We are a country with a high degree of social trust, and that is what I believe makes our country great. I realize that our system is not for everyone and that is fair.
I'm not fundamentally against open tax records like this, but even in Norway there are bad actors and if we are going to play a game of 'how can this be exploited', I think it's definitely possible to do so.
I can't really agree that a 500 limit with notification is 'in practice' the same as no limit with no notification. Data mining and other techniques are possible at scale but not with only 500 records. It also makes exploitation more profitable. Harvesting data for e.g. commercial targeting is not very appealing for n = 500. It's definitely appealing at n = 5 million.
Do the press abuse it in this way? Well, they don't publish stories about doing it. But how would you really know otherwise until some scandal breaks? Are lookups by press orgs also open to public inspection? Maybe you have some freedom of information laws that would let you request that data.
People are notified but that’s hardly going to stop someone seeking to upset you as in the example scenario.
Though as I understand the press can do mass lookups with no notification. Don’t you find that disparity concerning? The idea that the government gets to decide what counts as ‘press’ is already something people from countries that don’t operate that way would consider objectionable. Let alone giving them the power to decide who should be 'outed' for their tax affairs.
To be fair, that's perhaps more an issue of this particular implementation, rather than fundamental. But it's an example of how it can be used to entrench the establishment.