Business cost support

Business cost support primarily intended for tourism, restaurant and event companies that have suffered from less restrictive measures. A company whose operations or a significant part of its customer base has been subject to restrictions may also apply for business cost support.

The sixth application round for cost support starts on 26 April at 9.00 and ends on 31 May at 16.15.

The application must be submitted to the State Treasury no later than 31 May  2022 at 4.15 p.m. Please note that this also applies to paper applications, which must be received by the State Treasury on the last application day at 4.15 p.m. A same-day postal stamp is not enough.

The support can be applied for via the State Treasury’s e-services. The e-service guides you in filling in the application. You can also save the application as a draft and continue filling it out later.

You can use the application form to provide all the information needed. In addition, the State Treasury automatically receives information from other authorities, such as the Tax Administration and the Income Register, in order to grant support.

You will receive a case number and a notification in your email upon successful registration. You do not need to contact the State Treasury before or after sending in the application. The State Treasury will request additional information if necessary.

Inquiries do not speed up the processing of the application. The estimated processing time will be updated on the State Treasury’s website.

The amount of the cost support and closure compensation depends on the other expenses during the support period as reported by the company on the application.

Other expenses include the inflexible costs reported by the company in its application, and business costs during the support period.

Inflexible expenses refer to costs that cannot be adjusted in a manner that is equivalent to the volume of operations. The company must therefore bear these costs even if the company has no sales at all, and it is not possible to adjust the inflexible costs accordingly, unlike, for example, expenditure on materials and articles or new investments.

Expenses may also include prepayments made by the company that have proved to be final. Expenses do not include, for example, expenditure on materials and articles, new investments and wage costs that can be reduced.

Examples of inflexible expenses:

• Rental expenses related to the company’s property/premises (such as facility and property rent) and maintenance charges
• Electricity, water, gas,
• Waste management
• Security, facility surveillance or security systems
• Hosting, property maintenance and cleaning
• Property taxes
• Vehicle taxes on means of transport used in business
• Equipment and software rentals (including leasing fees)
• Concessions and license fees
• Long-term marketing contract fees
• Financial management, accounting and auditing
• Group management fee
• Permits and other official fees
• Dues
• Phone subscriptions
• Telecommunication
• Premiums for statutory and other essential insurance policies
• Loan interest on owner-occupied property and fixed assets acquired for business purposes

The necessary temporary agency workers’ expenses can also be reimbursed. These include expenses that correspond to the actions performed by your own staff, which are necessary to maintain business. This also applies to the costs of maintaining the assets used in the business.

Statutory and other necessary insurances are, for example, insurances related to real estate or vehicles used in business. They must be specified in the additional information section of the application, together with the amounts. Pension and health insurance contributions are taken into account on the application, in the section on wage expenses and YEL insurance. They should therefore not be indicated in the application’s expense table.

Costs that are flexible to some extent can also be reimbursed. In this case, compensation may be paid only for an amount which has not been flexible due to reduced volume of activity.

The costs must be final and cover the support period 1 December 2021 -28 February 2022. After the support period, the costs to be read in favour of the applicant, for example as a discount, cannot be reimbursed. The company is obliged to provide information on actual expenditure incurred during the support period even retrospectively in order to adjust the amount of support.

Wage expenses include data on direct wages paid by the company from the Incomes Register. In addition, the employer’s incidental expenses will be accepted as a percentage of wage expenses. The employer’s incidentals include holiday and sick pay and holiday bonus, as well as the costs of social security and occupational health care.

In the case of business name entrepreneurs and company-employed persons, the wage costs are accepted as the wage income established for the self-employed person’s pension insurance. In addition, the YEL insurance contribution and the health insurance contribution are accepted according to the company’s report.

The wages and wage side costs of self-employed persons of limited liability companies can only be accepted according to the data of the Incomes Register. Separate YEL contributions are therefore not accepted.

According to the bill, support will not be granted in the following situations

1. The company has less than 2000 euros of costs for the support period
2. The turnover of the company during the support period has not decreased by more than 25% compared to the turnover of the comparison period
3. The company is a credit or financial institution or its main activity is primary production, fisheries or aquaculture. The Act on Fixed-term Cost Support does not apply to these industries.
4. The company is not registered in the prepayment register
5. The company has failed to file a tax return
6. The company has tax debt information in the tax debt register
7. Recovery proceedings has collected unpaid taxes from the company
8. The company has been declared bankrupt or is the subject of bankruptcy proceedings.
9. The company was in difficulty before the coronavirus pandemic (31 December 2019). See the definition of a company in difficulty. Exception: This does not apply to small and micro enterprises that have been in difficulty before 1.1.2020. They may be granted support if the company is not in bankruptcy or reorganization proceedings at the time the support is granted and has not received rescue or restructuring aid.

Definition of a company in difficulty in the EU Regulation:

A company in difficulty refers to a company in accordance with Article 2(18) of the General Block Exemption Regulation of the EU. According to the definition, a company is in difficulty,

a. if more than half of its share capital has disappeared as a result of accumulated losses (limited liability companies),

b. more than half of its capital as shown in the company accounts has disappeared as a result of accumulated losses (companies where at least some members have unlimited liability for the debt of the company),

c. the company is subject to collective insolvency proceedings,

d. the company has received rescue aid and has not yet reimbursed the loan or terminated the guarantee, or has received restructuring aid and is still subject to a restructuring plan,

e. the company is not an SME, and for the past two years, its book debt to equity ratio has been greater than 7.5 and its EBITDA interest coverage ratio has been below 1.0.

Only section c applies to SMEs that were under 3 years of age on 31 December 2019.

The minimum amount of support is EUR 2,000. The maximum amount of support is EUR 1 million.

The other support already granted will be taken into account in the amount of the business cost support so that the total aid granted under the same temporary State aid rules of the European Commission will not exceed EUR 2,3 million.

Note! When granting cost support, the State Treasury takes into account expenses that correspond max. three times of average monthly turnover of the company during the reference period.e

Cost support can be applied for even if the company has already received other direct supports to mitigate the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic. Insurance compensation for the same costs, closure compensation and event guarantee granted by the State Treasury are deducted from the cost support.

Cost support is granted under the EU’s framework support programme. All aid granted under the framework support programme is subject to a maximum amount of EUR 2,3 million per company, which must not be exceeded. The ceiling of EUR 2,3 million is calculated taking into account all aid received by an individual company and companies belonging to the same group.

The following supports are under the EU framework support programme:

• Cost support (State Treasury)
• Closure compensation (not closure compensation for medium-sized and large companies) (State Treasury)
• Event guarantee (State Treasury)
• Grant for cultural events cancelled or organised smaller than expected due to the coronavirus pandemic, as well as grants to interrupted competition series and sports federations organising series at the top division level of sport (Ministry of Education and Culture OKM)
• Support for re-employment in the food sector (KEHA Centre)
• State aid for promoting journalistic content (Traficom)
• Temporary RKI loan in the event of a business disruption (Business Finland)
• Temporary extended ELA of the Provincial Government of Åland (tillfälligt utökat likviditetsstöd)
• Development grant granted by the ELY Centres (only if, exceptionally, the aid has been granted under the framework aid scheme and not as de minimis aid)
• Covid support for associations in the field of cultural heritage
• Covid support for communities in the cultural sector
• Covid support for art and culture festivals

In its application for cost support, the company must notify the State Treasury of all aid granted to the company under the framework aid scheme.