6 ms·

America, and the world, should see everyone's tax returns. What's the big secret? If you're proud of what you earn and the taxes that flow from that then sho

America, and the world, should see everyone's tax returns. What's the big secret? If you're proud of what you earn and the taxes that flow from that then show it. If you're not proud, then that should be exposed too.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
This always gets trotted out by people who make good money and who's family and friends basically all make good money. It's like the personal finance instance of saying "I have nothing to hide so I don't need privacy". I'd rather not have the in-laws knowing exactly how much I make or have my next employer know exactly how much more they're offering than the last one thank you very much. While I understand that in some countries tax returns are public, those countries are very different than the US in a multitude of ways (which are beyond the scope of this comment, I'm not going write a wall of text, those invite nit picking).
- amelius 7y ago
  > I'd rather not have the in-laws knowing exactly how much I make or have my next employer know exactly how much more they're offering than the last one thank you very much. But on the flip side, you'll know exactly how much your colleagues make.
  - lvh 7y ago
    By framing it as a flip side it sounds like two sides of a “fair” coin, but for the vast majority of people their relationship to their employer is one with a serious power imbalance.
    - amelius 7y ago
      By knowing what your coworkers earn (just like your employer knows!) you decrease the power imbalance.
      - lvh 7y ago
        You missed my point: the incentive to remove that balance already exists among workers (eg pay self-disclosure), but now companies know exactly how much you make. There’s no positive worker outcome to companies having that information.
  - cj 7y ago
    > But on the flip side, you'll know exactly how much your colleagues make. Can’t you also ask your co-worker if you care to know? My thought is this also risks creating unnecessary resentment in the office. (Most people will react negatively finding out a colleague makes $10k more, even if that colleague has more years of experience - people don’t think about compensation rationally)
  - raxxorrax 7y ago
    Which would immediately form a hierarchy.
  - cbg0 7y ago
    > But on the flip side, you'll know exactly how much your colleagues make. For most large companies you can already research what the average salary is for a specific position on sites like glassdoor.
  - sokoloff 7y ago
    Which is something that I don't care about in the slightest. Taking privacy away from people and giving them something of no value to them in trade is a poor justification for change.
Waterluvian 7y ago
Do you mean every company or everyone? The reason I don't want to share my tax return is that it reveals my income. The last time I revealed my income it created a lot of negative relationships.
- nicoburns 7y ago
  Well that may not be a bad thing in the longer term. It creates an incentive for the rich to reduce income inequality.
  - sdrothrock 7y ago
    I don't think this just affects "rich" people. It could also be that Waterluvian had a low income and that affected his relationships. Or it could be that it just differed in a direction (up or down) that his peers didn't expect or appreciate for whatever reason. I can think of a lot of reasons revealing my income would affect various relationships I have (whether that's a good thing or a bad thing isn't relevant), even though I wish it wouldn't. Information about money does change the way people treat you. When I was a kid, people knew my family wasn't doing so well and I'd get lots of well-intentioned charitable offers from friends and friends' parents that just made me feel really bad about myself, so there's one way that having a lower income revealed can affect relationships in an apparently positive way that's still uncomfortable.
  - josefx 7y ago
    I had coworkers that where hostile to the very idea of equality. Get paid the same as them? They were worth twice as much. Take a pay cut in exchange for some other bonus? They deserved the bonus more than you and they would get it without the pay cut (they didn't, especially not after trying to add their own terms to it). There was nothing positive to informing them of the pay of anyone else.
- hutzlibu 7y ago
  "The last time I revealed my income it created a lot of negative relationships. " Why? With coworkers who were jealous?
amelius 7y ago
I agree with the general point, but not with the argument: > If you're not proud, then that should be exposed too. What if I'm not proud because I earn only half of what my neighbor earns?
- jacknews 7y ago
  They show off a nicer and newer car than you? Buy more expensive garden ornaments? Throw bigger parties? Really, so much is wasted to display wealth superiority.
nhumrich 7y ago
Public companies? Sure. Private companies and individuals? No. They can have good reasons to keep their finances private. Just think about how much profiling will happen about a person if you were able to look up their finances first. This applies to job interviews, sales processes, etc.
- jacknews 7y ago
  Yes a very good point about job interviews. But if salaries were transparent, there would be much less reason to beat about the bush regarding job offers - It would be quite clear what the going rate was, and how that related to executive pay, etc.
  - literallycancer 7y ago
    Usually people who make a lot don't make most of it as salary.
    - jacknews 7y ago
      true, but the tax return would illuminate that
  - leetcrew 7y ago
    instead of mandating that the financial details of individual people's lives be public, why not just require companies to publish a mean and stdev for each position's compensation? seems like that's all you really need to figure out if you're getting a fair deal.
- socialdemocrat 7y ago
  We have had this in Norway for decades already and it does not pop up as a problem the way you describe it. Part of that is because in addition to focus on transparency, we also promote privacy. Yes that may seem like an oxymoron, but here is a way to give you an idea: If I ask for you credit history or how much you earn or make in taxes, then you will be informed by the government in letter form, exactly what information I was given about you, as well as my name and address. That makes it a lot less attractive to snoop around in people's data. Hence in Norway it is mainly news organizations that do these kinds of things in relation to writing articles. Otherwise you make yourself look foolish. Also it is a bit odd that Americans should be so concerned with privacy as you privacy laws are rather weak to begin with. E.g. unlike Norway you can administer drug tests to any employee in the US or do criminal background checks on all new hires. That would be highly illegal in Norway. Only business which can prove to the government that such checks are vital to the type of the business they do would be allowed to do such checks. E.g. working with children. Basically the US focus its "privacy" laws on hiding information important to the wealthy, while those at the bottom of the latter have most of their sensitive information easily exposed.
i_am_nomad 7y ago
Imagine the data-driven marketing gold rush that would ensue from having everyone’s tax returns be public. That alone is reason enough not to do it.
LoSboccacc 7y ago
> What's the big secret upper middle class people are juicy targets, rich enough to get some profit, not enough to have proper security. what could go wrong exposing them all in a nice list, indexed and sortable, right?
- jacknews 7y ago
  Juicy targets for those scheming criminal lower classes? How is public financial exposure different from living in an affluent area, having an expensive car, etc, etc?
  - cbg0 7y ago
    Well, you can live in a not-so-affluent area and drive an average car and be very well off, as some people do to avoid attracting attention. On the other hand, someone driving an expensive car is not necessarily well off, there are quite a lot of people living paycheck to paycheck that drive "expensive" cars.
    - jacknews 7y ago
      And so how are you then "at risk" if you live modestly, since there is little to rob? Kidnap? It seems a little ridiculous for most cases.
      - adventured 7y ago
        > And so how are you then "at risk" if you live modestly, since there is little to rob? I know a guy - we'll call him Mr. Frugal - he's worth, I'd estimate, $5 to $10 million based on what I know about his income and assets over the last 30 years (I know a fair bit to make that estimation). An old family friend, he's in his 70s at this point. He built his wealth from nothing, very slowly, and is a notorious penny pincher (the most extreme version of it I've ever seen). He lives in the same house he has owned since the 1960s; it's worth $150k-$175k today. This man would be a very ripe target for any number of schemes. Targeting his bank accounts / investment accounts / personal identity, credit, and so on. That's entirely ignoring any kidnapping or blackmail type risks. It doesn't take more than a few moments of consideration to understand how his finances being made so public would make him a target for all sorts of criminals. That despite the fact that he lives very modestly and there is nothing in his home to indicate such wealth. His wealth is held outside of his home, and that's where you would target him. Frankly, given this is HN, I think it's pretty silly obvious that the physical contents of a home often are not the best target for thieves / criminals today.
sigzero 7y ago
Sorry, it isn't anyone's business but mine and the IRS.
lvh 7y ago
A full tax return contains a lot more information than a summary number (“what you earn and the taxes that flow from it”). What benefit are we trying to achieve and how does applying that to most corporations get that? Saying we should have it for publicly traded companies makes a lot more sense than every private company let alone every person.
- jacknews 7y ago
  Why should it secret? I mean the gross amount, not the details.
jedimastert 7y ago
There are several problems: 1) There are many people in my life who would make it much more difficult if they knew how much I make. I've kept it from them for a very good reason and they're definitely the kind of people who would just go and look that kind of stuff about random people they know. This would tell them how much I have in investments and property as well. 2) It would necessarily reveal far too much personally identifying information or not serve the purpose you'd want it to. If I had ran away from an abusive or stalking relationship, they could simply look up the state and municipality I pay taxes in, and what company I worked for, making it almost trivial to find me. This could also mean finding (and targeting) anyone that works for a certain company. 3) It would be far too easy for companies to use this information for any number of purposes. I'm currently getting a huge amount of mail about moving companies and brokers because my landlord publicly put my condo up for sale. It could get much worse than that. 4) If I'm the daughter of an extremely conservative family but I'm working at a strip club, even if I'm "not proud" of what I do that give no good cause to expose it to the world. These are the situations from off the top of my head and already it would reveal far more information than I'm comfortable with. "If you have nothing to fear than you have nothing to hide" is never an appropriate excuse to curtail anyone's privacy.
- jacknews 7y ago
  4) If I'm the daughter of an extremely conservative family but I'm working at a strip club, even if I'm "not proud" of what I do that give no good cause to expose it to the world. Why would "strip club" be exposed? Only the amount you make should be. Your arguments all seem rather selfish. I realise the proposal might be extremely uncomfortable for some, but consider the overall benefits.
  - ben509 7y ago
    > Why would "strip club" be exposed? Because the EIN is listed on the W-2, which is filed as part of the return. And if you're going to reply that you meant some abbreviated form of the tax return, then: The "what have you got to hide" class of arguments you're using to insist we expose an abbreviated version would also apply to expanding the abbreviated version to full disclosure. And you might be reasonable enough to stop, but that doesn't mean others will be. People have strong motives to want to dig into political opponents or people they don't like, and we know from history the "what have you got to hide" question and friends are routinely used in trying to eviscerate 4A and 5A rights.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
pjc50 7y ago
In addition to the other reasons not to do this, it's a huge enabler of political or family harassment. It can be made to work in societies that are already pretty open and equal, but in a highly unequal society like America?
- jacknews 7y ago
  LOL, causality.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

This always gets trotted out by people who make good money and who's family and friends basically all make good money. It's like the personal finance instance of saying "I have nothing to hide so I don't need privacy". I'd rather not have the in-laws knowing exactly how much I make or have my next employer know exactly how much more they're offering than the last one thank you very much. While I understand that in some countries tax returns are public, those countries are very different than the US in a multitude of ways (which are beyond the scope of this comment, I'm not going write a wall of text, those invite nit picking).

amelius 7y ago
> I'd rather not have the in-laws knowing exactly how much I make or have my next employer know exactly how much more they're offering than the last one thank you very much. But on the flip side, you'll know exactly how much your colleagues make.
- lvh 7y ago
  By framing it as a flip side it sounds like two sides of a “fair” coin, but for the vast majority of people their relationship to their employer is one with a serious power imbalance.
  - amelius 7y ago
    By knowing what your coworkers earn (just like your employer knows!) you decrease the power imbalance.
    - lvh 7y ago
      You missed my point: the incentive to remove that balance already exists among workers (eg pay self-disclosure), but now companies know exactly how much you make. There’s no positive worker outcome to companies having that information.
- cj 7y ago
  > But on the flip side, you'll know exactly how much your colleagues make. Can’t you also ask your co-worker if you care to know? My thought is this also risks creating unnecessary resentment in the office. (Most people will react negatively finding out a colleague makes $10k more, even if that colleague has more years of experience - people don’t think about compensation rationally)
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  Which would immediately form a hierarchy.
- cbg0 7y ago
  > But on the flip side, you'll know exactly how much your colleagues make. For most large companies you can already research what the average salary is for a specific position on sites like glassdoor.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  Which is something that I don't care about in the slightest. Taking privacy away from people and giving them something of no value to them in trade is a poor justification for change.

Waterluvian 7y ago

Do you mean every company or everyone? The reason I don't want to share my tax return is that it reveals my income. The last time I revealed my income it created a lot of negative relationships.

nicoburns 7y ago
Well that may not be a bad thing in the longer term. It creates an incentive for the rich to reduce income inequality.
- sdrothrock 7y ago
  I don't think this just affects "rich" people. It could also be that Waterluvian had a low income and that affected his relationships. Or it could be that it just differed in a direction (up or down) that his peers didn't expect or appreciate for whatever reason. I can think of a lot of reasons revealing my income would affect various relationships I have (whether that's a good thing or a bad thing isn't relevant), even though I wish it wouldn't. Information about money does change the way people treat you. When I was a kid, people knew my family wasn't doing so well and I'd get lots of well-intentioned charitable offers from friends and friends' parents that just made me feel really bad about myself, so there's one way that having a lower income revealed can affect relationships in an apparently positive way that's still uncomfortable.
- josefx 7y ago
  I had coworkers that where hostile to the very idea of equality. Get paid the same as them? They were worth twice as much. Take a pay cut in exchange for some other bonus? They deserved the bonus more than you and they would get it without the pay cut (they didn't, especially not after trying to add their own terms to it). There was nothing positive to informing them of the pay of anyone else.
hutzlibu 7y ago
"The last time I revealed my income it created a lot of negative relationships. " Why? With coworkers who were jealous?

amelius 7y ago

I agree with the general point, but not with the argument: > If you're not proud, then that should be exposed too. What if I'm not proud because I earn only half of what my neighbor earns?

jacknews 7y ago
They show off a nicer and newer car than you? Buy more expensive garden ornaments? Throw bigger parties? Really, so much is wasted to display wealth superiority.

nhumrich 7y ago

Public companies? Sure. Private companies and individuals? No. They can have good reasons to keep their finances private. Just think about how much profiling will happen about a person if you were able to look up their finances first. This applies to job interviews, sales processes, etc.

jacknews 7y ago
Yes a very good point about job interviews. But if salaries were transparent, there would be much less reason to beat about the bush regarding job offers - It would be quite clear what the going rate was, and how that related to executive pay, etc.
- literallycancer 7y ago
  Usually people who make a lot don't make most of it as salary.
  - jacknews 7y ago
    true, but the tax return would illuminate that
- leetcrew 7y ago
  instead of mandating that the financial details of individual people's lives be public, why not just require companies to publish a mean and stdev for each position's compensation? seems like that's all you really need to figure out if you're getting a fair deal.
socialdemocrat 7y ago
We have had this in Norway for decades already and it does not pop up as a problem the way you describe it. Part of that is because in addition to focus on transparency, we also promote privacy. Yes that may seem like an oxymoron, but here is a way to give you an idea: If I ask for you credit history or how much you earn or make in taxes, then you will be informed by the government in letter form, exactly what information I was given about you, as well as my name and address. That makes it a lot less attractive to snoop around in people's data. Hence in Norway it is mainly news organizations that do these kinds of things in relation to writing articles. Otherwise you make yourself look foolish. Also it is a bit odd that Americans should be so concerned with privacy as you privacy laws are rather weak to begin with. E.g. unlike Norway you can administer drug tests to any employee in the US or do criminal background checks on all new hires. That would be highly illegal in Norway. Only business which can prove to the government that such checks are vital to the type of the business they do would be allowed to do such checks. E.g. working with children. Basically the US focus its "privacy" laws on hiding information important to the wealthy, while those at the bottom of the latter have most of their sensitive information easily exposed.

i_am_nomad 7y ago

Imagine the data-driven marketing gold rush that would ensue from having everyone’s tax returns be public. That alone is reason enough not to do it.

LoSboccacc 7y ago

> What's the big secret upper middle class people are juicy targets, rich enough to get some profit, not enough to have proper security. what could go wrong exposing them all in a nice list, indexed and sortable, right?

jacknews 7y ago
Juicy targets for those scheming criminal lower classes? How is public financial exposure different from living in an affluent area, having an expensive car, etc, etc?
- cbg0 7y ago
  Well, you can live in a not-so-affluent area and drive an average car and be very well off, as some people do to avoid attracting attention. On the other hand, someone driving an expensive car is not necessarily well off, there are quite a lot of people living paycheck to paycheck that drive "expensive" cars.
  - jacknews 7y ago
    And so how are you then "at risk" if you live modestly, since there is little to rob? Kidnap? It seems a little ridiculous for most cases.
    - adventured 7y ago
      > And so how are you then "at risk" if you live modestly, since there is little to rob? I know a guy - we'll call him Mr. Frugal - he's worth, I'd estimate, $5 to $10 million based on what I know about his income and assets over the last 30 years (I know a fair bit to make that estimation). An old family friend, he's in his 70s at this point. He built his wealth from nothing, very slowly, and is a notorious penny pincher (the most extreme version of it I've ever seen). He lives in the same house he has owned since the 1960s; it's worth $150k-$175k today. This man would be a very ripe target for any number of schemes. Targeting his bank accounts / investment accounts / personal identity, credit, and so on. That's entirely ignoring any kidnapping or blackmail type risks. It doesn't take more than a few moments of consideration to understand how his finances being made so public would make him a target for all sorts of criminals. That despite the fact that he lives very modestly and there is nothing in his home to indicate such wealth. His wealth is held outside of his home, and that's where you would target him. Frankly, given this is HN, I think it's pretty silly obvious that the physical contents of a home often are not the best target for thieves / criminals today.

sigzero 7y ago

Sorry, it isn't anyone's business but mine and the IRS.

lvh 7y ago

A full tax return contains a lot more information than a summary number (“what you earn and the taxes that flow from it”). What benefit are we trying to achieve and how does applying that to most corporations get that? Saying we should have it for publicly traded companies makes a lot more sense than every private company let alone every person.

jacknews 7y ago
Why should it secret? I mean the gross amount, not the details.

jedimastert 7y ago

There are several problems: 1) There are many people in my life who would make it much more difficult if they knew how much I make. I've kept it from them for a very good reason and they're definitely the kind of people who would just go and look that kind of stuff about random people they know. This would tell them how much I have in investments and property as well. 2) It would necessarily reveal far too much personally identifying information or not serve the purpose you'd want it to. If I had ran away from an abusive or stalking relationship, they could simply look up the state and municipality I pay taxes in, and what company I worked for, making it almost trivial to find me. This could also mean finding (and targeting) anyone that works for a certain company. 3) It would be far too easy for companies to use this information for any number of purposes. I'm currently getting a huge amount of mail about moving companies and brokers because my landlord publicly put my condo up for sale. It could get much worse than that. 4) If I'm the daughter of an extremely conservative family but I'm working at a strip club, even if I'm "not proud" of what I do that give no good cause to expose it to the world. These are the situations from off the top of my head and already it would reveal far more information than I'm comfortable with. "If you have nothing to fear than you have nothing to hide" is never an appropriate excuse to curtail anyone's privacy.

jacknews 7y ago
4) If I'm the daughter of an extremely conservative family but I'm working at a strip club, even if I'm "not proud" of what I do that give no good cause to expose it to the world. Why would "strip club" be exposed? Only the amount you make should be. Your arguments all seem rather selfish. I realise the proposal might be extremely uncomfortable for some, but consider the overall benefits.
- ben509 7y ago
  > Why would "strip club" be exposed? Because the EIN is listed on the W-2, which is filed as part of the return. And if you're going to reply that you meant some abbreviated form of the tax return, then: The "what have you got to hide" class of arguments you're using to insist we expose an abbreviated version would also apply to expanding the abbreviated version to full disclosure. And you might be reasonable enough to stop, but that doesn't mean others will be. People have strong motives to want to dig into political opponents or people they don't like, and we know from history the "what have you got to hide" question and friends are routinely used in trying to eviscerate 4A and 5A rights.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

pjc50 7y ago

In addition to the other reasons not to do this, it's a huge enabler of political or family harassment. It can be made to work in societies that are already pretty open and equal, but in a highly unequal society like America?

jacknews 7y ago
LOL, causality.