Comment by niemenmaa
3 years ago
Interesting to read about the Norway's system! I would guess that "If you search for anyone, they can see that you did" is pretty fair but can hinder one's curiosity for searching the information.
Also interesting that public lists for media is no longer distributed. How have media outlets taken this?
Here in Finland Tax office publishes lists of all over 100k earners to media and they are published as public lists online [0]. In addition to that, anyone's income information can be accessed at tax offices or by phone, so this does not leave a trace [1].
After GDPR, one is allowed to prevent one's information to be released to media by objecting to this. However media can still access and release your data via phone or tax office's computer [2] and in 2021 media outlets won a case in Administrative Court where they can also get a list of those who objected [3]. So basically after tax records go public, journalists just take this list and make the calls.
But yeah, as SP mentioned, this is very different approach than in the link of this thread.
[0]: (in Finnish) https://www.is.fi/verotiedot/
[1]: https://www.vero.fi/en/About-us/finnish-tax-administration/d...
[2]: https://www.vero.fi/en/About-us/finnish-tax-administration/d...
In Norway if someone looks up your income you can see who did it since they need to login with an approved ID system linked to your social security number. So i practice most people do not look up other people they know.
That sounds like something that can easily be masked by going through a middleman.
You can check the financials of any company without registering: https://www.180.no/
> Also interesting that public lists for media is no longer distributed. How have media outlets taken this?
Media is free to write about, and have searchable lists, for parts of the info. Typically something that is of "public interest", e.g the highest earners.
The rules behind this I believe is a bit vague. I read up on the legal text for this now, and it basically states that they can get access to the lists as long as they sign an agreement where they, among other things, need to promise not to publish the full list.
> Typically something that is of "public interest", e.g the highest earners.
Oh okay, so then it is pretty similar than in Finland!