Norwegian tax authorities released the nation’s income tax return figures today, which makes the headlines in the Norwegian newspapers every year. We’re all invited to delve into our friends’ and neighbours’ income and tax figures, as the online newspapers also offer a prominent search function, usually pretty close to the website’s masthead. So that’s what we’re up to over here today, digging into our peers’ private lives.
There’s an element of envy therein, of course, as well as a certain amount of very unsympathetic curiosity, which very much denotes the collective Norwegian soul, as it were; a quality that I’m ashamed to admit we hold. For those interested, I tried to summarise a set of very typical Norwegian traits over at iNorden last year. Please feel free to read.
Also, for those of you who read the language, it would appear that some wish to defend our right to inspect our neighbours’ finances in detail (please see comments). Oh, the humanity!
Anyway, that’s what Norway is all about today. That’s right, there you have us – in a nutshell.
Late addition: I suspect this phenomenon to be exclusively Norwegian, unprecedented in other countries. If you know of similar arrangements in other countries, please leave a comment.
I’ve positioned my blog at Høvik (Oslo area) in the blog portal Bloggurat!
