Should be trivial to spot by just looking at their water bill, no?
I would assume watering a garden consumes more than a swimming pool.
French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)
51–60 of 174 posts
Re: French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)
#52You can without a doubt take this even further and train it to detect all sorts felonies. The felonies will mainly be simple ones that perpetrated by the lower and middle class. Builder working without a bill? Crosscheck income with an country wide average and their spending history. Nailed. Waitresses working without paying tax? Crosscheck size of establishment with formally employees. Nailed. Of course, this not on…
Working class and even middle class people in France (and most of the world) definitely don't have swimming pools. No doubt you're right about the general case, though.
Re: French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)
#53It’s interesting they have time for this, but going after the big fish is too much. In the Netherlands we lack the capacity to go after tax evasion using non profits. Untold millions go to waste every year, but they have enough capacity to go after small fish and their “fraud”. ( https://nl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toeslagenaffaire , this is a big one where thousands of families were sent into 30k-150k debt for a “mistak…
Re: French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)
#54Social media is weird when it comes to taxation. Are you for taxes or not? Is it the poor that are buying these un-taxed pools?
Re: French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)
#55It’s interesting they have time for this, but going after the big fish is too much. In the Netherlands we lack the capacity to go after tax evasion using non profits. Untold millions go to waste every year, but they have enough capacity to go after small fish and their “fraud”. ( https://nl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toeslagenaffaire , this is a big one where thousands of families were sent into 30k-150k debt for a “mistak…
Re: French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)
#56You can without a doubt take this even further and train it to detect all sorts felonies. The felonies will mainly be simple ones that perpetrated by the lower and middle class. Builder working without a bill? Crosscheck income with an country wide average and their spending history. Nailed. Waitresses working without paying tax? Crosscheck size of establishment with formally employees. Nailed. Of course, this not on…
Re: French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)
#57Of course, tax auditors could just open any popular online map for a particular area, look at satellite view and do a quick count and then look up the addresses for that area. Diff that with the list of properties that do pay their taxes and job done, Tedious work and AI speeds that up. But it's not hard and the revenue is probably worth it. Also, from an AI point of view pool detection this isn't exactly rocket science.
And of course, a lot of these pools are actually mapped in open street map. I just checked this in a random part of France: 43.99847,4.92940 and compared with the satellite view in Google Maps. Lots of nice little pools that look like they are correctly mapped. An enterprising tax auditor might just export a list with a simple overpass query and them geocode them with nominatim to get the address.
Re: French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)
#58I m not sure if the idea of going after pools is a good one though. Is the water shortages really that big that people are not allowed to even have blow-up tubs anymore? Pools are good for cooling down in the summer. Is it better if they use electricity and A/C instead? The worst thing is that other countries are copying this anti-pool thing because it's populist .
Yep
> Pools are good for cooling down in the summer. Is it better if they use electricity and A/C instead?
There is not much A/C in France/Europe. Go to a lake or a public pool instead, no need for A/C.
> The worst thing is that other countries are copying this anti-pool thing because it's populist .
It is necessary. Not populist, necessary. We can't afford to just scream "freedom" or "populism" every time the upper middle-class wants to enjoy an environment-destroying luxury. Think of the freedom to live of the others. Is a pool necessary ? Of fsking course not. Don't try to color this as a basic need. You don't need a pool to cool down in the summer. You also don't need a 2 tons car, you don't need to travel to the other side of the world for your holidays, and those things are very detrimental to everyone, you included.
Re: French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)
#59> As property taxes are based on the rental value of the property, improvements mean an increase in taxes. A typical pool of 30 sq metres would be taxed at about an extra €200 a year. Sounds like the tax authority just DDoSed itself with this, because processing all these changes is going to take some time.
Re: French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)
#60You can without a doubt take this even further and train it to detect all sorts felonies. The felonies will mainly be simple ones that perpetrated by the lower and middle class. Builder working without a bill? Crosscheck income with an country wide average and their spending history. Nailed. Waitresses working without paying tax? Crosscheck size of establishment with formally employees. Nailed. Of course, this not on…
Working class and even middle class people in France (and most of the world) definitely don't have swimming pools. No doubt you're right about the general case, though.