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Language: en

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In Britain, the reaction to the Panama Papers
leak has been a bit weird.

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Politicians have been releasing summaries
of their tax returns,

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all falling over each other to try and prove
that they haven't got any offshore accounts

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or arguing strongly that they shouldn't have
to prove

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that they don't have any offshore accounts.

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One of them said that requiring politicians
to have public tax returns

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was "reminiscent of the Stasi or the KGB".

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Welcome to Norway. Behind me is the Oslo tax
office.

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And if you want to know what a politician
earns here, you can just ask them.

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It's not just politicians, though.

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It's everyone. Tax returns in Norway, Sweden
and Finland have been public for years:

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the countries differ on how much detail they
provide,

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and whether you need to have a good reason
for asking --

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but fundamentally the amount you earn is public
knowledge here.

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Now, at this point, we could do the news report
thing,

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and cut to interviews with Norwegian people
on the street,

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asking how they feel about this.

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Or: we could science it,

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and look at a paper by economist Ricardo Perez-Truglia
of Microsoft Research.

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That paper combines two things: first, the
Norwegian Monitor Survey,

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which, every two years, surveys a representative
sample of Norwegians

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and includes questions about happiness and
life satisfaction.

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And second, when finding out someone else's
tax details went from

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"you have to go here and look through a book,

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"and you've only got three weeks in the year
to do it"

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to "a newspaper has published everything online
and there's a search box".

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The paper concludes that wage transparency,

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that knowing whether you're keeping up with
the Joneses,

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or the Johansens,

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doesn't make the populace happier overall.

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Instead, it increases the happiness gap:

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knowing for certain you're being paid more
than your neighbours

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makes you more likely to be satisfied with
your life.

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Knowing for certain that you're not doing
as well? That hurts.

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You can still look up people's tax returns
online in Norway, by the way.

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But lately, you have to log in as a taxpayer
yourself,

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and everyone can see the records of who's
been searching for them.

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That's a whole different social game right
there.

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But there is another good argument for wage
transparency:

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that it makes for a fairer world.

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There's no strong data on that yet, not that
I can find,

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and it'd be extremely difficult to measure.

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But there's some good anecdotal evidence,

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particularly from an engineer at Google who
created a spreadsheet

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where their colleagues could voluntarily share
their salaries.

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The story around it, and how management reacted
to that, is well worth a read.

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And there's also evidence that,

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although politicians might not like it,

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public disclosure of tax returns does reduce
tax evasion.

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So does this mean I'm about to share my tax
return,

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and report to the world how much I made last
year?

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No. Because I'm British,

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because we don't talk about money,

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you might find out something you don't want
to know...

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or you might hurt someone else.

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So my reaction to wage transparency is the
same as a lot of people's:

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you first.

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