How YEL minimum threshold would hit low business owner incomes

Suomen Yrittäjät opposes lowering the YEL minimum threshold.

Jukka Rantala, who examined reform of the Entrepreneur’s Pension Act (YEL), proposed in his report that the minimum threshold for YEL insurance be lowered to €2,520. In 2025, the threshold was €9,208.43.

Suomen Yrittäjät, the Finnish SME association, rejected Rantala’s proposal to lower the YEL minimum threshold as soon as the report was published. The association says that cutting the threshold would weaken the position of low-income and part-time business owners.

“The minimum threshold for mandatory insurance must be raised to improve the position of those who are often under financial pressure and engaged in small-scale entrepreneurial activity,” said Mikael Pentikäinen, CEO of Suomen Yrittäjät, when Rantala’s report was released.

Suomen Yrittäjät has also proposed increasing business owners’ freedom of choice above the mandatory insurance threshold.

€160 brings just €10 more

Kauppalehti reported on Sat. 20 Dec. on a part-time business owner who had made an indicative calculation of what would happen to her if the YEL minimum threshold were lowered.

Alongside her salaried job, Anna Uschanov has run a business part-time for around ten years, her income from which has not exceeded the YEL minimum threshold. That would change if the threshold were lowered to €2,520, as Rantala proposed in his report.

“At my current income level, I would have to pay around €160 a month. As a result, I would accrue about €10 more in pension per month. And I still would not be entitled to unemployment benefits,” Uschanov told Kauppalehti.

“The benefits relative to the contributions would be greater if my business operations were bigger. The report left me with the feeling that the proposal does not treat part-time business owners fairly, or in general people running small-scale businesses.”

Uschanov thinks a YEL reform along the lines proposed in the report could raise the threshold for becoming an entrepreneur.

“Many young people experiment to see whether a business will take off. Their businesses can be very small-scale. Proposals on YEL like these certainly don’t make entrepreneurship more attractive, especially if someone is comparing it with paid employment,” she told Kauppalehti.

You can read more YEL-related news here.

Purra to Yle: “Dismantling the system over a long period could also be an option”

Minister of Finance Riikka Purra (Finns Party) discussed reform of the Entrepreneur’s Pension Act in an interview with Yle on Sat. 20 Dec. Purra said the situation is difficult because there is no desire to raise business owners’ pension contributions, while at the same time the state pays more than half a billion euros a year towards entrepreneurs’ pensions.

“In this country, taxpayers’ money is used quite extensively for many other kinds of income transfers and pensions, and for different forms of social security as well, including for people who, in the view of the Finns Party, should not be supported at the expense of Finnish taxpayers,” Purra told Yle.

Purra took her thinking further in the Yle interview.

“Dismantling the system over a long period could also be an option, in which case business owners would have the freedom inherent in entrepreneurship to decide for themselves how they arrange their pension provision,” Purra said, stressing that this reflects her own and her party’s thinking rather than a proposal to the government.

Purra also raised the option of moving the YEL system “in the direction of Sweden, where entrepreneurs’ pensions are part of the general pension system, which also includes some freedom to invest pension funds independently”.

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Toimitus

toimitus@yrittajat.fi