Thursday, May 1, 2008

Income Levels Of All Italians Posted Online

From Reuters:

Italians were surprised, and in some cases outraged, on Wednesday to discover their income levels were available for public viewing on an Internet site [agenziaentrate.gov.it].

As part of a crack-down on tax evasion, the outgoing centre-left government made public every citizen’s declared taxable income on the state’s tax website

The data was then taken down later on Wednesday after a complaint from privacy watchdogs and attacks by politicians. Reuters quotes tax minister Vincenzo Visco says, “It’s all about transparency and democracy. I don’t see the problem.”

[Via Spiegel.]

Update: Ema comments, “Just to add some info. In Italy, by the law (and it was from a lot of years) you can go to a local tax office and ask for other people tax declaration. ... They are public in our country. So the only new thing is that they are published online, not a big difference as long anyone can already take this data and publish everywere (some times newspaper did this in the past and none complain about).” [Thanks Ema!]

Income Levels Of All Ital ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (12)

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