Finnair Plus - Taxation of Finnair Plus points in Finland

Finnish media has recently covered a court case between the Finnish tax authorities and an unnamed Finnish company. The case is about employees of the company getting frequent flyer miles from work trips and using them for private holiday flights. Finnair Plus was the only frequent flyer program mentioned by name in the investigation.

The court documents of the case are here (in Finnish, sorry):
http://www.scribd.com/doc/21114393/09-0842-6

The claims of the company made perfect sense to me. Nevertheless, they lost the court case and were ordered to pay extra taxes.

Interestingly, the document also show that Finnish tax authorities were able to get the miles balances of individual employees from a foreign airline as well. The airline is not named.

I do not know which company was targeted in this investigation.

Another sad story about true Finnish jealousness. Of course, nowadays it is quite easy to use all the hard earned business trip AY points for AY upgrades (and booking the cheapest Y tickets for work travel) just by answering "U" to the SMS. Champange flows as ever before and veins on foreheads of the poor Finnish tax officers keep on throbbing :D !

I think, the officers can inspect the travel related documentation inside the company in question. They can not get listings from the airline. In most cases, the air tickets (or their PDF-copies) contain information about the FF-programs the points were conveyed to. In some companies, it is also a policy that the "department secretary" must be given the rights to monitor the FF-accounts of the employees.

Perhaps it would work that never give out any FF-numbers to the employer and the preferred travel agent, but still have your own private AY-account. And collect the points by displaying the card just when checking in to the flight. Then claim loudly, convincing everyone, that I do not care at all of such rubbish as airmiles...

Sounds like another reason to use a non-European airline's program?

It's truly pitiful that in this country our tax officials cannot figure anything more productive to do with their time...