Investing from Finland: osakesäästötili and AOT

• Capital income: 30% up to EUR 30,000, 34% on the part above that.
• OST: deposits of up to EUR 100,000, in cash only. You buy and sell shares inside without tax on individual sales; tax falls due only on withdrawal, when the provider withholds 30% of the return portion. One account per person, shares only.
• AOT: every sale counts for tax. Sales of at most EUR 1,000 a year stay tax-free; losses can be carried forward for five years.
• Dividends from listed companies: 85% taxable, 15% tax-free; Finnish companies withhold 25.5% in advance.
• Foreign broker: you report gains and losses yourself in the pre-filled tax return.
• Investor protection depends on the provider: the Finnish fund pays 9/10 of the claim, up to EUR 20,000. Nordnet refers its Finnish clients to the Swedish scheme of up to SEK 250,000.

Shares on an AOT fall under the general rules for capital income. According to Vero, these usually apply whether the shares are in a Finnish or a foreign company and whether the trade goes through a domestic or a foreign book-entry account.

• Rate: 30% on capital income up to EUR 30,000, 34% on the part above that (Vero page dated 26 March 2026).
• Deemed acquisition cost (hankintameno-olettama): 20% of the sale price if you held the shares for less than 10 years, 40% if you held them for 10 years or more.
• Small sales: if all your sales in a calendar year add up to no more than EUR 1,000, the gains are tax-free. Every sale in the year counts towards this limit, not just share sales; tax-free sales do not count. Conversely, losses are not deductible at all if the purchase prices of the shares sold in the year totalled no more than EUR 1,000.
• Losses: they are deducted from capital income. Whatever is not used up in one year carries forward to the following five years.
• Order of sales: the FIFO rule (first bought, first sold) applies to each book-entry account separately.

Dividends

Of the dividends from listed companies, 85% is taxable capital income and 15% is tax-free (page dated 1 January 2026). A Finnish listed company withholds 25.5% before paying the dividend. On a dividend of EUR 1,000, then, EUR 850 is taxable and EUR 255 is withheld; at a 30% rate that is exactly the tax on the taxable part (30% × EUR 850 = EUR 255).

Dividends from other EU and EEA countries, and from countries with a treaty covering dividend taxation, are taxed like Finnish ones. Finland withholds nothing in advance on dividends from foreign companies; the source country may levy withholding tax, depending on the treaty. For US dividends, the treaty between the United States and Finland limits it to 15% (Art. 10(2)(b)); 5% applies only to companies with at least 10% of the voting stock.

The OST is an account in which you buy and sell shares without each sale being taxed. The rules according to Vero (page dated 1 January 2026) and the providers:

• Deposits: at most EUR 100,000, and only in cash. Shares you already own cannot be transferred into an OST.
• Taxation: inside the account, individual sales of listed shares are not taxed. Taxable income arises, Nordnet says, only when you withdraw money or close the account. The provider then calculates the return portion of the withdrawal and withholds 30% of it as advance tax.
• No special reliefs: the 15% tax-free share of dividends does not apply inside an OST; all returns, dividends included, are taxable. Nor can you use the deemed acquisition cost on sales inside the OST.
• Losses: you can deduct a loss only in the year you close the OST.
• One account: you may hold only one OST at a time. Anyone holding several pays a tax surcharge of normally EUR 10 per day per account.
• Changing provider: the balance can be moved directly to another bank, without selling and without tax.
• Shares only: according to Nordnet, foreign shares and shares on the First North markets are eligible, but funds, ETFs and other exchange-traded products are not. Danske Bank likewise states that ETFs cannot be traded in an OST.
• Foreign withholding tax: Nordnet states that withholding tax, for example on US dividends, is not credited inside an OST.

On an AOT, according to Nordnet, you trade shares and exchange-traded products such as warrants, options and Nordnet Markets products, and you save in funds and ETFs. Funds and ETFs, which the OST does not allow, are therefore held here.

If you trade through a foreign broker, which Vero calls an etävälittäjä (a remote broker), you must report the gains and losses from those sales yourself in the pre-filled tax return.

Transfer tax: shares in a company are in principle subject to varainsiirtovero, a transfer tax of 1.5% of the price. If you buy shares on a stock exchange, you usually need neither pay the tax nor file a return. If you buy publicly traded shares of a Finnish company through a foreign remote broker and are generally liable to tax in Finland, the exemption applies only on one condition: either the broker reports the trade to Vero in an annual return, or you file a transfer-tax return yourself within two months.

Nominee registration (hallintarekisteri): under nominee registration, the public register shows not the investor but a bank or custodian, which keeps the owner records itself. Nordnet states in an undated educational article that domestic private investors in Finland cannot hold Finnish listed shares in nominee-registered form, whereas foreign investors can. We could not retrieve an official confirmation of the current legal position.

• Supervision: Finanssivalvonta (FIN-FSA in English) supervises, among other things, that supervised firms act appropriately and inform their clients well.
• Sijoittajien korvausrahasto: the Finnish compensation fund pays 9/10 of your claim against a provider, up to EUR 20,000 per investor and provider. It protects non-professional clients; its members are Finnish investment service providers, among them OP, Nordea Bank Oyj, S-Pankki, Aktia and Evli.
• Nordnet: according to its Finnish page, the securities it holds for Finnish clients fall under the Swedish investor protection law (1999:158), up to SEK 250,000, if Nordnet Bank AB goes bankrupt and cannot return them. The client files the claim with the Swedish Riksgälden within one year of the bankruptcy decision.
• Danske Bank: the OST in Finland is offered by Danske Bank A/S, Suomen sivuliike, the Finnish branch of a Danish bank. It is not on the Finnish fund's member list; which scheme applies we have not documented.

Protection therefore depends on where the provider is based, not on the fact that you live in Finland.

• [Nordnet](/en/brokers/nordnet): offers an OST with deposits of up to EUR 100,000, according to its Finnish website, in Finnish and Swedish, and the AOT alongside it.
• Lightyear: whether Lightyear offers an OST in Finland we could not document; the Finnish page did not exist.
• Other providers in our comparison, such as Trade Republic, LYNX, Saxo, DEGIRO and Interactive Brokers: we have not checked them for an OST.
• Finnish banks we do not compare: Danske Bank offers an OST according to its own page (one per person, up to EUR 100,000, no ETFs). OP, Nordea, S-Pankki, Aktia and Evli are members of the compensation fund; we have not documented their OST offers.

The directory filtered for Finland shows which brokers in our comparison accept customers resident in Finland; for share investors there is the share ranking for Finland. Supervision, investor protection and tax-advantaged accounts at a glance are on the Finland market page. How the Swedish investor protection scheme works is described in our guide for Sweden.

• Whether Nordnet reports sales on the AOT to Vero. Our dataset lists Nordnet as reporting tax in Finland; its OST and AOT pages say nothing about it.
• How the return portion of an OST withdrawal is calculated in detail.
• The OST offers of OP, Nordea, S-Pankki, Aktia, Evli, Lightyear and the other providers in our comparison.
• Which protection scheme applies at Danske Bank in Finland.
• The current legal position on nominee registration for domestic investors.
• Which foreign brokers file the annual transfer-tax return with Vero.

1. 1Check whether you want to hold ETFs or funds: the OST does not allow them, so you need the AOT.
2. 2If you hold US shares in an OST, Nordnet says the US withholding tax is not credited.
3. 3Bear in mind that losses inside an OST only count when you close it.
4. 4With a foreign broker, enter gains and losses yourself, and for Finnish shares find out whether the broker files the annual transfer-tax return.
5. 5Ask your provider which protection scheme covers your account.

• Vero, Osakkeiden myynti (dated 26 March 2026)
• Vero, Osakesäästötili (dated 1 January 2026)
• Vero, Listatusta yhtiöstä saadut osingot and Ulkomailta saadut osingot
• Vero, Varainsiirtovero: liikeosakkeet
• Sijoittajien korvausrahasto, Korvaukset and Jäsenet
• Finanssivalvonta, Finanssivalvonnan rooli kuluttajansuojassa
• IRS, US–Finland convention
• Nordnet, Osakesäästötili, Arvo-osuustili and Mikä on hallintarekisteri?
• Danske Bank, Osakesäästötili

This article is for information only and does not constitute investment, legal or tax advice.