… in the mid-1980’s, I worked for Exxon in Norway. The ten highest taxpayers in a community had their incomes and tax liability posted on a bulletin board outside of city hall. (About half were Exxon expats. Not because of any fantastic salary, but because the housing allowance for a large family and private schooling for the kids was taxable income to the employee, which needed to be grossed up for Norwegian taxes to make you whole. Someone making $100,000/yr in the US at the time might have a $700k Norwegian taxable income.)
Today that practice has be shifted to the internet where every Norwegian’s tax return is available for public perusal.
One goal of the 1924 tax publicity law was to show whether wealthy Americans and large corporations were paying their fair share of taxes. Newspapers published big stories on the first release of tax payments. Oil heir John D. Rockefeller Jr. was America’s biggest taxpayer, with a tax bill of $7,435,160.41, equal to about $123 million now. Next was automaker Henry Ford, who paid $2,467,400.10, or $41 million today. Douglas Fairbanks and Gloria Swanson were the highest-paying movie stars. Incomes weren’t disclosed, though they could be roughly inferred.
The Big Reveal was short-lived. In 1926, Republican President Calvin Coolidge, under pressure from rich taxpayers, got Congress to end the public tax payments.
I wonder if the lack of transparency leads to greater corruption in the US?
<I wonder if the lack of transparency leads to greater corruption in the US?>
Sure! The corrupt ALWAYS report their bribes and illegal income on their 1040s where we could all see them if tax returns were public.
Wendy
The bribery is completely legal in the US and reported (i.e., the best investment a businessman or wealthy individual can make is to buy himself a congressman through a legal, campaign donation – dark money, or not.) What’s not disclosed is the monetary benefit to the donor of any regulatory or tax changes.
And, of course as the rich pay less, middle-class workers need to pay more taxes to make up the slack. I probably shouldn’t be pointing this out, since I’m benefiting from it. But it’s amazing that poor folks have been bamboozled into believing that “tax privacy” for the rich is some kind of constitutional right. It’s not.
I wonder if the lack of transparency leads to greater corruption in the US?
And greater protection from fraud and other financial crimes?
My desire to protect my personal information is of more value to me than knowing the income of Musk. Additionally, I don’t need to see his income to reduce corruption. We have the FBI that can look at tax returns. Me being able to see such in no way reduces corruption.
I can only imagine the massive amount of fraud and harassment that would be generated if criminals could look up the tax details of all the little ole ladies…
“Mrs. Smith, this is the IRS calling and I see you reported your income as XXXXX.XX on your 2021 tax return. Unfortunately, you under-reported your income by $12,000. It is a common error that many taxpayers made this year due to the Covid relief funds. Your effective tax rate is 15% so we need you to wire $1800 (15% of $12,000) funds to the IRS to avoid tax penalties…”
I see that Norway recently added some additional protections so individuals are notified if someone looks at their data (to help protect from fraud and harassment) but that seems like it would only take one viewing by a nefarious person and the information is no longer protected - it could easily be shared with anyone else after that.
…to show whether wealthy Americans and large corporations were paying their fair share of taxes…
Just love that droll phrase, thrown around as much as “Nazis” with neither of them being defined very well other than you are in a group I don’t like.
Thank for making that important, though I’m sure unintentional point.
When ever the wide gap between the rate of taxation on the middle class vs. the wealthy is mentioned, the complaint is that it’s “wealth envy”, discrimination against white people, etc.
It’s just arithmetic. When you look at these large, multi-generational fortunes, most of the wealth is due to the lack of taxation rather than whatever productive activity the first generation workers were up to. And that’s why the dumbest thing you can do in America, tax-wise, is work for wage & salary income.