Clothing should be tax-deductible

One of the biggest annoyances in this country is the problem with clothes. The problem, specifically, is that you need too damn much of them: to have any kind of an active life in Finland, one needs to be able to survive in any kind of weather conditions that can happen – and that list is long. Too long.

In general, clothing and shoes are needed for the following weather conditions:

• Warm summer; it can be up to +30C in the summers and sandals are a better bet than shoes here.
• Normal summer; shorts and T-shirts simply do not suffice in the evenings, so some kind of light coats and long pants are also needed.
• Cold and/or wet summer; this is when the coats and long pants need to be somewhat warmer and be equipped with Gore-Tex fabric or something similar to prevent you from being soaking wet.
• Nice spring and fall; it could be sunny, but an occasional cold wind demands some wind-stopping capabilities from the clothing.
• Nasty spring and fall; this also calls for Gore-Tex outfits, only warmer than the summer versions.
• Normal winter; warm clothing is called for when we get months of -10C or so.
• Wet winter; the kind dominated by sleet, rain and wet snow. Normal woolen winter coats can’t handle rain and sleet very well, so Gore-Tex is a must all around.
• Cold winter; with temperatures plunging down to -30C, you need to be dressed warm. Really warm. So warm that you’ll get a heat stroke whenever staying inside for longer than 27 seconds, but the alternative – freezing to death outside – is even less appealing.

And, as anywhere, at least the following main types of clothes are needed:

• Really nice clothes for special occasions
• Neat clothes for work
• Casual wear for a bunch of occasions
• Sportswear for whatever sports it is that you do; this alone could be a long list

To get the total minimum number of outfits required, multiply the first list with the second list. Then add shoes to go with each situation and then think whether you can live with just one of each type – you need to wash them, too. The main trouble in Finland is that the first list being so long, the total number of outfits required is long enough to bankrupt anybody. It’s impossible, really, not to mention highly annoying; the end result is that for half the year you don’t have anything suitable to wear. And before someone mentions that you should dress in layers, well, yeah, you should, but layering is not a silver bullet – the clothes need to fit, too, and you can’t pile up layer after layer under a summer coat to magically transform it into a winter coat.

So the least we could ask, I think, is for the clothing to be tax-deductible in Finland. And we could also remove the VAT from it.