Every year during tax season, we hear about how much other people are making. The media discusses both public and private people’s salaries. It is as if people’s IRS filings are a matter of public record.
How is it that they are able to get that information?
Can a citizen do the same?
BUFORD
Comments
executives of companies have to file their salaries in their corporate statements.
Sometimes it’s estimated, or sometimes their salary is made public when it’s negotiated (like maybe a major actor, TV personality or sports figure). The IRS doesn’t give out the info.
The data doesn’t come from the IRS, aside from aggregate information. No individual data is released by the IRS.
Data on executives of publicly traded companies is included in their annual report and various SEC filings.
Many people do participate in salary surveys. While this data generally doesn’t release personally identifiable information, aggregate information is so tightly parsed that it may be able to identify a tiny handful of folks that it applies to. A Zip+4 postal code identifies only a handful of homes so guessing becomes easy.
Companies such as Choice Point and Lexis-Nexis mine huge amounts of data from publicly accessible sources and you’d be shocked at how much information they have on you.
Also any employee that has any or all their salary from taxpayer monies (state, city, county, employees, sometimes even college and hospital employees that get funding) all have their salaries published in different manners, or are available on the web, as taxpayers have the right to know where their money goes.
