Talk:Day-fine

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The day fine page was edited because of some new changes in the law by parlaiment on 20 June 2007, and also based on information discussed in the law change proposal. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.100.116.143 (talk • contribs)

[edit] POV

The article has been written by someone who has a very strong bias against the use of day-fines in Finland. At present, the article does not represent neutral viewpoint. --MPorciusCato 16:50, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Agreed, it appears that Sirkuspelle or a follower found that the article had been started and pasted his own POV 'undiluted' right onto the page. I'd recommend removing it, because it's hard to edit text that has been written into newspaper/editorial format. Obviously opinions of opposing day-fines would be mentioned in the text that will replace it. --Vuo 21:03, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
I agree. Of course, there is some discussion about putting an upper limit for a day-fine but no serious opposition to the system per se, not even among the National Coalition. The idea about the day-fine system treating aliens and inhabitants inequally is nonsense. The aliens do not have the right not to tell their income when they are fined. They may be compelled to do this by a court order under the pain of imprisonment. If they lie, they commit a crime which may even merit incarceration. --MPorciusCato 06:43, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I have now totally rewritten the Finland section, with plenty of references. I omitted to whole criticism section, as it did not cite any references. The debate on the day-fine system is not important enough to merit half of the article to be used for it. I did, though, put a referenced mention about the day-fine system debate into Finland section. --MPorciusCato 08:23, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Very nice clean-up. It is very unbiased. You spent a lot of time on that. Some of the items referred to however, such as the Finnish Penal Code, are available in English, and it would be more useful from an English language article.

I do admit to being extremely biased against the day fine system, and it is necessary to have a non-biased author. When I think something is blatantly wrong, I find I must speak out against it. I think it is an utterly horrible thing that the Finnish government has the police going around making people tell them how much money they make, something unheard of in the civilized world. The police imprisoning someone who does not tell their salary would be quite interesting indeed. I know some international Human Rights lawyers who would really enjoy handling a case like that. Also, when someone tells the police their salary, that information then becomes public domain, at least if it ends up in court, doesn't it? So essentially, the Finnish government is forcing people to make their private affairs public, which is covered under the list of basic human rights, over a petty violation. In the recent, famous boating accident case, it seems to be the case. The police also have no way of ascertaining that a foreigner or resident of a foreign country is lying or not, since in other countries, that information is strictly treated as private, more or less universally like what is seen in the OECD Taxpayer's Rights and Obligations. https://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/24/52/17851176.pdf In that way, the current day fine system in Finland, is, and always will be, inherently nationally discriminatory, something that the Finnish and EU legislation make no provision for. This is especially true in the case of violations caught on traffic cameras, where the policeman is not there to make the person tell what their income is. "I don't know" was a common answer used by Finnish people before the police got their SMS-tax records database that they currently use.

I also think that the Finnish government has starting to see the pitfalls of having such an intrusive, privacy-invading method of fining people and has starting working on new legislation to replace it. Hopefully it will be replaced sooner rather than later. http://www.om.fi/Etusivu/Ajankohtaista/Tiedotteet/1172045543109 http://www.om.fi/1172045422830

I also told one person I know in the European Comission about the recent boating accident case where a non-resident citizen was fined according to his income in the country where he resides, and that his reported income information was then made public, and received a reply that they are now going to start investigating the Finnish day fine system and how it fits into community law. I look forward to hearing the outcome. 192.100.116.143 11:30, 4 October 2007 (UTC)


"The idea about the day-fine system treating aliens and inhabitants inequally is nonsense. The aliens do not have the right not to tell their income when they are fined."

It is only nonsense if you are willing to ignore European Community law. The commenter above is right in stating that non-residents' income will never be made available by their home countries or any other sources; nearly every country in the world has strict data privacy laws. Therefore the system is both impossible and impractical to enforce in a non-descriminatory way. I predict that Finland will need to answer to both, the European Court of Human Rights and European Court of Justice. In my opinion, the system clearly violates people's privacy rights and doesn't belong in modern society. If Finland wants to be part of the international community, then it should adhere to agreements it signs.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.179.234.112 (talk • contribs)
In fact, I would like to point out that a person can be compelled to give information to the police. This happens through a court order, if the police wishes. Basically, the police takes the question to the prosecutor who then summons the person in question to the court to give information. If the person will not give information, the person may be imprisoned for a period of six months or until he gives the information. ("I don't remember", is "giving information" so dropping into this pitfall is not easy.) If the person persists after six months' imprisonment, he will be convicted of the contempt of court. (I have not heard this happening in practice for several decades but it is on the books.) In practice, the foreigner's income is approximated by the police and the prosecutor on the basis of the information he gives. Lying is a crime. Of course, the chances of getting caught are small, but still, your argument is essentially: "It is possible for a foreigner to commit a crime, while a citizen cannot do this without getting caught." However, this does not make the legislation itself discriminatory.
I think that giving the information about your income to the tax office is quite usual. It happens everywhere, where income tax is used. The OECD paper you referred is a recommendation by an advisory committee of an international body. It is by no means binding the Finnish parliament. The use of government information by another governmental body is hardly a violation of your privacy, so I cannot see any problem with the police using tax information. The Ministry of Justice documents you refer to do not talk about scrapping the day-fine system. On the contrary, they recommed that the police be given the right to order up to 20 day-fines without prosecutorial overview, something that the Ombudsman of Parliament is strictly against.
The question whether the publicity of tax information in Finland is against the Union law, remains to be settled. At the moment, no proceedings are active against Finland on this matter. The current government view is seen in the Government proposal 149/1999 which discusses the problems between the privacy given by the directive 95/46/EC and the principle of the publicity of the tax information. The idea is simple: the directive protects the database. It is not public. However, a single entry into the database is public, so anyone who is interested may go and access the tax information of any person. The fact that some people sell tax data by SMS is due to a loophole in the directive. This can be seen in the Verdict 05/0839/2 by the Administrative Court of Helsinki. Here, the seller of the data first collects manually the tax information, then publishes the information in paper format, with some editorial content. The data aquisition phase is simply accessing public data, so it's legal. The second phase is data handling, but it is allowed by the directive for editorial purposes. Afterwards, the published information is sold by SMS, so they are not selling data but taking excerpts of already-published "journalistic content". So, it's (unfortunately) legal and there is no Union-level litigation going on against it. So, although I sympatize with you, I would like to see solid references about this discussion before putting it into the article. --MPorciusCato 13:39, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I wonder, what's the point of intimidating people with the threat of prison into telling their income to police in order to be fined, thus putting their private personal data in danger of becoming public in a Finnish open court hearing, when Finland has signed numerous tax treaties with various countries in order to be able to exchange this information in a legitimate, official manner?

The above mentioned legislation makes pretty much all petty crimes punishable by "rikesakko" (fixed fine). It makes most crimes that can be fined by day fine, or fined by both day fine and fixed fine, mostly or all punishable by fixed fines. Also the perpetrator needs to give his or her consent to being fined. I don't think you carefully read the 200 or so page law proposal PDF document, MPorciusCato. 192.100.116.143 08:58, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

The committee proposal for the legislation does not change the crimes that are punished with a fixed fine. (e.g. p. 39 of the proposal). The change that is made is that these crimes are no longer punishable by day-fine. This means that if you take the matter into the court, you will get a fixed fine if you lose. Now, if you contest your guilt in a fixed fine case, you'll get a day-fine if you lose. (This is clearly a problem.) The perpetrator must give his/her consent to be fined in a summary proceeding. If the consent is not given, the case goes to court. The crimes that fall into this category of fixed fines are:
  • traffic crimes committed by a pedestrian or by a driver of a motorless vehicle
  • crimes concerning motor vehicles without valid documents
  • minor crimes concerning motor vehicles with construction deficiences or lacking inspection
  • crimes concerning unuse of personal safety features (e.g. seatbelts) in a motor vehicle
  • exceeding the speed limit by less than 20 km/h with a motor vehicle (if not in pedestrian zone)
  • driving against yellow light of the traffic lights
  • using mobile phone during driving
  • about a dozen other minor crimes that can be committed by a motorist, presently punished by day-fine according to the fine handbook
  • similar crimes in water traffic
  • fishing without valid fishing permit
  • crimes against the Järjestyslaki (Public Order Act), not including carrying arms or dangerous objects.
  • minor littering
Although this list seems long, it does not change the present situation. These crimes are already punished using the fixed fine. However, this list does not include "most" crimes punishable by fine. At least 250 valid Finnish acts include a definition of a crime that can be punished with fine. (Try searching Finlex-database with word "sakkoon". The word is only used in formula "-- on tuomittava (add the name of the crime) sakkoon.) The list of the crimes includes only the most usual crimes. --MPorciusCato 09:45, 8 October 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Not only in Finland

The article discusses the issue almost as if it only existed in Finland; it just mentions that a similar system is in use in at least three other countries. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.27.70.16 (talk) 10:06, 13 February 2008 (UTC)