{"id":419,"date":"2016-07-04T12:55:06","date_gmt":"2016-07-04T09:55:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eero.storijapan.net\/log\/?p=419"},"modified":"2022-10-03T10:05:24","modified_gmt":"2022-10-03T07:05:24","slug":"20160704-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eero.storijapan.net\/docfolio\/20160704-2\/","title":{"rendered":"20160704"},"content":{"rendered":"

I became a\u00a0sole trader in 2011 when\u00a0I was working regularly\u00a0for Outi Heiskanen. She didn’t want to be\u00a0defined as “an employer” in her tax reports (which is very costly in Finland) and at the time becoming an entrepreneur\u00a0felt like fun idea… I was active in building exhibitions for various parties and involved in serious art transportation ventures. We even talked about\u00a0buying a van with a friend. Becoming an entrepreneur was a serious joke. The status has enabled me to discuss\u00a0economics more convincingly. As an entrepreneur\u00a0I’m a subject in\u00a0economics and my\u00a0critique of capitalism is more founded and\u00a0more personal. Becoming an\u00a0entrepreneur was an accelerationist effort,\u00a0which culminated my involvement with\u00a0Ore.e Refineries<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sending bills is still fun but every year I regret not setting up a co-operative instead. Today my grief\u00a0is related to\u00a0sole trader taxation regulations when billing cities\u00a0and municipalities.<\/p>\n

As a sole trader I’m responsible for organizing my own pension. If earn more than 8000\u20ac a year as an entrepreneur, I’m legally obligated to join a pension trust and to pay around 100\u20ac a month in pension insurance premiums. The minimum “YEL-insurance” I’d have to pay a year is 1200\u20ac, which is too much for me (and many other sole traders working in the culture sector). This is why I don’t send more than 8000\u20ac worth of bills a year. There are various very simple and legal tricks to do this. During the fall I negotiate that I can send my bill the next year and for bigger gigs I setup an temporary employer statuses with the organizations that hire me. For the past four years I’ve only send out bills for small 200-400\u20ac odd jobs.<\/p>\n

As a result I haven’t payed any\u00a0pension fees. This is not because I wouldn’t want to… It’s just too expensive and as a part of my income comes from artist grants I dream that I’ll personally get an artist pension for myself (If I manage to survive as an artist for the next 33\u00a0years).<\/p>\n

The government needs new forms of income, so that it can\u00a0afford\u00a0for the baby boom generation’s pensions. There are various\u00a0aggressive\u00a0schemes at\u00a0work which skim funds for pensions from every possible monetary\u00a0transaction. Legislation for small scale business is quite unfair. “By law, entrepreneurs under the age of 53 are required to pay 23.7 percent of their earnings in pension insurance, while salaried workers contribute just over five percent.” YLE explains in a 2015 article<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I wrote about the Record Singers group for an Artsi-museum related book. The writing fee was decent\u00a0but as the museum is run by the municipality there is a cunning scheme\u00a0in legislation, which the government will use to\u00a0deduct a “pension” from my writer’s fee (More on the scheme\u00a0in Finnish<\/a>). This is saddening. I made the text almost for free. I don’t regret making it.\u00a0I did\u00a0a good job.<\/p>\n

I’m not bitter about anything but I think that the baby boomers generation should have spend their salaries more smartly. Additional funds for pensions should be harvested by disallowing (and re-distributing) pensions that are over 2 800\u20ac\/month (Statistics on pensions in Finland found here)<\/a>. I hate the feeling that a\u00a0petitioner makes more\u00a0money than I do and\u00a0that young forced-entrepreneurs are paying for their\u00a0second cars, their trips to Thailand and the renovation of their summer houses (which remain empty most of the year\u00a0and none from\u00a0my generation will be able to visit as\u00a0we can’t afford the gas money).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I became a\u00a0sole trader in 2011 when\u00a0I was working regularly\u00a0for Outi Heiskanen. She didn’t want to be\u00a0defined as “an employer” in her tax reports (which is very costly in Finland) and at the time becoming an entrepreneur\u00a0felt like fun idea… I was active in building exhibitions for various parties and involved in serious art transportation … <\/p>\n

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