The Act abolishing adult education benefits has entered into force on 1 June 2024. According to the Act, adult education allowance cannot be obtained under any circumstances for studies starting after 31 July 2024. Read about its effects on applying for adult education allowance on the page News.
Check out the instructions on how to make use of entrepreneur's adult education support until the end of 2025
Customer service: During the first days of the month, we have a lot of employee payment applications to process, so if possible, please take care of the entrepreneur's allowance matters at other times.
If necessary, we recommend that you contact us with a customer message that you can send from the e-service. It is the safest and most convenient way to get answers to your questions.
Withholding tax and tax card: 20% withholding tax is automatically withheld from adult education allowance. If you wish to change it, please provide us with a change tax card for the benefit at least 3 days before submitting the payment application.
You can order a tax card from Myvero and attach it as a PDF file to our e-service. You can also check your profile to see when your tax card has been stored in our records. Please note that there is a tax card for the benefit.
Cancel support if income does not decrease: The entrepreneur's adult education allowance can be obtained if the earned income of the business is reduced by at least one third during the subsidy period compared to the last confirmed taxation before the start of studies. We will check this once the supporter's tax has been confirmed. If the decrease in income does not occur, please cancel the support in advance.
You can apply for more support in the e-service under ‘Apply for an entrepreneur's adult education allowance’.
Fill in the following information for your application:
- personal data
- Application period and training
- Company information
- occupational history
- Other benefits
In section six, attach a certificate of study showing the studies to be completed, the educational institution in which you are studying, the extent of your studies in credits and the study right period granted to you.
After successfully submitting your application, you will receive a confirmation email.
The desired processing time for the entrepreneur's adult education allowance is 25 days. The time given is an average, and in individual cases and congestion situations, the processing time may be longer.
You can see the current processing times for applications on the News page, and you can monitor the status of your own application in the online service.
If the conditions for receiving the allowance are met, you will receive a notification about the payment of the support to the transaction service or by post. Therefore, a separate allowance decision will not be sent if your application is approved. The notification also includes information such as the allowance payment dates and the amount of the allowance. It will show the maximum amount you can earn from business activities during the allowance period.
The allowance is always paid on the last working day of each month.
If you have received an approved payment notification, you will not be able to appeal it. You will receive an appealable decision on your entitlement to the allowance at the stage, when we have verified that the earnings from business you have received during the allowance period have decreased by at least one third. Rejected applications can be appealed.
We process appeals in the order we receive them. The processing time is approximately one month. If the decision contained an error that we can correct, you may receive a new payment notification within a few days.
You can find more detailed instructions for sending an appeal attached to your decision. Send your appeal by encrypted email to: koulutusetuudet@tyollisyysrahasto.fi.
Please inform us of the cancellation of the allowance through the messages function well in advance of the allowance payment date. Select the subject of the message "Canceling allowance" and indicate in your message the month to be cancelled, the reason for the cancellation and your application number.
As an entrepreneur, you will receive a fixed amount of adult education allowance: In 2025, the amount is 660.91 euros per month (gross). You can also receive income from your business, as long as your income is reduced by at least a third. In connection with the payment declaration, you will be informed of the maximum amount of earned income you can have during the subsidy period.
When you receive an entrepreneur's adult education allowance, you can receive other non-business income with a subsidy period no more than three quarters of the amount of the subsidy to be paid, i.e. no more than EUR 495.68 (gross) per month in 2025. Outside the allowance period, you can freely earn salary income both from your business activities and as secondary income, for example, from paid work elsewhere.
In addition to salary and other work income, some statutory benefits are also considered as secondary income, such as child home care allowance without municipal allowance, partial care allowance and partial disability pension. Adult education allowance is not affected by, for example, alimony, tax refund or capital income.
In order for you to be entitled to adult education allowance for an entrepreneur, your earned income for business must decrease by at least one third during the support allowance compared to the last taxation confirmed before the start of studies.
In your application, you must state informally what kind of arrangements in business during training lead to a reduction in the earned income of business by one third. Business income should be reduced due to education.
We will indicate in the payment notice how much income you can receive during the support period.
The decrease in the earned income of business operations is always investigated only after the taxation of the supporter has strengthened. We can't find out in the middle of the year if the fall in income has occurred. If you wish, you can cancel the adult education allowance in advance if it appears that the decrease in income would not be realised for all months of the allowance.
If the decrease in your earned income from doing business by at least one third is directly reflected in the tax information received by the Employment Fund, you will receive a positive decision on the grant for the year in question.
If the decrease in income cannot be ascertained directly on the basis of tax information, a letter of consultation will be sent to you, to which you can respond with a response and the necessary clarifications. In the consultation letter you will find more detailed information on what clarifications we need.
If your earned income from entrepreneurial activities has not decreased by at least one third, you will receive a negative decision on support and the adult education allowance paid without justification for the year in question will be fully recovered.
Example: You have applied for adult education allowance between 1 July 2024 and 31 March 2025. In the most recent taxation confirmed before your application, the amount of earned income from business activities was 36,000 euros, i.e. an average of 3,000 euros per month. During the subsidy period, you are allowed to have earned income from business activities up to an average of 2,000 euros (gross) per month. Capital income is not taken into account.
With an allowance period, you can receive earned income from non-business activities up to three-quarters of the amount of support to be paid, i.e. up to a maximum of EUR 495.68 (gross) per month in 2025.
In addition to salary and other earnings, some statutory benefits are also considered as secondary income, such as child home care allowance without municipal allowance, partial care allowance, informal care allowance and partial disability pension. No tax refund or capital gains are considered as secondary income affecting the subsidy.
The income limit applies to the period during which you receive adult education allowance. Outside of the allowance period, you can earn freely. Please note, however, that income is always considered in accordance with the payment date.
Benefits that prevent the granting of an employee's adult education allowance include:
- study grant
- Daily allowance under the Health Insurance Act
- maternity, paternity or parental allowance or partial parental allowance
- pregnancy allowance (from 1.8.2022)
- parental allowance (from 1.8.2022)
- partial parental allowance (from 1.8.2022)
- Special care allowance or special maternity allowance
- Special Pregnancy Allowance (from 1.8.2022)
- unemployment allowance or labour market subsidy
- job alternation compensation
- full disability pension or rehabilitation allowance
- unemployment pension
- old-age pension
- farmers' early retirement aid
- rehabilitation allowance for the same education in accordance with the Act on rehabilitation benefits and rehabilitation allowance benefits of the Social Insurance Institution or the earnings-related pension acts
- full rehabilitation allowance under the Occupational Accidents and Diseases Act or the Act on Occupational Accidents and Diseases of Farmers
- full compensation for loss of earnings on the basis of the Act on Rehabilitation to be Replaced under the Motor Insurance Act or the rehabilitation provisions of the Military Injury Act
- years-of-service pension
- guarantee pension
As a recipient of adult education allowance, you may be entitled to a student loan government guarantee until the end of 2025. The state guarantee application is processed and the guarantee is granted by Kela. After receiving a guarantee decision, you can apply for a student loan from a bank with which you can agree on the terms of the student loan and the repayment schedule.
Send the guarantee application directly to Kela. More information on student loan is available from Kela on the page Student loan for adult students.
The student loan is also not considered an income and does not affect the amount of adult education allowance paid to you.
We at the Employment Fund are only able to monitor the decrease in entrepreneurs' income retrospectively once the tax information has been confirmed, i.e. in practice the allowance period the following year. As a result, we may have to issue a negative aid decision retrospectively and recover the aid already paid if the condition is you are not eligible for allowance.
As an entrepreneur, you will instead have access to up-to-date figures for your business and will be able to influence them during the allowance period, allowing you to avoid chargebacks as well.
Changes in own information, employment or studies
Please let us know if your information has changed by sending a message in the e-service.
Please let us know your new account number by sending us a customer message at least one week before the next payment date.
You do not need to update your address information yourself; instead, we receive your new address information directly through the Digital and Population Data Services Agency. If you have an address other than that known to the Digital and Population Agency, you can change the address in our e-service in your profile information.
Your right to adult education allowance ends if your study leave or studies are interrupted or your studies are completed. You will have to cancel your allowance right after this period. Please inform us of the cancellation of the entitlement period with a customer message in our e-service.
If the institution where you are completing your studies changes, please provide us with a new study certificate from your new institution so that we can make the necessary changes to your information. Please note that when your studies change, you are no longer entitled to adult education allowance.
Your entitlement to adult education allowance ends if your studies on which the allowance is based change or change during the grant entitlement period granted to you.
If you have previously received adult education allowance for trail or fairway studies and become a degree student, your right to adult education allowance ends. It is not possible to receive support for studies for which you have not received adult education allowance before 1 August 2024.
If you receive a social security benefit retroactively that you have not notified us of during the application phase and that may prevent the payment of adult education allowance, please let us know. Such social security benefits that prevent support include parental allowance, Kela study grant, unemployment allowance and pension.
If you move abroad for a longer period of time, please find out from Kela whether you are still covered by Finnish social security. If your right to Finnish social security is terminated, your right to adult education allowance ends.