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Norway Tax Data Now!
It's the moment nosy Norwegian neighbors have been waiting for -- the release of official records showing the annual income and overall wealth of nearly every taxpayer in the Scandinavian country.
In a move that would be unthinkable elsewhere, tax authorities in Norway have issued the ''skatteliste,'' or ''tax list,'' for 2008 to the media under a law designed to uphold the country's tradition of transparency...
Many media outlets use the tax records to produce their own searchable online databases. In the database of national broadcaster NRK, you can type a subject's name, hit search and within moments get information on what that person made last year, what was paid in taxes and total wealth....
The information had been available to media until 2004, when a more conservative government banned the publication of tax records. Three years later, a new, more liberal government reversed the legislation and also made it possible for media to obtain tax information digitally and disseminate it online.
There has got to be more than one dissertation here. Aside from the obvious issues of studying the distribution of wealth over time and cross-sectionally the three year break raises possibilities such as testing whether making salary and wealth information public encourages people to work more or less and whether public information about income increases or decreases inequality.
Perhaps most interesting--does conspicuous consumption fall and efficiency increase in a society in which income is conspicuous?
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on October 24, 2009 at 07:38 AM in Data Source, Economics, Travels | Permalink
Comments
I doubt conspicuous consumption would be affected -- because, for the most part, it's not directed at people you know. They know your income, or can make a reasonable guess at it. Conspicuous consumption is directed at strangers. And though they may very rarely be as impressed by it as we hope, we keep trying!
Posted by: Hugo Lindgren at Oct 24, 2009 6:00:05 PM
Alex,
There is an interesting discussion of this here: http://www.finlandforthought.net/2007/11/22/transparency-vs-underground-economy-another-myth-busted/
Some quotes:
In Norway, according to the government tax authority’s web site, 45% of people over 18 years old have purchased unreported labour. It was described as “underground economy” labour. There are probably similar levels in Sweden and Finland as well.
The article showed that there was, among all the European countries featured, the most dramatic growth of underground economic activity in the Scandinavian countries between the years 1960-1995.
Posted by: Seward at Oct 24, 2009 6:10:44 PM
Dating.
So norwegian men don't have to signal their wealth and can't pretend to be wealthy. Do they buy expensive cars and dinners at all? Do norwegian women pretend to be interested in their dates profession and function within his firm, even if he is in risk management or quality assurance?
Posted by: Ethnic Austrian at Oct 24, 2009 7:51:05 PM
"So norwegian men don't have to signal their wealth and can't pretend to be wealthy. Do they buy expensive cars and dinners at all? Do norwegian women pretend to be interested in their dates profession and function within his firm, even if he is in risk management or quality assurance?"
Hrm, that's very interesting, tell me more?
Posted by: Norwegian Female at Oct 24, 2009 10:22:37 PM
Does anyone know how to obtain a computer-readable data set with this tax data?
Posted by: Marek at Oct 24, 2009 11:23:14 PM
One society is based on "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". The other is centered on what everyone else earns and what they possess.
Now, tell me: which is the materialistic society?
Posted by: Richard Whiney at Oct 25, 2009 12:31:29 AM
Anyone who has read Marx realizes that socialism is inherently materialistic... it places all of history and historical change and struggles through the view of resource allocation. This used to puzzle me why far-leftists try to say that capitalism is materialistic, but I had an epiphany. I think that in many circles, "materialistic" has been conflated with "wealthy."
Its a form of sour grapes over other people's money. Someone else's society is richer than you... well they are just so "materialistic."
Posted by: Doc Merlin at Oct 25, 2009 12:58:30 AM
Do you think it would be fair to log identities of people who searched someone's records and display them to the "subject"?
(This would, of course, need good authentication mechanisms, but this is feasible in current IT.)
Posted by: Marian Kechlibar at Oct 25, 2009 5:00:20 AM
An interesting thing: When accessing the site from foreign webpages a list of "most shown abroad" comes up. Those persons are mainly norwegian footballer plying their trade in foreign clubs and some other sports stars. Apparently, those persons data must have some interest to foreigners. Could be that these data is never made public and journalist and fans get a rara chance to see the wages paid to footballers...
Posted by: Johan M at Oct 25, 2009 6:58:55 AM
In a move that would be unthinkable elsewhere, tax authorities in Norway have issued the ''skatteliste,'' or ''tax list,'' for 2008 to the media under a law designed to uphold the country's tradition of transparency.
Finland does the same thing, and so does Sweden, so it's not "unthinkable elsewhere".
Posted by: JL at Oct 25, 2009 1:51:02 PM
Japan had a similar system for many years. They stopped it within the last decade or so because of heightened privacy concerns.
Posted by: Joe Jones at Oct 25, 2009 11:10:50 PM
In the world of Internet dating in the US, many women face challenges in determining how much their prospective dates make and how much they are worth. The dating service profiles contain spaces for people to display their income ranges, but it is widely believed that many guys exaggerate their incomes. And, except for a few specialized dating services, there is no space to reveal one's net worth.
As a result, women have developed a number of proxies for income and net worth, such as occupation, neighborhood, etc. These proxies are imperfect at best. Some doctors have modest incomes while some are rich, for example. If the IRS published a searchable database as Norway does, this information would be easily obtainable and search costs would be lowered.
Posted by: Larry at Oct 26, 2009 1:28:24 PM
