It's semi-public.

Previously, up until 2010-ish?, newspapers etc. could ask for the public tax records from the government and make them searchable.

Now that's not possible, but they are free to list the 10-50-100 richest people in each municipality, the sports people earning the most, the business mean with the highest wealth or lowest tax etc.

Everyone can still look up individuals, though, but they have to log in to a government portal to do it, _and_ the individual being looked up will be notified about it, and who did it.

In Finland the system is similar, but recently changed in a somewhat entertaining way. The tax office used to publish a summary list of highest earning individuals for media's benefit. Then some politicians got involved and demanded that you should be able to deny being on that list. So now they compile a list of people who have denied the tax office from listing them.

Turns out there's no legal grounds for keeping the other list secret, so the media gets a copy of that list through some sort of transparency request. They then ask the tax office for the income information for each of these people. So now the yearly "jealousy lists" are published with all the names just as before, but some names have an asterisk next to them, pinpointing that these people didn't want to be on the list.

It's still public, but now it is behind a login, and people can see who has looked at their tax info.