Do you have to give a receipt? What Finnish law asks of your till

A lunch customer taps a card, picks up the tray and walks off without the slip. The next one pays with a lunch voucher and says “no receipt, thanks”. Did the restaurant just break the law twice? No, as long as it offered. That one word, offer, carries most of the rule, and it is the part most people get wrong in both directions.

The rule is a short act from 2013, Laki kuitintarjoamisvelvollisuudesta käteiskaupassa, the Act on the obligation to offer a receipt in cash sales. It has eight sections. Here is what they ask of a counter, read from the current text on Finlex.

The short answer

If your business’s turnover for the financial period is more than 10 000 EUR, you must offer the buyer a receipt for every payment made in cash or by a comparable means of payment.¹ The act has applied since 01.01.2014. The threshold was 8 500 EUR at first and has been 10 000 EUR for financial periods starting on or after 01.01.2016.²

The customer does not have to take it. The government proposal behind the act says so plainly: the buyer has no duty to accept the receipt or to keep it, so it is enough that the receipt is offered.³

You have to offer it. They do not have to take it.

“Cash” includes the card

The act does not stop at notes and coins. It covers payment “in cash or by a comparable means of payment”, and the government proposal lists what that means: bank payment cards, credit cards, benefits given to employees such as lunch and exercise vouchers, and e-money, for example a restaurant card loaded with value.³ Its reasoning is practical. A rule for notes and coins only would be applied at random and would be hard to supervise.³

So at a normal Finnish counter, where almost everything is paid by card, the rule applies to almost every sale. Section 3 lists what is outside it:¹

• sales from vending machines;
• lottery and gaming activity under the lotteries legislation;
• outdoor market and market-square selling, except the retail sale and serving of alcoholic drinks;
• e-commerce, paying an invoice and other situations where the buyer pays independently, without the business being present.

Two things follow for a restaurant. A bar tent at a summer event is not exempt: the outdoor exception stops at alcohol, and the proposal says this was deliberate.³ And an order paid online in advance is outside the act, because nobody from the business is present when the buyer pays.

The self-order kiosk in your own dining room sits between the two. The buyer pays without staff at the screen, but inside premises where the business is very much present. We found nothing in the act, the proposal or Verohallinto’s pages that settles which side of section 3 it falls on, so we will not guess. The practical answer is the same either way: a kiosk that offers a receipt makes the question irrelevant.

What must be on the receipt

Section 4 lists five things. In our translation, the receipt must show:¹

• the business’s name, contact details and Business ID (y-tunnus);
• the date the receipt was issued;
• the receipt’s identifying number or other unique identifier;
• the quantity and kind of goods sold and the kind of services;
• the payment made for the goods or services, and the VAT payable per rate, or the VAT base per rate.

The third item is the one that matters most to an inspector. The government proposal explains why it is there: the number has to identify the receipt so that the recording of the cash sale in the business’s books can be verified without difficulty.³ The receipt number is the thread from the counter to the books.

The fifth item is where a restaurant receipt differs from a shop’s. Food is sold at 13,5 % and alcoholic drinks at 25,5 %,⁴ so a bill with a burger and a beer needs two VAT lines, not one. Baslic has written about how that split is made, including for meal deals sold at one price.⁵

The act does not care which machine prints the receipt. The proposal says a receipt can be printed from the card terminal or the till, or written by hand.³ What counts is the content. A card slip that shows only the amount and the card has no items and no VAT per rate, so on its own it is not the receipt the act asks for.

Paper is optional

Section 4 ends with one short sentence: the receipt may also be offered electronically.¹ The act names no format, so e-mail, a QR code on the screen or a link all qualify, as long as the receipt carries the same five items.

The proposal adds a detail about timing that is easy to miss. Because the buyer does not have to take the receipt, it is enough to offer it once the payment has been recorded for the books.³ Record first, then offer. Printing a slip for every customer who does not want one is not required; recording every sale is.

Finland has no approved cash register

Some countries certify the till itself. Finland does not. The receipt act regulates the receipt, not the device: the government proposal says the act would not require a cash register or a till system at all, since a receipt can be written by hand, and it left type-approved registers out on purpose, to be assessed separately.³

Verohallinto did assess them. Its 2018 study of fiscal cash registers starts from the fact that Finland has no legislation on minimum requirements for cash register systems or devices, and its working group proposed online fiscal registers, which would need new legislation.⁶ Sweden, by comparison, has used fiscal registers since 01.01.2010.⁶ We found no Finnish law on till certification in force today.

In practice this means there is no certificate to buy and none to ask for. An inspector judges a till by its receipts and its records. If a vendor tells you its system is “approved by Verohallinto”, ask to see the decision.

Who checks, and what it costs

Verohallinto and the police supervise the act. In premises with a licence to serve alcohol, the Finnish Supervisory Agency, Lupa- ja valvontavirasto (LVV), supervises it as well; before 01.01.2026 that task belonged to the regional state administrative agencies.¹⁷ The proposal expected the alcohol inspectors to check receipts as part of their ordinary alcohol inspections.³ On Åland, Verohallinto supervises alone.¹

Inspectors may check on the business’s premises, and when there is reasonable cause to suspect the act is being broken, they may make test purchases: buy something and watch whether a receipt is offered and the payment recorded.¹³

Failing to offer receipts can bring a negligence charge, laiminlyöntimaksu, of at least 300 EUR and at most 1 000 EUR. The amount depends on the kind of conduct, how often it is repeated and the value of the goods or services concerned, and a minor case can be let go or charged below the minimum.¹ The decision can be challenged first by asking the authority for rectification, then in the administrative court.¹

Why restaurants are watched

Because that is where Verohallinto keeps finding money outside the till. Its intensive campaign from early 2023 to autumn 2025 inspected 373 restaurant businesses, mostly pizza, kebab and Chinese restaurants, and sent 198 of them, 53 %, to be considered for criminal investigation. It found 18,3 million EUR of unreported income. The typical pattern, in the release’s words: income is not rung into the till.⁸ Baslic has looked at those figures in more detail.⁵

Seen from the counter, the conclusion is simple. A receipt offered every time, from a till that numbers every sale, is the owner’s cheapest evidence that the sale reached the books. What the receipt then proves in the bookkeeping is a separate question, and Baslic has answered it too.⁹

A one-minute check at your counter

• Every receipt shows your name, contact details, Business ID, date, receipt number, items and VAT per rate.Print one now and tick the five items off against section 4.
• Receipt numbers are unique and run without gaps.The act asks for a unique identifier. A gap-free sequence is what makes it easy to show nothing is missing.
• The card terminal slip is not your only receipt.A slip with only the amount has no items and no VAT per rate.
• Staff offer a receipt for card, voucher and cash payments alike, and know the customer may say no.Offer, not force. Declining is the customer’s choice.
• A customer who does not want paper can still get the receipt electronically.E-mail, QR code or link, with the same content.
• Alcohol sold at a terrace, a festival or an outdoor event gets a receipt.The outdoor market exception does not cover alcohol.
• Your self-order kiosk offers a receipt too.Then it does not matter which side of section 3 it falls on.

What this means for your till

The act asks for something small at the moment of sale and something large over time: every payment recorded, every receipt identifiable, every receipt offered. People are good at the first part on a quiet afternoon and bad at it on a Friday night. That is a job for the till, not for staff memory.

The till should put the five items on every receipt without anybody setting them up per sale, give each sale its number when it is recorded, and treat “no receipt, thanks” as a choice about paper, not about the record. We build Fizzy that way: a sale does not close without its receipt, and the customer decides whether it is printed, shown as a QR code, sent by e-mail or not taken at all.

Sources

1. Laki kuitintarjoamisvelvollisuudesta käteiskaupassa 658/2013, consolidated text including amendments 516/2015, 359/2024, 450/2025 and 722/2025: sections 2 to 7. Quoted in our translation. · finlex.fi (in Finnish)
2. Act 516/2015 amending section 2 of 658/2013: turnover threshold raised from 8 500 EUR to 10 000 EUR, in force 01.01.2016, applied to financial periods starting on or after that date. · finlex.fi (in Finnish)
3. Government proposal HE 23/2013, detailed reasons for sections 3 to 5 and general reasoning: comparable means of payment (cards, lunch and exercise vouchers, e-money); the buyer need not accept the receipt; it may be printed from a card terminal or till or written by hand; no cash register required; purpose of the receipt number; alcohol inspectors’ role. Quoted in our translation. · finlex.fi (in Finnish)
4. Verohallinto, Rates of VAT: general rate 25,5 %; 13,5 % for foodstuffs and restaurant services; the reduced rate does not apply to alcoholic drinks or their serving. · vero.fi
5. Baslic blog, 13,5 and 25,5 on one bill, 25.09.2026. · baslic.com
6. Verohallinto, Grey Economy Information Unit, Fiskaaliset kassajärjestelmät, osa V: Yhteenveto, study 15/2018, 12.06.2018: no Finnish legislation on minimum requirements for cash register systems; proposal for online fiscal registers; Sweden since 01.01.2010. · vero.fi (PDF, in Finnish)
7. Act 722/2025 amending section 5 of 658/2013: in licensed premises, supervision by Lupa- ja valvontavirasto from 01.01.2026, replacing the regional state administrative agency. Verohallinto’s own pages on the obligation, last updated 02.02.2024 (English) and 07.02.2024 (Finnish). · finlex.fi (in Finnish) · vero.fi · vero.fi (in Finnish)
8. Verohallinto, press release 30.10.2025, Harmaa talous edelleen yleistä ravintola-alalla: tehovalvonta paljasti 11 miljoonaa euroa maksamattomia veroja: 373 businesses, 198 (53 %) to criminal investigation consideration, 18,3 million EUR of unreported income. Quoted in our translation. · vero.fi (in Finnish)
9. Baslic blog, What a receipt proves, and what it cannot, 11.09.2026. · baslic.com
10. Act 450/2025 amending section 7 of 658/2013, in force 01.01.2026: the new second paragraph no longer contains the five-year lapse of the negligence charge. · finlex.fi (in Finnish)