Kotitalousvähennys: what you get back on home work in Finland (2026)

In Finland, the kotitalousvähennys gives you back 35% of the labour cost of home work in 2026, up to €1,600 per person a year. Unlike Sweden’s ROT, you do not see it on the invoice: you pay the contractor in full and claim the credit yourself in MyTax. It covers labour only, never materials, and the first €150 of the credit each year is yours to bear. Dropping oil heating earns a larger credit, covered below. Source: Vero, kotitalousvähennys

You claim it yourself, after you have paid

What catches Swedish or just-moved homeowners out is that nothing happens at the invoice. Your Finnish contractor charges you the whole amount, labour included, and you recover the credit later through MyTax: either on the pre-completed tax return for last year, or by adjusting your tax card for this year so less tax is withheld. Beyond itemising the labour so you know what to claim, the contractor plays no part in it.

This puts the record-keeping on you. The claim needs the company’s name and business ID, the labour cost (separated from materials), and the date you ordered the work. A job where the invoice bundles labour and materials into one line is a job where you cannot prove the labour share, so the credit shrinks to what you can document.

The numbers: 35%, €1,600, and the €150 you bear

The credit is 35% of the labour cost of work bought from a company, capped at €1,600 per person per year, and the first €150 of your annual credit is not paid. Materials, travel, and equipment hire never count, so on a job that is mostly parts the credit is small even when the bill is large.

The per-person structure is the part worth planning around. Each spouse has their own €1,600 ceiling and their own €150 own-risk, so a couple can claim up to €3,200 on the same home in a year when both are billed and both qualify. Spreading a large job across a year-end, so part of the labour falls in each tax year, is the legitimate way to use two annual ceilings on one project.

The bigger credit for dropping oil heating

Replacing oil heating earns far more than ordinary repair work. For tax years 2025 to 2027, the labour of removing an oil-heating system and installing one that does not burn fossil fuel qualifies for 60% of the labour cost, up to €3,500 per person per year, in place of the standard 35% and €1,600. Heat pumps of every type, district heating, and pellet heating all count as the replacement.

The reason this matters now is the sunset. The elevated track is scheduled to end after 2027, so a homeowner weighing an oil-to-heat-pump switch has a window where the labour is subsidised at almost double the normal rate. After it closes, the same work falls back to the standard 35%.

This is the kind of dated, jurisdiction-specific detail a maintenance record is built to surface: which components are due, what a switch would cost in labour, and how much of that labour the current rules give back before the window shuts. appkeep holds that against each component so the deduction is part of the decision rather than a surprise at filing time.

Who and what qualifies

You qualify for work done in a home you own and live in, or in a home used by your parents or grandparents. The company must be in the prepayment register (ennakkoperintärekisteri), and its registration must be valid on the date you order the work, not the date you pay. Renovation, repair, and maintenance labour qualifies; new construction does not, and nor does design or surveying work bought separately.

The cash arrangement is the trap. A contractor outside the prepayment register, or one who offers a lower price for an undocumented job, cannot carry the credit, so the headline saving disappears once the lost 35% (or 60%) is counted. The register check takes a minute in the BIS business information system before you sign.

Worked example: Eero drops oil heating in Jyväskylä

Eero is replacing an old oil boiler with an air-water heat pump. Because he is giving up oil heating, the labour falls under the elevated track: 60% of the labour cost, up to €3,500 for the year.

Say the labour line on the contract comes to €4,000 (the materials and the unit are separate and do not count). The credit is 60% of that, €2,400, minus the €150 own-risk, so €2,250 comes back to Eero through MyTax. Had the same labour been ordinary repair work at the standard 35%, the credit would have been €1,400 minus €150, so €1,250. The oil-abandonment rule is worth €1,000 to him on this job, and only until the end of 2027. The credit reaches its €3,500 ceiling once the qualifying labour passes about €5,800; above that, the rate stops mattering and the cap takes over.

He claims it himself: the company’s business ID, the labour figure, and the order date go into MyTax, and the credit lands as lower tax rather than a smaller invoice.

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Related guides

• What a plumber should cost in Finland: how the deduction applies to a plumber’s labour, with Helsinki and regional rates.
• ROT-avdrag: the Swedish version: the same idea across the border, with the key difference that Sweden applies it at the invoice.
• Repair or replace: the maths that decides: where the credit-reduced labour cost fits into the annual-cost comparison.
• What a boiler replacement costs: the heating decision the oil-abandonment credit sits underneath.

Glossary terms used in this guide

• Glossary: Mandate: the budget ceiling you set before the work, with the labour line stated.
• Glossary: Corrective maintenance: the kind of work the credit most often pays toward.