{"id":905522,"date":"2026-09-25T23:26:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T23:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/905522\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T23:26:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T23:26:12","slug":"why-everybodys-tax-return-is-publicly-available-in-norway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/905522\/","title":{"rendered":"Why everybody\u2019s tax return is publicly available in Norway"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ever wanted to know how much your co-workers and neighbours make in a year?<\/p>\n

That information is readily available, so long as you live in Norway<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"People<\/p>\n

People enjoying the summer at central station street in Oslo, Norway\u00a0iStock<\/p>\n

Every year the Norwegian tax office releases every resident’s tax return.<\/p>\n

For anybody curious as to how much anyone else makes, all they have to do is search for it on their website.<\/p>\n

Public disclosure of wealth is a point of pride in Norway, where for centuries tax assessments were nailed on town hall walls.<\/p>\n

“Free access to information has been a fundamental right in Norway’s open and democratic society for many years,” the tax office’s Director General Nina Schanke Funnemark told nine.com.au.<\/p>\n

“Information about individual income, wealth and tax has been available to the general population since the 19th century.”<\/p>\n

Curious people are limited to looking up 500 people or businesses every month, though they have to log in to do so.<\/p>\n

That wasn\u2019t always the case. Until 2014, anybody could search anybody else\u2019s tax return in complete anonymity.<\/p>\n

As a consequence, the day when tax returns were posted made the tax office one of the most popular websites in Norway.<\/p>\n

\"Norway<\/p>\n

Norway prides itself on making its tax records public.\u00a0iStock<\/p>\n

But concerns were raised about the safety of those whose wealth was exposed.<\/p>\n

If anybody could secretly discover how much money somebody had, it could make them a target for burglars or extortionists.<\/p>\n

Since then, anonymity was removed from searches. If you want to find out how much money someone earns, they can find out they looked you up.<\/p>\n

When that reform was introduced in 2014, searches dropped by 90 per cent.<\/p>\n

“When you look someone up, that is logged to a search log which is visible to the person whose tax record you viewed,” Funnemark said.<\/p>\n

“Similarly, you can see a list of everyone who has accessed your tax records.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Even high-profile Norwegians cannot keep their incomes a secret.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

Norway’s public disclosure laws are broad, but it is part of a tradition that is common across Scandinavia.<\/p>\n

In Finland<\/a>, all residents who made more than 150,000 euros a year have their income information made public.<\/p>\n

That data can be accessed without a login, allowing people to search anonymously.<\/p>\n

The day those records are released every year is colloquially known in Finland as “national envy day”.<\/p>\n

In Sweden<\/a>, tax returns are publicly available but not especially easy to access.<\/p>\n

There’s no website where you can search for names.<\/p>\n

Instead you have to call or email the Swedish Tax Agency and ask directly for a specific name. They will then send you the information in the mail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ever wanted to know how much your co-workers and neighbours make in a year? That information is readily…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":905523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99],"class_list":["post-905522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=905522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/905523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=905522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=905522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=905522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}