Kahon 3, which is headquartered in Kalasatama, Helsinki, was the largest corporate tax payer in Finland in 2016. Owned by Softbank, the holding company paid almost 700 million euros in corporate taxes on the proceeds of the sale of a majority stake in Supercell to Tencent.
Supercell has become a substantial source of tax income for Finland, according to the annual trove of tax data released by the Finnish Tax Administration on Wednesday.
The data indicate that the largest corporate tax payer in Finland in 2016 was Kahon 3, a holding company established by Softbank to carry out the sale of a majority stake in Supercell to Tencent in mid-2016 for roughly 7.6 billion euros.
Kahon 3 paid almost 700 million euros in corporate taxes on the sale proceeds in Finland.
Supercell itself, meanwhile, was the second largest corporate tax payer with a total tax bill of 181 million euros. The massively successful game studio also produced seven of the ten largest income tax payers in the country, who paid over 123,500,000 euros in income taxes and other contributions in 2016.
Supercell thus generated almost one billion euros in tax revenues for Finland, provided that no appeals are filed against the tax decision for Kahon 3.
Its tax contributions have already prompted experts to describe it as the long-awaited new Nokia.
“At this point, Supercell is our new Nokia,” Teemu Lehtinen, the chairperson of the Taxpayers’ Association of Finland (TAF), stated in an interview on YLE Areena on Wednesday.
Lehtinen drew attention to the one-off nature of the corporate tax payments of Kahon 3, but also expressed his confidence that revenues from the corporate tax will continue to increase in the years to come due to the decision to lower the corporate tax rate from 24.5 to 20 per cent in 2014.
A reasonable corporate tax rate, he viewed, will ultimately generate higher revenues for Finland. He also reminded that a number of countries around the world are about to lower their corporate tax rates closer to 20 per cent, possibly forcing Finland to reduce its tax rate further – to 18 per cent, for example.
“It’s likely that it’ll have to be lowered at least a bit more before long,” he told YLE.
Aleksi Teivainen – HT Photo: Roni Rekomaa – Lehtikuva Source: Uusi Suomi
