Incidentally, Norway appears among the countries with the lowest perception of corruption in the world: #4 among 180 countries (0). It would be interesting to look if there is any correlation with other countries where income records are publicly available.
Salaries are not the entire income. Corruption is usually some income in addition to a salary, but it may still be reflected in the tax record (that is, it's usually some service, board position, etc, not a suitcase full if cash).
Thus public tax records give a better transparency picture than salary records.
But you can't look it up anonymously. You have to authenticate with your national ID number, and the person will be notified about who looked up their income.
Incidentally, Norway appears among the countries with the lowest perception of corruption in the world: #4 among 180 countries (0). It would be interesting to look if there is any correlation with other countries where income records are publicly available.
0: https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/corruption-rank
All* US government salaries are public record. If you know your neighbors name and department/agency, there’s a good chance you can look them up.
Salaries are not the entire income. Corruption is usually some income in addition to a salary, but it may still be reflected in the tax record (that is, it's usually some service, board position, etc, not a suitcase full if cash).
Thus public tax records give a better transparency picture than salary records.
But you can't look it up anonymously. You have to authenticate with your national ID number, and the person will be notified about who looked up their income.
The way they get around this in Sweden at least is that you pay a company to do the look up for you and then no one knows who looked up what or why.
Can you pay someone to look up this data for you?
Norway is the only one. And you can't look up salary, just their total income, which could include say renting out a vacation home or whatever.
I thought Sweden did the same thing?
Total taxable income, which depending on your family/health/debt situation can be different from the same base income.
The only one? Source?
Finland is another.