Published on 30 March 2026
SECOND SECTION
Application no. 14654/25
Tuija Kaarina SCHMIDT
against Finland
lodged on 14 May 2025
communicated on 10 March 2026
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application concerns the publication of tax information on the applicant – including her name, year of birth, place of residence, the amount of taxable income and the amount of tax – in so-called tax machines.
In Finland, private media companies run internet services where data on about 150,000 persons’ taxable income and assets is published in so-called tax machines each year, which covers about 6.5 percent of all persons subject to income tax in Finland. The data published includes their name, year of birth, place of residence, the amount of taxable income and/or capital income and the amount of tax payable. The Tax Administration transmits the data en masse to the media every year and they are published in tax machines practically as such.
The tax information on the applicant was published in the tax machines of the newspapers Helsingin Sanomat and Ilta-Sanomat. The applicant is not a person known to the public, nor is she in a significant public position in the society. She is not a politician, and her work in a limited liability company is not associated with any public interest. Due to her uncommon last name, she is easily identifiable in a permanent manner.
The applicant asked in 2019 that the Tax Administration does not transmit her tax information to the media and the Tax Administration agreed to do so. Nevertheless, the newspapers had manually added the applicant’s tax information to their tax machines. The applicant asked the newspapers to withdraw the information on her from the tax machines but the newspapers refused to do so. She then brought the issue to the attention of the Data Protection Ombudsman who on 27 October 2021 held that data processing had been only for journalistic purposes and that the right of opposition was not applicable. On 14 December 2023 the Administrative Court rejected the applicant’s appeal, mainly on the same grounds as the Data Protection Ombudsman. On 3 February 2025 the Supreme Administrative Court granted the applicant leave to appeal and rejected her appeal. It held, inter alia, that the data published in the tax machines concerned persons with a high annual income (150,000 euros of taxable income per person for Helsingin Sanomat and 100,000 euros of taxable income per person for Ilta-Sanomat), the publication of the data had a journalistic purpose and the data was not as such sensitive.
The applicant complains under Article 8 of the Convention that her right to respect for her private life was interfered with by the media publishing tax information en masse, and this interference was not necessary in a democratic society, in particular not proportionate. She argues that tax information is available even without the tax machines since anybody can access public tax information by contacting directly the Tax Administration. The decisions by the domestic courts are not in compliance with the previous case-law.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
Has there been an interference with the applicant’s right to respect for her private life, within the meaning of Article 8 § 1 of the Convention? If so, was that interference in accordance with the law and necessary in terms of Article 8 § 2 (see L.B. v. Hungary [GC], no. 36345/16, §§ 102-28, 9 March 2023; and, mutatis mutandis, Satakunnan Markkinapörssi Oy and Satamedia Oy v. Finland [GC], no. 931/13, §§ 120-66, 27 June 2017)?