Main daily Helsingin Sanomat (HS) reports that Vero, the Finnish Tax Administration, sent the wrong tax information to 60,000 people in Finland on Tuesday.
Many of the notices sent out contained other customer’s personal information including their social security numbers, according to Jarkko Levasma, chief development and information officer at the Finnish Tax Administration.
“On August 6 we sent out about 60,000 letters. At this point we need to assume that they all contain mistakes,” Levasma told HS.
Levasma said that tens of people have contacted the Tax Administration regarding the matter. He told HS that while the majority of the letters sent out related to personal tax matters, there may be some businesses ones in the mix as well.
HS writes that Levasma said it's not known how the error originated: “We’re looking into the matter and for the time being have halted sending letters. We ask those who have received the incorrect information to destroy the letters they received.”
The politics of teaching
“Being an MP was easier than teaching,” according to former MP Tuula Peltonen in an Iltalehti tabloid lead story on her return to being a teacher -- a career that she is now considering leaving.
Peltonen was an MP from 2007 to 2015 for the Social Democratic Party, and said that when she returned to teaching two years ago, she quickly realised that “things had changed, and not in a good way."
Iltalehti writes that Peltonen, who works as a special needs education teacher in Jämsä, noticed that municipalities were trying to cut back on everything, including special needs.
When Peltonen was an MP, she supported the idea that special needs students should attend regular classes at a local school, be provided with support, and that there should a limited number of special needs students in one classroom.
“Municipalities discovered that savings could be made without hiring special needs teachers and leaving the work to the class teacher,” says Peltonen, who told the newspaper that although she hasn’t made a decision yet, she’s considering a career change.
Downpour on the way
Ilta-Sanomat, the sister tabloid of Helsingin Sanomat, reports that the Finnish Meteorological Institute has issued a heavy rainfall warning for Friday, with some parts of the country set to receive 20 millimetres of rain per hour.
Southwestern parts of Finland will be hit by rain and thunderstorms, which may spread to other parts of the country. The Finnish Meteorological Institute has also issued heavy rainfall warnings for the Uusimaa, Satakunta, Kanta-Häme and Pirkanmaa regions.
On Thursday, in Pori on Finland's west coast, it rained 34.7 millimetres per hour, causing flooding of streets and basements.