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Sweden's tax disclosure laws keep a record of who requested this information, which is a good solution for your concerns Not to mention that there are many oth

Sweden's tax disclosure laws keep a record of who requested this information, which is a good solution for your concerns Not to mention that there are many other already public & private records that already can provide information on wealth (company ownership records, house ownership records, etc...)

jahaja 7y ago
There are regular news articles in Swedish tabloids like "Who makes most money where you live?". So this isn't correct.
- marvin 7y ago
  Speaking from Norway, the media gets access to the complete tax lists, and are assumed to publish information contained in them responsibly. They have to use "journalistic discretion" and cannot make the full list available. For everyone else, lookups in the list are logged and available to the person that has been looked up. Personally, I'm not sure I'm so super happy with this system, but it's very much in tune with our culture where being in a significantly better position than the average is seen as suspect.
  - jahaja 7y ago
    In Sweden, the default is to make everything public, public domain style, so with income taxes for example, the amounts are public, but the sources of the income are not (because of personal integrity, not to be able to map military, police etc. employees). A perhaps internationally unusual thing this creates is that entire police investigations, including interview transcripts, are usually available to download as soon as court proceedings begin.
    - jdavis703 7y ago
      It’s probably even more important to know income sources of government employees (I write this as a former employee of state and federal government). And FWIW you can lookup the salary of all federal employees, and that of government employees in certain states. As a side note, this transparency helps expose potential corruption in handling evidence, awarding defense contracts, etc.
Legogris 7y ago
Yes and no. All incoming and outgoing correspondence is kept on a public record and can be requested. So if you send in a request per e-mail or post, it can be accessed. But you can still can in anonymously or walk in to their office and request it physically, without having to identify yourself. Source: Used to work as a journalist in Sweden, dealt a lot with requesting information from governmental and military organizations. Everyones's reported income, address, date of birth, family and a whole lot more information is publicly available on request. If you have particular reasons (e.g. threat of violence), you can request to have your identity hidden and exempt from public disclosure.

jahaja 7y ago

There are regular news articles in Swedish tabloids like "Who makes most money where you live?". So this isn't correct.

marvin 7y ago
Speaking from Norway, the media gets access to the complete tax lists, and are assumed to publish information contained in them responsibly. They have to use "journalistic discretion" and cannot make the full list available. For everyone else, lookups in the list are logged and available to the person that has been looked up. Personally, I'm not sure I'm so super happy with this system, but it's very much in tune with our culture where being in a significantly better position than the average is seen as suspect.
- jahaja 7y ago
  In Sweden, the default is to make everything public, public domain style, so with income taxes for example, the amounts are public, but the sources of the income are not (because of personal integrity, not to be able to map military, police etc. employees). A perhaps internationally unusual thing this creates is that entire police investigations, including interview transcripts, are usually available to download as soon as court proceedings begin.
  - jdavis703 7y ago
    It’s probably even more important to know income sources of government employees (I write this as a former employee of state and federal government). And FWIW you can lookup the salary of all federal employees, and that of government employees in certain states. As a side note, this transparency helps expose potential corruption in handling evidence, awarding defense contracts, etc.

Legogris 7y ago

Yes and no. All incoming and outgoing correspondence is kept on a public record and can be requested. So if you send in a request per e-mail or post, it can be accessed. But you can still can in anonymously or walk in to their office and request it physically, without having to identify yourself. Source: Used to work as a journalist in Sweden, dealt a lot with requesting information from governmental and military organizations. Everyones's reported income, address, date of birth, family and a whole lot more information is publicly available on request. If you have particular reasons (e.g. threat of violence), you can request to have your identity hidden and exempt from public disclosure.