If it is public knowledge, then fraud becomes very hard. Also part of the egalitarian society that everyone should more or less earn the same, and nothing shoul

If it is public knowledge, then fraud becomes very hard. Also part of the egalitarian society that everyone should more or less earn the same, and nothing should be secret (at least to the gov). That all your income and assets are automatically sent into the tax office by your employers, estate agents, banks make fraud even harder. But it does make your self-assessment super easy, just mostly log in and approve the pre-calculated assessment. The digital transformation 15-20 years ago did have some issues initially when it became super easy to find out the income for all your neighbours, family and friends. It was open to all for a few years in Norway. I have to admit I could not resist the temptation then as well. They have subsequently tightened access. You can request to see someone' details, but you have to be logged in and they will be notified who viewed it. I think journalists still do that to view celebrities details every year as there are always articles in April about their earnings. Thankfully all the anonymised statistics are still public knowledge so you can easily compare how your earnings are with other people in your age group in your area etc. You think you can still see a top 10 of whom paid the most tax in your area, had the largest income, or have the most assets. Handy for some more dubious people, probably. My view is that public tax information is a good thing, on the whole. It creates greater transparency and harder to hide discrimination. It works in a society that is quite egalitarian, low crime and the public mostly trusts the government. It may not work as well in many other places.