French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022) • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by stavros » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 10:55 AM UTC

cinntaile wrote: post #80

stavros wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 evad…

Yes, everybody has to pay taxes. The more money you have/make, the more taxes you need to pay, but the case now is that the more money you have, the more you can avoid taxes.

Sure, the agency can get more of the non-super-rich people who don't have an army of accountants optimizing their tax structure, but I don't think that's the most equitable thing to do.

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

#92

Post by seydor » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 10:55 AM UTC

andybak wrote: post #14

denhaus wrote: post #2

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

It's people that can afford pools on their property. They can afford to own property. I'm not shedding many tears here. If even a tiny amount of the money recovered improves the lot of the vulnerable then I find it hard to put this at the top of my "this year's dystopian" list. Your comment however might go on my own "most unimaginative definition of dystopian" list.

The problem with unaffordable housing all over europe should be solved with massive amounts public housing.

Pools should be taxed but that does not solve the problem. Everyone pretends they are not looking at the elephant in the room: draconian environmental regulations and lack of resources make the prices of housing go higher and higher. The governments have the money to solve that, instead of making it worse

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

#93

Post by contrarian1234 » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 10:55 AM UTC

dorfsmay wrote: post #87

contrarian1234 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wo…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_enforcement

Thanks! Didn't think it was a new idea, but I didn't know the concept's name

"Therefore, the mere fact that a law is selectively enforced against one person and not against another, absent bias or pattern of enforcement against a constitutionally-protected class, is not illegal."

I don't think breast size is a protected class - so please carry on officers

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

#94

Post by prepend » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 11:00 AM UTC

Symbiote wrote: post #48

siva7 wrote: post #33

I'd rather become homeless than doing such shitty work.

The purpose and laws are clear, easily understood by all French citizens, and everyone knows whether they have skirted the tax or not. The tax law can be changed if enough people think it wrong. Working for Facebook or Google or Amazon is less ethical, in my view.

I mean there are also anti-immigration laws in the US. Id rather not write the code that finds and deports families.

I agree that working in adtech is more of a bummer though.

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

#95

Post by beebeepka » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 11:03 AM UTC

matsemann wrote: post #15

denhaus wrote: post #2

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

AI making normal people lose their jobs, accumulating even more wealth at the top: Good AI making affluent people pay their share of taxes: Dystopian.

The way I see it, there are some really well off people on this site, so they sympathise with others like them. Off-putting but not unexpected

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

#96

Post by lnsru » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 11:17 AM UTC

zo1 wrote: post #65

lnsru wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, a…

I guess client group is rather limited. Salaried employees have to pay taxes. There is no other way. Small businesses can deduct cars and iPhones as expenses and are happy. It gets interesting reaching mid 7 digit revenue zone. But on other hand it is also matter of trust. I have classmates advising about these things, very interesting stuff. Exclusively for real riches.

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

#97

Post by gryn » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 11:19 AM UTC

ElFitz wrote: post #72

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

don't think you'll find anything explicit. but these big french contracting companies are very well known for their technical incompetence. they are not tech companies, their number one priority is to land lucrative contracts and keep renewing them and growing them, executing them or worrying about the quality of the end product is an afterthought.

the compensation in these companies is all the proof you need, most of the money is spent on 'business guys' and whole big ladder of them, projects on the technical side get staffed by who can accept the least pay regardless of skill. failed to get your diploma, great they can hire you for a big discount, have an art degree or anything else but know how to argue in a interview great you're hired.

they hire such people by the shovel everywhere. they are not the only company that does it almost all the big and smaller ones. here are some example of job offers that you can translate, and keep in mind that even is you don't meet almost any criteria they can still hire you if you accept a small enough price. I know a few of them in person.

- https://fr.indeed.com/q-capgemini-reconversion-professionnel... - https://jobs.capgemini.com/fr-fr/job/Reconversion-Profession...

these a few example but search in indeed and other hiring webites and you'll find them spamming this kind of offers everywhere.

having a career as a tech guy in these companies is a dead end, and a recipe for depression.

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

#98

Post by poisonborz » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 11:20 AM UTC

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…

On the other hand, as more law is written in code, the more easier any deviances or unlawful privileges could be detected - including when someone goes around the (open source) algo-based result. Maybe it's naive, but this could also lead to more transparency.

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

#99

Post by sokoloff » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 11:29 AM UTC

prepend wrote: post #85

mandmandam wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Disproportionate can have different meanings. I think that the rich pay most of the income/wealth tax [0], but that’s because that’s where the income/wealth is. It’s disproportionate by number of persons, but arguably proportionate by income. [0] in 2020, US, top 1% paid 42% of income tax https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/3894233-how-america-actu...

> arguably proportionate by income.

That source demonstrates that it’s definitely not proportionate by income.

> the top 1 percent paid 42.3 percent of the total federal income tax in 2020 while receiving 22.2 percent of total adjusted gross income

We have a progressive taxation system on income (for good reason), which causes the high-income to pay far more than their proportional share of income.

Some will argue that they should be paying an even more disproportionate amount, which is fine and we can have that discussion, but it is an absolutely truthful claim that they are already paying a higher than proportionate share now.

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

#100

Post by candiodari » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 11:43 AM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #81

contrarian1234 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wo…

> If you don't have a system to track swimming pools then don't tax swimming pools. You’ll be happy to learn that France has moved in the direction to comply with your concern here.

How much do you want to bet that

1) There's a 4-5% mistake rate

2) getting a wrong conclusion of the AI turned back is a 2-year kafkaieske nightmare where you have to front all the money, and even after they admit they're wrong it takes 5 years to get your money back. And then next year you get another tax bill for the nonexistent pool and we start from scratch?