If the contractor concludes a subcontract or a contract for temporary agency work it must obtain the following information on its contracting partner before the contract is concluded:
- documents stating whether the contracting partner has been entered in the Prepayment Register, Employer Register and the VAT Register
- extract from the Trade Register
- documents concerning the contracting partner’s tax payment status
- certificate of the employee’s pension insurance and the payment of the pension insurance contributions, or a document stating that the contracting partner has prepared a payment plan for outstanding pension insurance contributions
- details of the collective agreement or principal terms of employment applicable to the work
- details of the provision of occupational health care services
- certificate of accident insurance (only in association with construction contracts)
In construction contracts, the contractor must obtain the information listed in sections 1–3 even if the construction work specified in the contract will only be performed by the entrepreneur acting as the contracting partner or its subcontractor and not by the contracting partner’s employee.
If the contracting partner is a foreign company or a foreign public body, see also the section ‘Foreign company as contracting partner’.
Documents concerning the contracting partner’s tax payment status
The contractor can obtain the details of its contracting partner’s tax payment status from the public tax debt register, which is available via the online service of the Finnish Business Information System (www.ytj.fi/en). If the tax debt register shows that the contracting partner has tax debts, the contractor must also obtain an official document detailing the total amount of the contracting partner’s tax debts (for example, a tax debt certificate).
It is not always possible to obtain information on the contracting partner from the tax debt register. This can happen when the contracting partner is, for example, a foreign organisation without a branch in Finland or a self-employed person without a business ID. In such cases, the contractor can check its contracting partner’s tax payment status by obtaining any of the following documents:
- a certificate stating that the contracting partner has paid its taxes
- contracting partner’s tax debt certificate
- a document stating that the contracting partner has prepared a payment plan for its tax debts.
The contractor must always judge whether its contracting partner intends to fulfil its statutory payment obligations. The contractor may be ordered to pay an increased negligence fee if the contractor should have understood that its contracting partner does not intend to fulfil its statutory payment obligations. This may happen when, for example, the contracting partner has tax debts for which no payment plan has been prepared and the debt can be considered substantial.
Keeping the information up to date and retaining it
The documents and certificates must not be more than three months old when the contract is concluded. The contractor must retain all information for at least two years after the end of the work specified in the contract.
If the contractor does not request the documents and certificates directly from its contracting partner, they can also be obtained from a private service provider considered reliable.
Usually, the contractor does not have any obligation to obtain new information if it concludes a new contract with the same contracting partner within 12 months of the conclusion of the previous contract and within 12 months of obtaining the information for it. However, the contractor must always obtain all required information before concluding a new contract if the contractor has reasons to believe that the contracting partner’s circumstances have changed in a manner requiring new checks.