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

theguardian.com

71–80 of 174 posts

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

#72

"AI" Imagine being charged 24 million euros ( https://www.01net.com/actualites/piscines-non-declarees-la-t... ) by Capgemini, known for having fucked up every single public -private partnership in France so they can just run OpenCV on satellite pictures, while being paid for a THIRTY PERCENT ERROR RATE

It's not only Capgemini. Most of French digitalization is horrendous. We have a Social Security card (Carte Vitale) that you show when doing medical activities (so to speak). It could have been a great driver for centralized patient documentation (results, prescriptions, ...). What they did instead - a totally fucked up system nobody uses (including doctors and pharmacies) which was architected and coded by an intern…

> which was architected and coded by an intern with a liberal art diploma

What? I tried to look it up, no luck. Do you have any link that goes into more details?

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

#73
post #2

legitimately the shittiest, most boring, and most unimaginatively dystopian use for AI I have ever seen.

Why do you think discovering illegal tax evasion is not good?

Because middle-to-lower-class people aren't the ones I want paying more taxes.

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

#74

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…

>but also one of social justice. Illegal employment, or what is called "sort arbejde" in Danish or Schwarzarbeit in German if want a compounded word, allows builders en masse to make a decent wage and is widespread, in Denmark at least.

Illegal employment also goes hand in hand with exploitation.

https://www.dw.com/en/spains-sea-of-plastic-where-europe-get...

>(2019) The greenhouses of Almeria grow much of Europe's fruits and vegetables. The region's dark secret: Tens of thousands of migrants are apparently taken advantage of to fill supermarket produce sections.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50200217

>'Exploited' workers propping up the [UK] building sector (2019)

(Maybe the construction industry in the UK is worse for this than Denmark/Germany?)

And modern slavery

https://www.unseenuk.org/modern-slavery-in-construction-is-o...

>In the EU, construction ranks second only to the sex industry as the sector most prone to modern slavery.

Even North Korea is in on it (2016) https://www.dw.com/en/sent-from-north-korea-exploited-in-pol...

>Hundreds of North Korean workers are believed to be toiling in Poland under degrading conditions.

It's worth remembering that there are more people in slavery than there have ever been. I think we're "blind" to it much the same people must have been at the height of the transatlantic slave trade. It's normal. People are more interested in cheaper products and not paying their tax.

On the other hand freedom can't exist without the possibility of crime.

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

#75
post #40

"AI" Imagine being charged 24 million euros ( https://www.01net.com/actualites/piscines-non-declarees-la-t... ) by Capgemini, known for having fucked up every single public -private partnership in France so they can just run OpenCV on satellite pictures, while being paid for a THIRTY PERCENT ERROR RATE

Capgemini and Atos are the worst that happened to French tech. Atos managed to turn me from liberal to communist when in comes to public services and general interest. I would rather deal with slow, 'lazy' bureaucrats than greedy little shit who can't own their mistakes. At least, when the corruption is within the government, it can't be that huge and blatant. A state secretary can say 'it would be easier to get that…

Hey! It’s most likely thanks to one of them (or Sopra Steria, can’t tell) that we got this beauty:

https://web.archive.org/web/20180323092106/https://projectfa...

HN conversation at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16793884

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

#77
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 .

Unfortunately, it looks like pools get taxed even if unused and empty.

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

#78
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I'm not seeing how that applies to OP's false claim that "the rich pay a disproportionate share" of taxes.

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

#79

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…

[deleted]

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

#80
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think discovering illegal tax evasion is not good?

Because middle-to-lower-class people aren't the ones I want paying more taxes.

How did you arrive at your conclusion that the pools mentioned in the article belong to middle-to-lower class people? Did you do your own analysis and cross-checked it with their income statements? Myself I would expect the pools to disproportionally belong to well-off people.

I don't quite get why you differentiate between classes, everybody has to pay taxes. I would prefer the tax agency to go after (illegally evaded) tax revenue where they get the most bang for their buck, this project paid itself back in less than a year so that seems to fit the bill.

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