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Yes. America’s problem is that they use the SSN as a secret. Knowing it means you can impersonate someone. Whereas in Sweden the “person number” is public in
by willvarfar 5y ago
Yes. America’s problem is that they use the SSN as a secret. Knowing it means you can impersonate someone.
Whereas in Sweden the “person number” is public information and identity is authenticated and authorized in other ways (by showing a driving license or using a “bank id” app etc).
In the nordics how much tax you pay (meaning for most people you can just divide by twelve to determine salary) is also public info. As is how much houses sell for etc.
- progre 5y agoThe public library probably have the local "Tax-calendar" (taxeringskalendern). Like an old fashioned phone book except instead of phone numbers it has the taxed income for everyone in your town for the last year (there is of course web sites with this info too but no free service that I know of). Spent an hour at the library looking up my coworkers salaries when prepping for my first pay negotiation many years ago.
- barbarbar 5y agoThat seems like a horrible sideeffect of that system.
- Fnoord 5y agoI wonder if the publicity works well against work via tax evasion. Anyone can combine whatever you do with your ID. If you earn a lot of money black on the side (e.g. via drugs dealing), while your income is public and you got this expensive car, then its not just suspicious. Anyone can look you up, figure out you're a sham, and report you.
- progre 5y agoTrue, people with low income and flashy spending habits regularly attracts the attention of the tax authorities. So a little bit more savvy criminals funnels their black money through a legit company, in effect paying taxes on a little bit of it. Restaurants was/is popular for this (mostly cash). Used car businesses too.
- willvarfar 5y agoYet the reality isn’t so bad. It’s not like the people in the nordic countries think it’s a problem or suffer any because of it. The wage secrecy in the US must be one of the factors contributing to the perpetual inequality.
- greedo 5y agoHouse sales are generally available in the US at your tax assessors website.
- frankosaurus 5y agoCalifornia property tax map: https://www.officialdata.org/ca-property-tax/ https://www.officialdata.org/ca-property-tax/
- phonethrowaway 5y agoASSESSEE NAME AND ADDRESS ARE NOT AVAILABLE ONLINE PER CA GOV CODE §6254.21
- armchairhacker 5y agoSSN isn’t even a well-kept secret, considering you have to give it out for banking, medical, or anywhere else that needs to identify you. We should have a kind of username / password system instead, where everyone has a unique ID and a separate private ID. We could even use something like RSA so you never have to give out your private ID to anyone.
- j_walter 5y agoYou mean like many cryptos are pushing? A pub key and private key...
- kibbleble 5y agoAccording to this article, if you get accidentally declared dead in the US, companies and institutions make their own copies of the death records and they aren't kept in sync with the governments. So even after you become alive again, at any moment, someone might switch the bit on their database, and you become dead to few companies again. https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2019/01/how-exactly-do-you-prove-youre-alive-if-youre-accidentally-declared-dead/ https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2019/01/how-exactly... Kind of interesting how this HN post shows that transparency is important, because fixing an error like erroneous death in other countries isn't as bad as it is in the US. Anyway I ended up writing about it as a use case for crypto, because the blockchain part of a transparent ledger is important for being a companion to the public memory: your birth, your marriage, your relationships with relatives, and your death. https://www.dyingtowrite.com/posts/2021/33_crypto-isnt-what-you-think-it-is/ https://www.dyingtowrite.com/posts/2021/33_crypto-isnt-what-...