Finance Minister Riikka Purra (Finns) wants higher taxes on products that are harmful to health.
"Health taxes or sugar taxes could play a role, along with taxation of nicotine products and alcohol," Purra said at an event hosted by the Taxpayers' Association on Wednesday.
"It is clear that in the future the tax burden on electric car drivers will rise from the current level," she said.
According to Purra, taxation of work is heavy in Finland and particularly the upper marginal tax rates are high. Therefore labour taxes should not be raised, she argued.
"It doesn't make sense to tax what you want more of," the Finns Party leader said.
However, Purra said that electric vehicles should be taxed more rather than those that run on petrol and diesel.
"Electric-powered public transport is not available in every region, which is always good to keep in mind in Helsinki," Purra said.
There has been speculation about raising the value added tax level on food, but the finance minister did not express support for the idea in her speech.
She did say that the government would seek to impose new health taxes, though.
"Trans fats, salt and sugar are used excessively, [and they are] comparable to alcohol and tobacco," Purra declared, adding that "we can promote health with a new kind of tax policy."
Real estate tax re-jig on the way
Purra noted that the government programme adopted last summer calls for reform of real estate taxation.
"The current real estate taxation cannot be said to be based on the current values of real estate and buildings," Purra stated. "The taxable value is now determined quite incompletely and in some cases even arbitrarily," she said.
The goal of the reform is not to collect more revenue for the state, but to achieve a fairer distribution of the tax burden, Purra said.
Finland back in the AAA club?
"As you know, our financial situation is not particularly flattering. The government's deficit for the current year alone is likely to be more than 12 billion euros. As for the public finances as a whole, our debt ratio is approaching 80 percent of GDP. Our public finance deficit is well over three percent," Purra said.
She said that the government's goal is to restore Finland's credit rating to the AAA level, up from the current, second-best AA+ level, adding that credit ratings are important in terms of the availability of financing and the cost-effectiveness of borrowing.
Users with an Yle ID can leave comments on our news stories. You can create your Yle ID via this link. Our guidelines on commenting and moderation are explained here.