{
  "title": "Cut the Taxes: Finland the Hardest Taxer | Elias Erämaja | Neuvottelija 195",
  "titleOriginal": "Verot alas Suomi kovin verottaja | Elias Erämaja | Neuvottelija 195",
  "episodeNumber": "195",
  "guest": "Elias Erämaja",
  "publishedAt": "2023-06-09",
  "duration": "36:13",
  "durationIso": "PT36M13S",
  "youtube": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCdrb_0PBx4",
  "fiCanonical": "https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/287-verot-alas-suomi-kovin-verottaja-elias-eramaja-neuvottelija",
  "originalLanguage": "fi",
  "format": "full",
  "topics": [
    "finnish_economy_policy",
    "ownership_capital_tax"
  ],
  "description": "Elias Erämaja, chief economist of Suomen Ekonomit, works through Finland's marginal tax rates with Sami Miettinen in the final week of the 2023 government formation talks. The figure that carries the episode is not the near-60 per cent top rate but the income at which it bites: roughly 1.8 times the average wage, against countries where the equivalent level only arrives at 30 times. Members' median pay is 5,400 euros a month and lower in real terms than ten years ago. Erämaja's strongest argument answers the standard objection that labour supply is rigid: the damage does not appear in the employment rate, because nobody emigrates over a tax rate, but in a specialist declining line management when 60 per cent of the raise is taken — a misallocation of talent that microsimulations do not capture. The solidarity tax gets an exact timeline: temporary in 2013, meant to expire in 2015, threshold 100,000 euros then, as low as about 72,800 under Sipilä, 85,800 this year, and around 120,000 if the original intent were preserved against inflation. Sweden's social-democrat-led abolition of its own solidarity tax was estimated to finance between 58 and over 180 per cent of itself. On the government programme he asks for lighter progression on the Swedish model, work-based immigration of about 45,000 net against a long-run 15,000, and productivity. The closing section is the quietest and sharpest: purchasing power fell last year as much as in the 1977 oil crisis and stood at its 2008 level by the first quarter, while index adjustments to the tax schedules of 3.0 and 3.5 per cent against inflation of 7.1 and about 5 per cent tightened taxation without anyone deciding to. The episode was made in commercial collaboration with Suomen Ekonomit ry.",
  "chapters": [
    {
      "t": "00:00",
      "title": "Elias Erämaja, chief economist of Suomen Ekonomit ry",
      "seconds": 0
    },
    {
      "t": "00:40",
      "title": "Moving between employee and employer unions is common — Elias's career",
      "seconds": 40
    },
    {
      "t": "01:10",
      "title": "Suomen Ekonomit close to economists' thinking, serving graduates of Aalto, Hanken and the social sciences",
      "seconds": 70
    },
    {
      "t": "03:10",
      "title": "Members' median pay has fallen in real terms back to a decade ago",
      "seconds": 190
    },
    {
      "t": "03:57",
      "title": "Finland's very high marginal rates near 60% are among the world's heaviest",
      "seconds": 237
    },
    {
      "t": "05:40",
      "title": "Even middle earners are over-taxed in Finland, above 50% marginal. Sweden has cut taxes a great deal",
      "seconds": 340
    },
    {
      "t": "06:40",
      "title": "Are Finnish wages low both net and gross because of taxes on work?",
      "seconds": 400
    },
    {
      "t": "08:54",
      "title": "Nalle Wahlroos's thought experiment — tax leisure instead",
      "seconds": 534
    },
    {
      "t": "09:57",
      "title": "The 2013 “temporary” solidarity tax should end in 2023",
      "seconds": 597
    },
    {
      "t": "11:47",
      "title": "Finland's high taxation against Sweden and the EU's key competitor countries",
      "seconds": 707
    },
    {
      "t": "14:20",
      "title": "The Laffer curve in Finland — an underrated piece of economic theory?",
      "seconds": 860
    },
    {
      "t": "16:30",
      "title": "The irrationality of the tax debate",
      "seconds": 990
    },
    {
      "t": "18:50",
      "title": "Flat-taxed Estonians on high incomes are repelled by Finland's taxation",
      "seconds": 1130
    },
    {
      "t": "21:40",
      "title": "The effect of the wellbeing services counties on taxation",
      "seconds": 1300
    },
    {
      "t": "24:00",
      "title": "Three wishes for the government programme — moderate taxes, work-based immigration and productivity",
      "seconds": 1440
    },
    {
      "t": "28:00",
      "title": "Fix productivity",
      "seconds": 1680
    },
    {
      "t": "29:50",
      "title": "The loss of purchasing power, for worse and for better — fifteen years",
      "seconds": 1790
    },
    {
      "t": "33:34",
      "title": "Index adjustments below inflation as a tightening of taxation",
      "seconds": 2014
    },
    {
      "t": "34:15",
      "title": "Problems with the finance ministry's forecast",
      "seconds": 2055
    },
    {
      "t": "35:05",
      "title": "Summary and outro",
      "seconds": 2105
    }
  ],
  "sourceTranscriptType": "macwhisper_srt",
  "subtitleMethod": "none",
  "provenance": "Owner page assembled from YouTube metadata, the neuvottelija.fi episode record and a MacWhisper transcription of the Finnish audio. The chapter marks are the publisher's own list as released with the video, each verified to fall within ten seconds of a real transcript cue and translated into English here. No English caption track was produced, so no transcript is published here. The episode was made in commercial collaboration with Suomen Ekonomit ry, which is stated in the publisher's own show notes and read aloud in the episode, and is carried onto this page and into both AI-edition articles. The transcription contains one gap of about 28.4 seconds at 00:09:49, between the Wahlroos thought experiment and the solidarity tax section; the summary is written only from what the transcript contains and the gap has not been filled by inference. The transcript carries no speaker labels, but with a single guest the speakers are reliably distinguishable.",
  "slug": "ep195-verot-alas-suomi-kovin-verottaja-elias-eramaja",
  "guestsCanonical": [
    "Elias Erämaja"
  ],
  "guestPages": [
    "https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/guests/elias-eramaja/"
  ],
  "page": "https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep195-verot-alas-suomi-kovin-verottaja-elias-eramaja/",
  "markdown": "https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep195-verot-alas-suomi-kovin-verottaja-elias-eramaja/index.md",
  "captions": null,
  "transcript": null,
  "videoId": "ZCdrb_0PBx4",
  "dbId": null,
  "qaCoveragePct": 0.0,
  "qaSemanticVerdict": "transcript_timecoded"
}