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French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)

theguardian.com

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Re: French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)

#61

Post by lnsru »

JCharante wrote: post #56
l5870uoo9y wrote: post #11

You 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…

Why shouldn't crimes perpetrated by lower and middle class be persecuted? The rich already pay a disproportionately large amount of taxes and then society excuses lower and middle class persons from paying their small share of taxes.

Rich optimize taxes due to many loopholes in tax system using insanely well paid consultants specializing exactly in that. While middle class gives at least 2/3 of the pre-tax money for taxes, so called insurances and weird things like petrol tax in Germany.

Re: French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)

#62

Post by ithkuil »

l5870uoo9y wrote: post #11

You 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…

The main reason I'm ok to have low/middle class pay their fair share of taxes and not have "Schwartzarbeit" is that that's not fair to other low/middle class workers who cannot as easily avoid paying their taxes

Re: French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)

#63

Post by mandmandam »

JCharante wrote: post #56
l5870uoo9y wrote: post #11

You 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…

Why shouldn't crimes perpetrated by lower and middle class be persecuted? The rich already pay a disproportionately large amount of taxes and then society excuses lower and middle class persons from paying their small share of taxes.

> The rich already pay a disproportionately large amount of taxes

INCOME taxes.

Which is NOT the same as WEALTH.

If you're going to talk about "the rich" then you need to differentiate between the wealthy ownership class (the people who own things like the debt for our 20 trillion dollar illegal wars, or your mortgage), and the software engineers and doctors who get spooked by any talk of raising taxes.

This guy explains the issue in simple terms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXP8gH0wddE - He's British, but it applies to the US also.

Re: French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)

#64

Post by empiricus »

jylam wrote: post #58
seydor wrote: post #26

I 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 .

> Is the water shortages really that big that people are not allowed to even have blow-up tubs anymore? 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 necessar…

What is this? Ode to poverty? There is enough stuff in the worlds for everybody to have 10 houses, 10 cars, enough water to waste, etc. We just need to make some effort to organize ourselves (and of course stop using fossil fuels, they are not enough).

Re: French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)

#65

Post by zo1 »

lnsru wrote: post #61
JCharante wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't crimes perpetrated by lower and middle class be persecuted? The rich already pay a disproportionately large amount of taxes and then society excuses lower and middle class persons from paying their small share of taxes.

Rich optimize taxes due to many loopholes in tax system using insanely well paid consultants specializing exactly in that. While middle class gives at least 2/3 of the pre-tax money for taxes, so called insurances and weird things like petrol tax in Germany.

I don't want to be snark about it, but why not make a SAAS or product out of such loopholes? Commoditize them, and have economies of scale work.

Of course, my first thought as to why that hasn't been possible is because there is a "lower bound" cost to such things that on a meta-level only really works if the rich do it. E.g. the $5k cost and $100k minimum bank balance to have a bank account in tax haven country X, and the $1600 yearly company registration fees to maintain a shell company in country Y.

Re: French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)

#66

Post by tromp »

mandmandam wrote: post #63
JCharante wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't crimes perpetrated by lower and middle class be persecuted? The rich already pay a disproportionately large amount of taxes and then society excuses lower and middle class persons from paying their small share of taxes.

> The rich already pay a disproportionately large amount of taxes INCOME taxes. Which is NOT the same as WEALTH. If you're going to talk about "the rich" then you need to differentiate between the wealthy ownership class (the people who own things like the debt for our 20 trillion dollar illegal wars, or your mortgage), and the software engineers and doctors who get spooked by any talk of raising taxes. This guy expl…

Some countries charge a wealth tax on your total worldwide assets.

Here in the Netherlands that amounts to over 1% of total wealth.

Re: French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)

#67

Post by ElFitz »

cm2187 wrote: post #27
pyrale wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Taxes is what sends children to school, pays for hospitals and funds the infrastructure everyone uses. People love to hear about AI breakthroughs that could transform education or health, why should they not be happy about this? I have many doubts about the actual technical solution, but I wouldn't discard the work because it's for taxation purpose.

Taxes are pissed away in France in gigantic useless bureaucracies, useless projects and vote-buying redistribution, to the point that core state functions (police/justice, army, education or healthcare system) are paradoxically starved of funds and dysfunctional. Sadly the only way to curb this spending incontinence seems to starve the state of revenues.

You forgot jet flights because, you understand, there were no business class seat available on commercial flights at the right time. I thought it was an isolated incident (the random undersecretary who otherwise couldn’t have made it on time for the government’s school book picture), but it appears to not be so isolated [1] [2].

On some random weird "missions" [3] paid €9.000 a month, or life-long supposed "postings", granted at the discretion of the government, such as our dear ambassador to the penguins [4] [5] (lovingly called "ambassador to the poles", although the previous one, "Michel Rocard", a life-long politician, was apparently also known as "Rocky the Penguin").

And that’s just off the top of my head.

If we were to focus less on the rather questionable spending, and more on the doubtfully useful, we could cite the public health system, where it seems that more than a third of the money goes to the administrative side, and not actual healthcare workers [6], with a significantly bigger share of bureaucratic employees than most European countries.

And I’m pretty sure starving the state of revenue will not curb any of this. It’s not like they’ve shown they were sensible, or acting in good faith.

[1] https://www.ladepeche.fr/article/2010/03/29/806733-ministre-...

[2]: https://la1ere.francetvinfo.fr/vol-350000-euros-autres-gouve...

[3]: https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2010/06/09/boutin-c...

[4]: https://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/frais-d-ambassadrice-des-p...

[5]: https://www.liberation.fr/checknews/2019/09/18/est-il-vrai-q...

[6]: https://www.challenges.fr/entreprise/sante-et-pharmacie/a-l-...

Re: French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)

#68

Post by contrarian1234 »

l5870uoo9y wrote: post #11

You 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…

This degenerates into worse subjective and discriminatory systems

Just think of traffic cops on the highway in the US. If you have big tits and a pretty smile you get off with a warning, but if you're black with resting bitch face then you'll get a ticket or maybe even some K9 action

Either enforce laws or get rid of the laws. If you don't have a system to track swimming pools then don't tax swimming pools.

In the worse dystopian case (see Russia and a lot of the third world) the endless unenforced laws become a means for the govt to harass people they don't like

Re: French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)

#69

Post by seydor »

jylam wrote: post #58
seydor wrote: post #26

I 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 .

> Is the water shortages really that big that people are not allowed to even have blow-up tubs anymore? 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 necessar…

for the last point, i knwo that other mediterranean countries are copying that taxation on pools , even if AC is very common and very heavily used in the sommer, and even if there isnt a water shortage

The rest is the same tired usual drivel

Re: French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)

#70

Post by gniv »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #57

The only interesting thing here is how this rule was simply not being enforced by anyone. Happens a lot with tax rules in many countries. Having rules is one thing, doing the leg work to enforce them is another thing. And tax systems tend to be extremely complicated. Of 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 a…

> The only interesting thing here is how this rule was simply not being enforced by anyone.

Turns out that not even the notary, whose job is to check these things when a property changes hands, does it. I am in a local Facebook group and there are multiple folks saying they got a bill from the tax office for an undeclared pool. They bought the house recently and thought that everything was fine and now surprise.

Even worse, some of them don't even have permits, so on top of the extra taxes they have to go through the town permitting process from scratch.

It seems that the program mentioned in the article, which is from 2022, has now expanded nationwide. Would be nice if the French govt would publish some stats once they are done with it.

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