to the 1700s at least), so I didn't really need it.
- Jsharm 7y agoThis is awesome, if only there was something like this covering Ireland...
- shinryuu 7y agoAwesome, now I wish there was a similar guide for germany :)
- mindjiver 7y agoYeah,as someone that did the switch from employment to self-employment in Germany it was not exactly straight forward.
- pillefitz 7y agoAs I'm going to be in the same boat soon, what were your issues in a nutshell if I may ask?
- mindjiver 7y agoI got different answers from the people I talked to, the lawyer, accountant and insurance broker all told me different things, i.e. if I was to start a GmbH, a Gewerbe or be Selbständig/Freiberufler. In the end I went the Selbständig-route and it has been good so far. Also since I have been 100% working for US based companies remotely I needed to figure out tax implications and there most of the time I had to research things own and explain to my accountant due to the the accountant not knowing English. I guess I could find a better accountant but now after a year the accountant knows how things work and I'm too lazy to switch now. Other than that getting the insurances in place and bank accounts took some time, but not too bad in the end. But a guide would have helped. :)
- shaneprrlt 7y agoIt's incredible that Finland gives you a monthly grant to become an entrepreneur. Definitely wish something like that existed in the US, even if only possible at the state level.
- sam_hosseini 7y agoIt is indeed. Makes taking the risk of going from employee with lots of protections in Finland to freelance with no protection whatsoever much less dangerous financial wise.
- hopia 7y agoIt's not automatically granted, it depends on whether your local office has any budget left, and on your business plan and such. It's a somewhat bureaucratic process.
- hedgew 7y agoIt's probably one of the better government programs, though as a programmer you'll pay the entire grant's €2500-5000 value in one month of taxes.
- vekker 7y agoIf I read it well, this grant is personal income though. If the company has to pay 2-5k in monthly taxes, that will be on its revenue. If you have no revenue yet, then I don't imagine you will have to pay that much in taxes
- zadkey 7y agoThank you very much!
- nerdomancer 7y agoAwesome! I wish there was something similar for the Netherlands.
- sam_hosseini 7y agoWould you be interested in forking it for Netherlands yourself and maybe divide the work between your peers to get it up and running? :)
- tomashubelbauer 7y agoI hope this will start a trend. A tech meme of sorts - virally producing amazing and useful content with the same theme. :)
- sam_hosseini 7y agoIt's gone semi viral I guess.. cuz it's now trending on github and it was #1 on /Finland subreddit when I posted it 3 days ago. I'd personally love to see this for other countries, maybe specially Nordics ones cuz that's easier to implement cuz of the similarities I think. [1] http://github.com/trending http://github.com/trending
- xondono 7y agoIt would be amazing to have a collection of guides like this sorted by country!
- sam_hosseini 7y agoAgree fully! Couple of people have explained interest in forking this for their respective country! I hope it goes forward and they'd do it.
- metakermit 7y agoYes, definitely. I started doing something similar (though much more narrow in scope) while I was freelancing in Austria: https://punkrockdev.com/accounting-austria https://punkrockdev.com/accounting-austria Ideally, we would have crowd-sourced instructions and spreadsheets with taxes, pension calculations etc. – like a Wikipedia for entrepreneurs.
- bilekas 7y agoStep 1) Move to Finland!
- sam_hosseini 7y agohaha :) well, the target audience of the guide is for people who already live in Finland :) https://github.com/sam-hosseini/freelancing-in-finland#how-can-this-guide-solve-the-problem https://github.com/sam-hosseini/freelancing-in-finland#how-c...
- versale 7y agoAwesome! I wish there were a similar guide on how to establish a cooperative of freelancers in Finland.
- sam_hosseini 7y agoWould you like to open an issue on Github and start discussing it?
- kharak 7y agoThis is great. How many people have solved similar problems to this and not written anything down? How often are the same problems solved, over and over again? You did a great service and I hope it catches on. I'm just wondering, will the people who would benefit the most from your guide actually find it?
- sam_hosseini 7y agoI have to be explicit as I have been in my guide [1] that I did it for both selfish and selfless reasons. So it has not been done in pure good will :), but I think it can be thought of as maybe a good sweet spot of serving the community and benefitting from it at the same time. About finding it, yes. It's gotten #1 on /Finland subreddit, I myself have an extensive network in Finland, and it's gone relatively big on twitter and linkedin. So given the size of Finland and the software dev community, I think word of the mouth will eventually spread it to most people who are interested in freelancing. [1] https://github.com/sam-hosseini/freelancing-in-finland#now-that-youre-here https://github.com/sam-hosseini/freelancing-in-finland#now-t...
- khnov 7y agoVery nice and detailed ! I wished for a french version of this that could be very helpful to me. keep up!
- climate_realist 7y agoI think people here who look at Finland and Europe in general and see these social programs to help you get ahead are rather blinded by the reality that they only exist for Europeans. As a US citizen who lived in Europe for 5 years, I can assure you that it's a 100% closed game. If you are not from the EU, you can only work for a European. It makes no difference if you have a great idea, or even your own funding, you won't get the legal permission to found a business in Europe unless you basically got a European to found it for you and then you can be their employee. This is basically why the tech scene in Europe is more smoke than heat, it only allows the local talent to be successful, which we all know leads to subpar results. It is also why you really don't see any actual innovation come out of Europe.
- cromulent 7y agoIt's not super hard to do in Finland actually, especially if you engage a local to help you. If you want to, you can become an e-resident and run a business in Estonia completely online. https://e-resident.gov.ee https://e-resident.gov.ee
- Nextgrid 7y agoEstonian e-residency doesn’t magically make you a tax resident of there and absolve you of your tax obligations to your country of residence. Some countries still require you to pay local tax on any income from foreign companies as long as you’re considered a tax resident.
- cromulent 7y agoYeah, there are definitely shortcomings to that approach. I was just trying to address the: "I can assure you that it's a 100% closed game. If you are not from the EU, you can only work for a European... you won't get the legal permission to found a business in Europe unless you basically got a European to found it for you" comment as I have not found that to be true.
- e4325f 7y agoFintech in the UK looks pretty innovative to me, banking in the US is embarrassing.
- s_dev 7y agoContracting in Ireland: https://www.reddit.com/r/DevelEire/comments/bk8pmo/getting_started_contracting_in_ireland_guide/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DevelEire/comments/bk8pmo/getting_s...
- outime 7y agoI’ve been a freelance in Finland for some time and was surprised by how easy setting everything up electronically was and how little I had to pay if my income was low in the beginning. I was also very surprised to see how helpful the tax office (Vero in finnish) is, even for questions that could be answered with “hire an accountant” but thanks to their help, I was able to do it on my own. I even made a mistake once and they let me know and fix it without consequences. Compare this to my home country (Spain) where you have to pay a rather high fixed fee every month despite having no income (a typical situation at the beginning of any business), the amount of paperwork and unreadable legalese together with the unwillingness of the tax office to help you out with most of the stuff. On a side note this guide looks great and wish I had such thing when I started out!
- unclesams-uncle 7y agoSpain really needs to fix its autonomo system to let people add to the economy without being overburdened with taxes and paperwork. I remember reading that PSOE wants to amend it, but I don't know how much of that was just campaign rhetoric.
- rasjani 7y agoFew foss projects and authors that started in this god forsaken country, Finland: Linux - Linus Torvalds. Finn Ssh - Tatu Ylönen. Finn IRC - Jarkko Oikarinen. Finn. Dovecot - Timo Sirainen. Finn. Robot Framework - Pekka Klarck. Finn. And maybe not fortune100 or even 500 companies but companies like Nokia, F-secure, Futuremark have had their global impact. And Yeah. These are old tech already but saying that no innovations came out out of Finland or Europe is just plain bullsh*t.
- fsloth 7y agoI'm a bit familiar with finnish industrial history. Finland has a history of massively innovative companies that were decades ahead of their competition in several sectors. The thing that they did not have, was capital funding, so they could not grow, and experience of global markets to have the know how to grow. So they remained small shops, with one or two big industrial clients who did not care to help them grow, and the world caught up with them. The ones that managed to grow, are exceptions. Nokia and Kone are probably the more familiar ones (look at the next elevator you ride, there's a 50/50 chance it's made by Kone). Finland is a capital poor country but rich in ideas.
- ChuckNorris89 7y ago>Finland is a capital poor country but rich in ideas You can replace Finland with pretty much any non US country on Earth. I've met brilliant hard working people all over the world. The only thing they lacked to make it big was capital.
- fsloth 7y agoWell, depends what you compare with. Most european countries have a rich history of industrialization and colonization and hence quite a lot of private capital. Unlike Finland. Of course, there are lots of other dirt poor areas, but if you compare Finland to the segment where it's usually included, i.e. non-iron-curtain-enclosed European states, then in that category it stands out.
- irrationalactor 7y agoAnybody have experience as to whether this applies to an American living in Finland? Due to FATCA and the US's draconian tax laws around ownership of foreign investment assets...I'm wondering if it wouldn't make any sense to try to start a Finnish company while holding American citizenship. Assuming it would be a tax nightmare if you start producing any real income.
- beagle3 7y agoThe requireMenus start on day one, regardless of producing any income. What follows related to the US tax code in general, the us/Finland tax treaty might make exceptions about some of them: You will be unable to hold any financial asset other than cash or deposit (no broker will let you do stocks for example - or an ETF) You will have to report and pay taxes on the fantasy gains on your locally accumulating pension funds, even though you will not have access to them until retirement (if then). You will have to file your company paperwork locally, but also as if it was American - with requirements that become more onerous with your ownership percentage (starting at 10% or 25%, can’t remember - luckily for me in that respect, I was below the reporting threshold most years - but I did have to translate and file financials at some point) I had done all of these for many years. If you don’t enjoy the bureaucracy, you might be better off NOT owning a non-US company.
- hopia 7y agoWhy would you want to start a Finnish company? For targeting purely Finnish clientele?
- irrationalactor 7y agoFrom the guide it sounded like you need a Finnish limited liability company to be able to service domestic Finnish clients. Or would Finnish companies be able to pay an on-site freelancer with an American LLC just as easily?
- sam_hosseini 7y agoI think Finnish clients can work with an American LLC. I'm not 100% sure, but I can't seem to even imagine why not.
- dgellow 7y agoThat’s awesome. I would love something like this for other Germany
- ronyfadel 7y agoCan we please have a guide like this for every (selfishly: European) country?