Kim Väisänen pays 4.6 million euros in tax on 12.3 million

Investor and entrepreneur Kim Väisänen earned 12.3 million euros last year and paid 4.6 million euros in tax, Yle reports. He was among Finland’s highest earners for the third time.

Most of the income came from shares in Framery, a start-up that makes soundproof workspaces. Väisänen sold just under a third of his shares last year when the company was listed on the Helsinki stock exchange. He says he still owns more than two-thirds of them.

Väisänen says he is not a happy taxpayer, but he is not planning to leave Finland because of taxes. “A better reason to leave would be the November weather,” he said, recalling a rainy, windy bicycle ride that morning.

He does not support raising taxes and argues that higher taxes on work could reduce economic activity. He would rather see taxes imposed on things other than income from work, though he does not consider Finland’s tax burden too high in his own case.

Väisänen is comfortable with his income being public. He says reporting on the low incomes of celebrities is not socially significant, but publishing information about the highest earners can help prevent corruption. He also pointed to past bonuses and stock options at Fortum, a company, saying they might not otherwise have come to light.

Väisänen’s wealth began with Blancco, a company specialising in deleting digital data from computer hard drives. He sold it in 2014. He invested in Framery more than a decade ago and spent several years as its board chair.

He grew up in a working-class family in Outokumpu, near Joensuu. Large payouts from company sales or listings, he said, follow demanding work and bring their own pressures. “Great power brings great responsibility,” he said, citing Spider-Man.