According to one embodiment of the present invention, a method of transferring filters for operations in a distributed system comprises generating at each source node a first filter of a first size. The first filter indicates elements of objects that need not be processed for an operation. Each source node generates one more second filters of a second size less than the first size. Each generated second filter is based on a prior generated filter with each location representing a plurality of locations from the prior generated filter. A second filter is transferred from each source node to each of destination node. The elements of the objects to remove for the operation are determined based on the transferred second filters. Embodiments of the present invention further include a system and computer program product for transferring filters in a distributed system in substantially the same manners described above.