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Comment by tormeh | Hacker News Reader

A solution is to just make everyone's tax reports public. The worst that happens is you get tasteless websites ranking who earns and owns most in your area. Really, that's it. Norway tried it and it got a little too tasteless for our politicians, so now it's a government website thing where anyone you view can see that you've viewed them.

You still get some cool stats, though: http://www.dn.no/skattelister/#!/Norge/2013/

These are the tax statistics for 2013. The table at the bottom is the "top score". Position and name on the left with income, tax and wealth to the right, in that order.

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> A solution is to just make everyone's tax reports public.

Hell no.

I don't want to be targeted be advertisers, penalised by insurers, and become a target for robbery because I have my personal information spread around for everyone to see.

There's a lot of personal shit on your tax return. Far more than is even apparent. It can also expose your side business to your employer which could cause issues.

I'm all for salary transparency, but tax returns are pretty private forms that contain an extremely high amount of PI, and can be data mined to expose even more implicit forms of PI.

I totally agree with this. The potential upside of doing this doesn't warrant the massive downside.

Before you know it, you'll be getting bombarded with advertisements.

Besides, in the EU, a society where the average person hates it when someone who is not him is doing well, I'd rather people not know how much I earn.

> EU [...] a society

Don't generalize. The EU has 28 member states, with diverse cultures and social norms. What works in Norway may not work in the southern Italy.

Norway is not a member state of the EU. It has close ties with the EU, but it is not part of the EU.

Criminals and marketers already know how rich you are based on where you live. Published tax forms will have no effect on your probability of being robbed.

It argue tax forms are private, but that's what's at issue here. Many societies think this should be public information. It goes a long way towards preventing graft.

Criminals and marketers already know how rich you are based on where you live.

Not true.Read this:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Millionaire-Next-Door-Surprising/d...

The fact is that most rich people live without showing off. They enjoy having the freedom to do in their lives what they want but they do not want other people kidnapping their children or blackmailing them. Or just people behaving different with them because of the money.

You know Bill Gates used to park his car like everybody else in MS, until it became impossible for him to park without having 1 or 2 people ask him for money(on the tens of thousand of dollars each time).

Or ask me. I am not Bill Gates, but for people in my environment I have "made it".

Just putting my name in my HN account will significantly change how people react to my comments.

"already know how rich you are based on where you live"

Of course... Because if you live at place X you're rich and Y you're poor

That is naive at best.

"Published tax forms will have no effect on your probability of being robbed."

Of course not, so maybe you can start and put your tax info somewhere public.

State employees in California have their pay published yearly. I've never heard of this being even the least bit controversial.

http://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/state-pay/#req...

I don't know what Norway's tax system is like, but there's too much detail in a US tax return. For one thing, it would tell my employer things about my family situation and spouse's employment, that might affect my bargaining power.

For another, since I run a small business, it would reveal my sales volume, which is probably the most important piece of information for someone trying to decide whether or not to compete with me.

The tax returns are not public, just a summary of it. Adjusted income, tax paid and net worth.

Do you mean tax reports, or just the taxable income? At least in Finland only your taxable incomes after deductions are public information, which a decent compromise between transparency and privacy.

Wow. How does that mesh with your infamous "Janteloven"? (a common piece of North European culture where people tend to despise others who visibly do better than average - not just money btw)

In Canada, all public sector employees making more than $100,000 have their names and salaries published by the Government. But they don't adjust for inflation. In another decade or two, literally all public employees will have their salaries published.

In the US, all public sector employees have their salaries/income reported regardless of how much they make. My wife is a nurse at a public university hospital and has her salary published for anyone to see.

That's just for Ontario's provincially-funded public sector employees, not all of Canada.

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