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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)

#111

Post by trilbyglens »

candiodari wrote: post #100
sokoloff wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I bet they are only flagging locations for physical inspection.

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

#112

Post by tasubotadas »

cinntaile wrote: post #6
denhaus wrote: 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?

Monitoring citizens using AI is China-like dystopia.

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

#114

Post by lostmsu »

sokoloff wrote: post #99
prepend wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Capital gains tax in US is capped at just under 25%. Regular income tax goes higher.

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

#115

Post by recursive »

candiodari wrote: post #100
sokoloff wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I'll bet against that. What were the stakes again?

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

#116

Post by candiodari »

trilbyglens wrote: post #111
candiodari wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I bet they are only flagging locations for physical inspection.

That doesn't sound like French government at all. Plus that'd be monumentally impractical for them (have you seen how big France is -and how inaccessible parts of it can be?). The reputation of the tax office is that the tiniest of inconveniences is more than enough to prevent them from doing something.

Oh and there's the surprisingly little known fact that French citizens torched most of the cars and half of the government departments, including Police stations, in Paris (and Marseille, and Lille, and Toulouse, and ...) on a regular basis for 5 years now. And I bet the recent pension reform is going to make that worse, not better.

Government employees physically inspecting anything will result in large scale battles with the public these days. So I would like to add: they won't physically inspect these pools for the simple reason that nobody wants to get killed working for the tax agency in France, and that's exactly what will happen if they go out and physically check.

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

#117

Post by Solvency »

Imagine an AI that instead finds potential infrastructure problems riddled across the country. Buildings, bridges, roads, you name it. Then the AI priorities them into a queue and generates cost/resource estimates for repairs. Thereby helping the government improve the livelihood of its constituents!

Or wait, imagine if the AI were finding all the rivers and lakes that corporations are dumping trash, chemicals, and other waste products into!

Right? Right? Surely they'd do that with this great technology!

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

#118

Post by dantheman »

lostmsu wrote: post #114
sokoloff wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

Capital gains tax in US is capped at just under 25%. Regular income tax goes higher.

Capital gains is on invested capital, that capital can be lost. Also gains have already been taxed by corporate taxes, etc.

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

#119

Post by hellojesus »

coldtea wrote: post #101
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 How do people come up with these ideas? Related to their income and overall wealth they pay disproportionate embarassingly little. The "disrpoportionate" also includes well paid employees in the top 10%, but not the real 0.1% "owning" class. And above a few million worth, the actual money earned per year is usually obscured by all kinds of schemes, of…

Assuming US: Tax is based on income. If you find a way to avoid income, you don't have any income to be taxed. There are certainly ways to game the system, but those ways mean one isn't realizing income. Seems relatively fair to me. After all, the gov isn't supposed to be a welfare machine,and stealing from others is generally regarded as theft.

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

#120

Post by looping__lui »

lostmsu wrote: post #114
sokoloff wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

Capital gains tax in US is capped at just under 25%. Regular income tax goes higher.

Keep in mind that marginal tax rate is not equal to effective tax rate. Also keep in mind that companies also pay tax on profit - which means that dividends get taxed at company level only to get taxed again at personal level.
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