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Norway Is the Only Country with Public Tax Returns (2018)
- TheChaplain 5y agoThe issue with this kind of information being public is that people become targets, especially the elderly. In Sweden you can even find out the name and address by looking up the vehicles license plate, with one notable event with a guy who were assaulted in his home after a minor traffic dispute.
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- dustintrex 5y agoIt isn't though: tax returns are public in Sweden and Finland too.
- tagoregrtst 5y agoAnd italy? And a terrible idea.
- anonporridge 5y agoWhy?
- WalterBright 5y agoJust the other day, there was a thread on HN about how terrible it was that employers could look at a candidate's salary history before making an offer.
- throwawayboise 5y agoFor a lot of state/government employees in the USA, salaries are public record. It's not really that uncommon.
- Skinney 5y agoIn Norway, this is normally asked during the interview. If the employeer would look up your tax returns, you’d be notified of it and, at least for me, it would be such a huge red flag that I would almost unconditionally decline an offer.
- paulryanrogers 5y agoCouldn't they just buy the data from companies that scrape it and sell access more discretely?
- Skinney 5y agoYou need to login with your BankID (national auth provider) which is bound to your personal id number, and which is illegal to use for machine access, so no.
- vegai_ 5y agoYeah, that kinda sounds bad, but then again, if your salary is below what you should deserve, you just change jobs again with a higher salary request.
- paulryanrogers 5y agoIn the US job changes aren't trivial. Health plans impact provider networks and coverage. In some areas employers demand in office with which reduces the pool of available employers.
- hetspookjee 5y agoI'm torn on the subject, for one I think the transparancy is good, especially when viewed in the public sphere, but on the other hand, like HN mentioned: it's bad that the "ladder syndrom" might occur: e.g. one only hops a certain % in salary. On the other hand, one might also view what all the collegues are earning and the "past" wouldn't be a relevant anymore, but rather the merits one might bring to a company. In addition I find tax Returns different from salary history, though for most indeed would be the same. and finally I find it not the same that for the Experian flavor one has to pay to get some info, where the Norway variant is free for all to see.
- tagoregrtst 5y agoBecause its a deeply personal piece of information for many people. Personally, Id rather have my medical history available to the public than my personal wealth or income (and Im loath to give that up!). No one except my wife knows how much I make. In the case of my parents, my mom has never known how much money my dad makes. They may seem strange to you, it may seem barbaric or backwards. That’s irrelevant - I’m firmly entrenched in this position and wont help you release this data (through my vote, and legal lawsuits, clearly). You can’t dismiss me as an eccentric American behind the more enlightened Europeans - Im not American, I am and grew up in Europe, I just live in the US. Nor am I or did I grow up rich. Growing up, my dad whenever my dad was doing the bills he joked he was feeding a blackhole (debt). We never knew how big this hole was, but we knew where it came from - even a hard working engineer has a steep financial hill when you’re from a poor country. You really must understand ours is a deep seated difference in points of view. My mom has never asked how much my dad made, my dad has yet to tell her. My mom had a vague idea how much she could spend (her guesstimate was very good) my dad never enquired what she spent money on. He himself never spent any money except on us. The result is they never fought over money, the most common marital problem (I guarantee you this. Both my parents would rather be paupers than put money between their relationship - they are both very stoic and devoted to each other). I doubt this would have been the case had my mom ever displayed any interest in money. So what does making my tax returns or my salary (probably the lowest among my colleagues) publicly available mean to us? It means inviting strangers into our intimate space, more intimate than the fact that I have a rare auto immune disease Ill share with a random person on the internet (anonymized, of course :P ). You see, there are people who view this information not merely as a means to a more just society (whatever that means anymore) but as a very intimate part of their family life. Just because some cannot see that doesn’t mean it isn't real.
- paulryanrogers 5y agoWhy consider it intimate data? Fear it will cause spousal resentment, impact future offers, being targeted by gold diggers or grifters? Wealth tied to identity?
- ramphastidae 5y ago
- neximo64 5y agoIf it's really public in those places could you please cite the leaders of each countries tax returns with a direct link?
- jks 5y agoIn Finland newspapers get the data and run their own search engines of the highest earners. For example: https://verokone.hs.fi/ https://verokone.hs.fi/
- helsinkiandrew 5y agoIn Finland, to stop a free for all of 'nosy parkers' you have to physically visit a tax office to view the information. This results in a few newspaper reports of the biggest payers around the time the information is released (https://yle.fi/news/3-12181764 https://yle.fi/news/3-12181764) and then everyone looses interest. https://www.vero.fi/en/About-us/finnish-tax-administration/data-security-and-information-access/public-information-on-taxes/public-information-on-individual-income-taxes/ https://www.vero.fi/en/About-us/finnish-tax-administration/d...
- vidarh 5y agoThis used to be exactly how it was in Norway too. It changed when internet got popular and everything was dumped online with no restrictions for a few years until people realised how much more invasive that got than the prior system, so now you have to log in and people can see whether or not their name has been looked up if you do it online.
- dheera 5y agoHow do rich people who aren't yet filthy-rich enough to have their own bodyguards deal with personal security in these places? In the US, if you hypothetically had, say, $10M net worth, you'd be best to not let anyone know, and stay under the radar. If you have a billion then it doesn't matter, go all out and hire your own 24/7 security team.
- s1artibartfast 5y agoYou make sure crime doesn't pay. Simple as that. Countries with kidnapping are ones with very porous policing. You can go into any affluent neighborhood in the USA and see people worth 10m plus walking around with no bodyguards.
- paulryanrogers 5y agoKey word there is neighborhood. Even in the Midwest US there can be very 'safe' neighborhoods right next to very unsafe ones, and the difference in the police resources from one block to the next is palpable. Forcing construction of mixed income neighborhoods (much like forced busing of students) very quickly improves schooling and policing outcomes, though sadly more affluent folks often move out soon thereafter.
- mongol 5y agoThey start to move abroad. Seriously. Violent crime such as robbery at gunpoint in your own home, car jackings etc is an increasing problem which worry many in Sweden. It is perhaps not common but is increasing with a worrying pace.
- wobblybubble 5y agoThat seems like such a middle class worry. I don’t see how people with tens of millions of USD (or equivalent of course) are more susceptible to opportunistic crimes like robberies and car jackings. If anything they are less susceptible since they can move to nicer places.
- brtkdotse 5y agoI’m Sweden at least, it requires a little bit of hoop jumping and has prompted several grey zone companies to spring up. The companies get a publishing license, effectively giving them the same free speech protection as the press. They then request all the information from the government and offer it in a easy UI, for a nominal charge of course.
- fy20 5y agoAnyone who is a contractor - working through a personal service company - effectively makes their tax returns public in the UK as well.
- jb1991 5y agoYou should read the article because it talks about the distinctions between those three countries very clearly.
- aliswe 5y ago> In Sweden and Finland, people can find out about anyone else’s tax returns just by making a phone call, but Norway is the only country where you can just look up that information on a government website. You can also visit the closest Skatteverket and use their computers, I used to do it as a kid... Oh and you dont have to speak to anyone or identify yourself to do it either.
- supernova87a 5y agoOn a side note, I found the point interesting about policing it by publishing/logging who has searched for your tax info (and limiting people to 500 per month). Although, in today's age of data sharing, it's not like that is a great barrier against wide publication of factual info. I had some kind of similar idea about when you share your online / phone location with friends, but are worried about someone just using it constantly to monitor you. Make it clear to everyone that every <x> times, their use of it will be logged and published to the owner, so that they know they are also being kept track of...
- riffraff 5y agoAs someone else noted, tax returns are public in Italy too, but you have to request them explicitly for a given person. Newspapers can and do publish analysis of tax returns by politicians, for example. Some years ago the tax authority decided to actually publish everything online for ease of access and the country exploded, so the privacy authority told them not to do that.
- vidarh 5y agoThe last part is similar to what happened in Norway: For a couple of years it became a free-for-all, and then they put in place a login and notifies people if they get looked up. Doesn't stop newspapers from prying into politicians and well known people, but stops most of the casual prying into friends and family or potential hires.
- vinni2 5y agoIt used to be like you could google someone’s name and you could get their tax returns. But now you need to login to tax portal and the person will be notified that you looked up their tax returns.
- inglor_cz 5y agoDo you have to be a Norwegian tax resident to look at other people's returns, or do they honor random logins from Russia or China? (Probably the former, but it is still an interesting thought experiment on levels of trust across the world.)
- seibelj 5y agoI don’t want how much money I make known by anyone I don’t want to know. How quickly people who advocate for privacy and data ownership acquiesce when it comes to salary data. The transparent-salary movement is a terrible crime against privacy.
- igorkraw 5y agoWhy? Honest question from someone with a radical-transparency conviction
- schoen 5y agoApart from other more ideological considerations, there are two obvious practical ones: * having people know you have more money than they do can make them jealous of you; it might also motivate family members to ask you for money and to feel angry with you if you don't share it * having people know you have a lot of money can make them interested in robbing you or in kidnapping you or your family members for ransom (especially in developing countries, but to some extent anywhere in the world) Those seem like considerations on par with those people might bring up around other kinds of privacy interests: information that can make people feel negatively toward you, and information that can incentivize people to target you for harm. (edit: I realized these issues are both more focused on how much money you have rather than on how high your salary is -- stocks rather than flows -- although the two are often correlated)
- igorkraw 5y agoIf the country has a wealth tax it will also show how much you have, regarding your edit.
- seibelj 5y agoI am an individualist and I think every person has various things they are good at and things they are not-so-good-at. No two people are alike. However some say that everyone should be paid the same, when IMO no 2 people accomplish a task the same way. If no one is alike, then why should everyone be paid an equal wage? I like the idea of some super-skilled people making more than others. If we standardized all salaries it would hurt the top more than it helps the bottom. So no, I don’t want everyone being treated like replaceable cogs, and if I’m paid more than others then why should I have to defend myself? Radical transparency is a strategy to make people feel like they owe the collective, when my goal is to make everyone feel like an individual.
- FredPret 5y agoNorway has many great ideas but this isn’t one of them
- igorkraw 5y agoWhy? I think it's great, salary transparency, makes tax evasion harder, less information about your life's than is sent to credit agencies for them to leak or Facebook...
- sandebert 5y agoPlease don't just throw out an opinion without explaining the reasoning behind it.
- FredPret 5y agoIncome is very personal information. I’d rather have naked pics of me on the internet than my income. I’ve had friendships ruined because one party earned significantly more/less than the other and this was accidentally disclosed. For a government to make this highly valuable and personal information available to the public strikes me as utterly dystopian. In every society, there’s a tradeoff between the individual and the collective, and I think it all works better when it’s heavily skewed towards the individual. Society has no moral right to nose around in one’s bank account.
- igorkraw 5y agoWhich individuals though? This seems to highly benefit th many poorer people, at the expense of mainly the rich elite. As a member of that elite who understands where my quality of life comes from (robust social contract enabling wealth creation through cooperation without friction)and where my place is (I'm top 30-15% of my home country but no higher, but was born into a life that could have easily launched me into the top 10% if I was a smarter/more disciplined person) , this seems fine
- FredPret 5y ago
- igorkraw 5y agoThis is one of the few things that people seem to take their privacy serious on and I don't get it, possibly because I'm too poor and trust the social fabric too much to worry about people using my tax return to scope kidnapping me. The information is inevitably less detailed than what gets siphoned off to Credit card companies and their downstream data processors, less detailed than the ad tracking which monitors my everyday life and less than what people already share on social media. And the state already has your info! The only thing that changes for me is that now you can't lie about your finances anymore, so no actings above your station and no acting humble while being rich. Naïve but serious question: what are the serious downsides aside from "my social circle would collapse in jealousy and rage", which sounds like a problem with the social circle?
- colmmacc 5y agoOne serious downside is when negotiating purchases like cars, houses, or anything else with some aspect of deal-making. It can go both ways. A more transparently high earner may get a much worse deal on a car than they otherwise would have, and a modest earner may be locked out of a house sale that they can afford because they got the money together but the seller feels it wouldn't be appropriate for the neighborhood.
- igorkraw 5y agoThe first one I'd call "system working as intended" ,the second one would be illegal in my country.
- peytoncasper 5y agoThe system is working as intended if a rich person is discriminated against based on their wealth, but illegal if a poor person is discriminated against based on their wealth?
- igorkraw 5y agoIf you can afford a house you can afford it. You said "they don't fit into that neighborhood", you can't deny a sale at an advertised asking price for "not fitting into the neighborhood", that triggers discrimination laws. In a negotiated setting where you can hide that motivation, everything is open, but we as a society have settled on price discrimination being okay (see, first class tickets), this simply evens the playing field so the rich can't hide their wealth. Also, if it really pains you, as a wealthy person you can easily get the poor person treatment by giving away your wealth, so I find these "both types of discrimination" rhetoris inconsistent anyway.
- TrackerFF 5y agoOur (Norwegian) public tax returns show income, fortune/net worth, and taxes paid. But there's a big caveat: The reported figures are net numbers, so the income for example, will include capital gains, and exclude all deductibles. There are lots of deductibles here, so for a salaried worker without any capital investments, the income number will be lower than their actual income, due to deductibles. Likewise, if you have lots of appreciating investments (stock that pays dividends, sale of stock, whatever), your income will be higher than your salaried income. Same for fortune (or net worth). If you have more debt than equity, then your net worth will show up as zero. Basically, if you own a house worth $1MM, and have $1MM in some other debt/loan, your net worth will show up as zero...even though that debt could practically be at zero rate, from a relative, or whatever. So, all in all, it's a neat concept that was (AFAIK) designed for more transparency, as well as lowering financial crime (i.e, why is your neighbor driving a lambo, if he's on gov. benefits?) - but it's not optimal for things like checking salaries. Lots of people are very interested in salaries, in order to have some number when negotiating their own salary. Just one example.
- palmy 5y agoIn addition, you will be notified if anyone accesses your records. This defers most sane people from looking up the records of family members, friends and neighbors.
- inglor_cz 5y agoI would expect some nosy person to access everyone's records, store them and then either charge others for looking at them secretly, or pranking the country by releasing them into the wild.
- TrackerFF 5y agoYes, right after the change (back in the day, you could view anyone without them getting notified, or being able to see who'd been checking them out), a small cottage industry of "snoopers" popped up. They charged something like $1 - $3.5 pr. query. But that seemed to have died out a bit now. I think most people simply don't care enough to check out other people, while risking to come off as a snooper.
- sys_64738 5y agoWhat I get paid is nobody’s business but mine. I am forced to pay tax but the least privilege rules means that info should be used for just that and no more. Yet all sorts of parasite can suck my info against my will. No, unacceptable as I can’t opt out of such BS.
- helloworld11 5y agoI'll take a moment to mention that policies like this are something that only people in relatively secure countries with firm rule of law and reliable police would applaud. I shiver to think of fully public tax records in any nation where organized crime, kidnapping, corrupt police/prosecutors and general criminality are common.
- jdmoreira 5y agoIt's not. Sweden also has public tax returns. They are just either in printed form per post code or paywalled for a specific individual. I think this is by design to make it harder to pry.
- IXxXI 5y agoNorway has a small population of only 5 million. And shouldn't be compared to larger nations with greater populations. Norway doesn't scale.