Estonia's largest taxpayers in 2026: a thousand companies and institutions pay 58% of taxes
An entity.ee analysis of Tax and Customs Board open data: over four quarters 201,326 companies and institutions paid €17.1 billion in state taxes. The ten largest paid 9%, the top hundred 30% and the top thousand 58%; the smaller half of payers paid 0.3% in total.
Who pays the taxes in Estonia? After every quarter the Tax and Customs Board publishes how much each company and institution paid in state taxes. entity.ee added up the last four quarters (from the fourth quarter of 2025 to the third quarter of 2026, data as of 10 October 2026) and calculated how few payers account for most of the tax paid. Over the four quarters 201,326 companies, institutions and associations paid a total of 17.1 billion euros. The sum covers all state taxes paid to the tax authority, net of refunds: VAT, excise duties, social tax, income tax withheld from salaries, corporate income tax and others.
The ten largest payers paid 1.55 billion euros, or 9.1 percent of the total, the top hundred 30.4 percent and the top thousand 58.0 percent. Half of all taxes came from 543 payers, which is 0.27 percent of payers. Ninety percent of the sum came from 15,077 payers, or 7.5 percent. At the other end the picture is reversed. The median payer, with half paying more and half less, paid 2,530 euros over the year. The smaller half of payers, 100,663 companies and institutions, paid 53 million euros in total, or 0.3 percent. That is less than Elisa Eesti paid on its own (56.9 million euros).
More than a million euros a year was paid by 2,182 payers, who accounted for 68 percent of the sum. More than 100 million euros was paid by 13 payers, who accounted for 10.9 percent. The same picture emerges by number of employees. There are 2,020 entities with at least 50 employees, 0.8 percent of all, yet they paid half of the taxes. The 148,113 entities with no registered employees (62 percent of all) paid 8.5 percent.
Who the largest payers are
The largest payer is not a large employer. In first place is the fuel terminal Olerex Terminal, which paid 271.7 million euros over four quarters and has 29 employees. It is followed by the Social Insurance Board (263.9 million), the Unemployment Insurance Fund (142.2), the wholesaler Sanitex (135.8), Neste Eesti (132.6) and Philip Morris Eesti (132.5 million, 19 employees). More than a hundred million euros was also paid by the Ministry of the Interior, Olerex, Eesti Energia, the Ministry of Defence, the Centre for Defence Investments, Alexela and Telia Eesti.
There are three kinds of payers at the top of the table. The first are sellers of fuel, tobacco and alcohol. The open data does not show which taxes make up the amount, but for them a large part is excise duty and VAT, which the consumer ultimately pays. That is why a warehouse with a few dozen employees can pay more than a retail chain with thousands. The second are state and municipal institutions, which pay taxes on salaries, pensions and benefits. The third are large employers and service companies, for example Eesti Energia (113.9 million), Telia Eesti (101.7), Maxima Eesti (98.3) and Swedbank (93.9 million).
By type, companies paid 14.0 billion euros, or 82.2 percent. These include companies owned by the state and municipalities, for example Eesti Energia and the hospitals of the City of Tallinn. Government and state institutions, among which the tax authority also counts the institutions of cities and rural municipalities, paid 2.13 billion euros (12.5 percent), foundations, including large hospitals, 0.39 billion (2.3), non-residents 0.33 billion (2.0) and non-profit associations 0.15 billion (0.9). Among the hundred largest payers there are 78 companies, 18 state and municipal institutions, three foundations and one non-resident. The largest non-resident is Whaleco Technology Limited, which runs Temu's sales in Europe: it paid 24.5 million euros in Estonia and ranks 73rd overall.
Labour taxes are in a separate column in the data and cannot be added to state taxes. Over four quarters 106,993 employers paid 8.89 billion euros in labour taxes: the ten largest 12.7 percent, the top hundred 31.5 and the top thousand 59.7 percent. The top ten includes eight public-sector institutions and hospitals: the Social Insurance Board (280.8 million euros), the Unemployment Insurance Fund, the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Defence, Tartu University Hospital, the University of Tartu, the North Estonia Medical Centre and the Ministry of Justice and Digital Affairs. A ministry's row also includes the taxes for the employees of the agencies under it; the Police and Border Guard Board, for example, has no labour taxes of its own in the data. The companies in the top ten are Pensionikeskus (56.4 million euros, seven employees), whose amount does not come from its own employees' salaries, and the Estonian branch of Wise Payments Limited (52.8 million, 2,531 employees). Among private companies they are followed by Swedbank (44.1), Ericsson Eesti (32.7), Telia Eesti (32.6) and SEB Pank (32.1 million).
Sectors and counties
By sector, a quarter of the taxes comes from trade: wholesale and retail companies paid 4.29 billion euros, or 25.1 percent. Next come manufacturing (1.89 billion, 11.1 percent), public administration and defence (1.56 billion, 9.1), transport and storage (1.34 billion, 7.9), information and communication (1.16 billion, 6.8) and construction (1.04 billion, 6.1). Concentration within sectors varies widely. In electricity and gas the five largest pay 62 percent of the sector's taxes, in finance and insurance 45 and in transport and storage 38 percent, because fuel terminals belong there. In construction the top five's share is 8, in real estate 7 and in professional, scientific and technical activities 5 percent.
By county, payers registered in Harju County paid 12.47 billion euros, or 73.0 percent, although the county has 58.5 percent of the employees in the data. Tallinn alone accounts for 56.5 percent of the taxes. Tartu County's share is 9.7 percent (12.1 of employees), Pärnu County's 2.7 and Ida-Viru County's 2.6 percent (5.4 of employees). Of the thousand largest payers, 728 are registered in Harju County and 87 in Tartu County. The county here is the payer's registered location. A retail chain, bank or ministry operating across Estonia pays its taxes from the head office address, so this split does not show where the work is actually done.
What this shows and what it does not
The concentration is stable. In the first three quarters of 2025 the hundred largest payers accounted for 30.7 and the top thousand for 58.4 percent of the taxes, in the same period of 2026 for 30.8 and 58.5 percent. Taxes are about as concentrated as turnover: the thousand entities with the largest turnover account for 59.3 percent of the turnover declared to the tax authority. Jobs are spread more evenly, with the thousand largest employers accounting for 41.0 percent of employees. The thousand largest taxpayers employ 33.9 percent of the employees in the data. For tax revenue this means that the fortunes of a couple of thousand larger payers weigh more than those of all the others combined: the 2,182 payers who paid more than a million euros accounted for more than two thirds of the sum.
Limitations. The data shows who remits the tax to the state, not who ultimately bears it: excise duty and VAT are borne by the consumer, income tax withheld from salaries by the employee. The amounts are on a cash basis, meaning actually paid in the quarter. If a payer was refunded more than it paid (for example VAT to an exporter), the data shows zero, so the total does not equal the state's tax revenue. Taxes of private individuals and the taxes on sole proprietors' business income are not published. The analysis is at the level of the legal entity, not the group. Sector and county are as recorded by the tax authority, and the number of employees is as of the last day of the third quarter of 2026. Quarterly totals can be found on the Estonian economy statistics page.