can the US Census Bureau ask you what your salary is?

[Doreen Peri]

And if so, are you legally required to tell them?

[stilltrucking]

I thought the next census was in 2010?

[Doreen Peri]

they sent me a very LONG form.. telling me i was arbitrarily selected for a census survey in between the regular census.. (arbitrarily selected... story of my life)... it asked questions about my fuel, my transportation, my education, and more other questions that i can list here 'cause i don't remember... LOTS of questions.. it was PAGES long.. I did the best I could with it then sent it in

i got to the question about my salary and refused to answer.. it wasn't their business in my opinion.. I wrote "not your business"

so today I got a phone call and the lady on the phone asked me the same questions on the form and i repeated the answers and asked her why she was calling me then she got to the salary question and again, i declined

i said, "if you want to know my salary, contact the irs"

*shrug*

i donno if i'm supposed to comply with this or not

why is my salary the census bureau's concern????

i feel a major invasion of privacy here... even the other questions were really delving past the point of privacy, in my opinion

am i obligated by law to answer them?

thanks for your reply, jack

[stilltrucking]

I worked the census in 1990 and 2000. Supposedly the information is completely confidential, not even the IRS can look up specific information about anyone. But what does that mean in these days of the Patriot Act? I always resented the question about how many toilets I have in my dwelling. But I would have answered the question about income. I got a feeling that is not the end of it. Next time I would just surrender to the bureaucracy, but I am a lover not a fighter

Yeah the long form is a bitch, only one percent or less is fortunate enough to get that long one. I read somewhere that American bureaucracy is nothing compared to the French. I think they keep records with quills.

The Census Department called me back in late 2000 to ask if I wanted to work some more on the non-repliers. They told me it was perfectly safe, a sheriff’s deputy would accompany me. These were the guys with the No Trespassing signs, and no niggers or jews allowed posted on their gate. I declined.

[Arcadia]

they want to make you pay more taxes, no doubt.

I decided that in the next censo I'll not be available. I'll find some excuse.
The first and last censo I was involved was the 2001 one. I was in charge of 19 censistas. But the state asigned to me only 9 at the beggining. I have to do the planos of a zone four blocks from the school that in the state/planos had 0 habitantes. I pre/counted more or less 200... So for doing the planos I had no help and the zone was a villa (no blocks, no numbers, more or less a borgian laberynth but more dangerous). I could enter the place thanks to an old lady that lived there and knew more or less everyone and everything... she was analfabeta, the same her daughter but I decided to count them into the 10 more censistas that I needed (the pay was 60 pesos) They did the censo a su manera, the forms were illegible but we corrected each one of them, with the information about the families they told us. The other censistas I chose were pupil's parents and some vecinos that offered their services voluntariamente (some of them completely stoned at the moment). They did a great job, we had a great picnic at school and we were the first ones in finished the thing succesfully. A big equipo. But I wan't do that crazy thing again.