The difference in one paragraph
As a kevytyrittäjä you work through an invoicing service. The service invoices your customer, withholds tax, and pays you the remainder. You are self-employed for tax purposes but you are not running a registered business of your own.
With a toiminimi you have your own Business ID, you invoice in your own name, and you are responsible for your own VAT returns, bookkeeping and tax filings.
Both are self-employment. The difference is who does the administration and what it costs you.
The cost comparison
Invoicing services charge a percentage of your invoicing, typically in the range of 3% to 7% depending on the provider and volume.
A toiminimi has fixed costs instead: bookkeeping, which for straightforward gig-worker filings runs at a flat monthly fee, and nothing that scales with what you earn.
The arithmetic follows directly. At a 5% service fee:
- €500 a month invoiced costs €25 through a service
- €1,000 a month costs €50
- €2,000 a month costs €100
- €4,000 a month costs €200
Against a flat bookkeeping fee of €30 a month, the crossover sits at roughly €600 of monthly invoicing. Below that the service is cheaper. Above it, the percentage keeps climbing while the fixed fee does not.
For anyone couriering seriously, the gap becomes substantial over a year. At €2,000 a month, the difference is around €840 annually.
Deductions are the bigger difference
The headline fee is not where most of the money is.
With your own toiminimi you deduct your actual business expenses: equipment, phone, vehicle costs, insurance, YEL, bookkeeping. Every euro deducted reduces both taxable profit and, where VAT applies, your VAT bill.
Invoicing services vary in how much expense handling they support, and the practical experience for many users is that deductions are harder to claim, more limited, or simply not claimed at all.
For a courier with real equipment and vehicle costs, the deductions available under a toiminimi are often worth more than the entire difference in fees.
VAT
Under a toiminimi, VAT registration and filing are yours. Once registered, you charge VAT, reclaim input VAT on purchases, and file returns on the schedule your turnover dictates.
Through an invoicing service, VAT is generally handled within the service's own arrangements, which is genuinely less work but also means input VAT on your purchases is not something you are managing or benefiting from directly.
For platform courier work the question is often settled for you: platforms typically require partners operating through their own company to be VAT-registered from day one.
YEL applies either way
This is the most common misconception in the comparison.
Using an invoicing service does not remove the YEL obligation. If you are 18 to 67, the activity lasts more than four months, and your work input exceeds the annual threshold, YEL is mandatory regardless of which route you use.
Invoicing services handle invoicing and tax withholding, and many people reasonably assume pension cover comes with that. It generally does not. Check what your service actually covers rather than assuming, because the gap tends to surface years later.
What each one is genuinely good for
A light entrepreneur service is a good fit when:
- You are testing whether the work suits you at all
- Your income is small or irregular
- You invoice a handful of customers and have almost no expenses
- You want zero administration and will pay for that
A toiminimi is a better fit when:
- You are working regularly, and certainly if it is full time
- You have real business expenses to deduct
- A platform requires you to have your own company
- You expect to keep doing this for more than a few months
The honest summary is that a service is a good way to start and an expensive way to continue.
Switching from a service to a toiminimi
Moving over involves registering the business at ytj.fi, registering for VAT and prepayment tax as applicable, arranging YEL if it is not already in place, and setting up bookkeeping.
The step people skip is checking whether YEL was ever arranged during the light entrepreneur period. If it was not and it should have been, that gap exists whether or not anyone has noticed yet, and it is better addressed deliberately than discovered.
Nothing about the switch is difficult. It is a form-filling exercise that takes an afternoon.