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)

#141

Post by karaterobot » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 3:31 PM UTC

The world depends on all the dumb little rules someone put in place for dumb little reasons not being adequately enforced. Imagine automatically getting a speeding ticket every single time you went over the speed limit by one mile an hour. Take a moment and mentally inventory all the code violations in your house right now. Look hard enough and everybody is breaking the rules every day, but we muddle through because it doesn't matter 99% of the time.

If all these rules were actually enforced — let's even assume impartially and perfectly — we would be overwhelmed by them. Maybe the consequence would be that we would refine some of the dumb little rules, and remove others. But maybe we would just be overwhelmed.

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

#142

Post by coldtea » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 3:39 PM UTC

hellojesus wrote: post #119

coldtea wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>Seems relatively fair to me.

It's legal. It's hardly fair. It means the working/middle class masses get to pay the burden of taxes (including sales taxes, and others) disproportionately to their income and wealth - and of course, the money taken from them is orders of magnitude more impactful on their everyday life than if we half of Bezos income (or even half his total wealth) was taxed away.

>and stealing from others is generally regarded as theft.

Only as long as you're not rich. If you're its normalized and has lots of legal avenues available to you to do that, same how unfairness is codified in laws like the above, in which "if you find a way to avoid income, you don't have any income to be taxed", which was made the case precisely because the rich have ample easy means to "avoid income".

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

#143

Post by s1artibartfast » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 3:44 PM UTC

samstave wrote: post #137

throw_m239339 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine an AI that instead finds potential infrastructure problems riddled across the country. Well you need tax payer money to finance the AI that find potential infrastructure problems... So an AI that find tax avoiders might bring more tax payer money to fix other problems.

> Well you need tax payer money to finance the AI that find potential infrastructure problems You mean like the tax-payer money paid at the pump which was sold as a way to finance the maintenance and fix of potential infrastructure problems? https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/the-gas-taxs-tortured-...

But where could those gas taxes have possibly gone? That the question only AI can solve

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

#144

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 3:45 PM UTC

looping__lui wrote: post #120

lostmsu wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#145

Post by mandmandam » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 3:53 PM UTC

hellojesus wrote: post #122

mandmandam wrote: post #63

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…

In the US a wealth tax is unconstitutional at the federal level. So we can only measure disproportionate income taxes by using income as a qualifier for rich. https://www.heritage.org/taxes/commentary/1-chart-how-much-t...

[flagged]

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

#146

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 4:03 PM UTC

alecco wrote: post #130

zulban wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is this "they" you're talking about? Lots of people and lots of groups are trying to use AI in different ways. So yes, obviously people are looking into that too. You seem cynical.

Not OP, but let me try: career bureaucrats and democratically elected officials.

[deleted]

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

#147

Post by sokoloff » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 4:03 PM UTC

candiodari wrote: post #116

trilbyglens wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gov…

> [getting killed is] exactly what will happen if they go out and physically check.

Come on. The average tax plus penalty here was 500 Euros. No one is throwing their life away over a 500 Euro tax bill that any simpleton could plainly judge whether a pool does or does not exist at the address.

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

#148

Post by devoutsalsa » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 4:05 PM UTC

kwanbix wrote: post #128

Solvency wrote: post #117

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 o…

Imagine an AI that instead can find corrupt politicians, judges, and business men! That would be something!

…and THAT is how we got AI regulation!

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

#149

Post by ohgodplsno » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 4:10 PM UTC

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.

>https://www.lesechos.fr/economie-france/budget-fiscalite/lim...

Billionaires' effective tax rate in France is 26%. _I_ pay more than that just in revenue tax, not to mention value added tax, etc. People making over 627000€ per month have a 46% effective tax rate.

The rich do not pay their fair share, and benefit disproportionately from the taxes that I pay. It's not my trucks destroying public infrastructure, or polluting the atmosphere.

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

#150

Post by ShamelessC » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 4:13 PM UTC

samstave wrote: post #134

Solvency wrote: post #117

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 o…

This is actually really important! Both statements. It would be amazing when the planning dept just has you upload a BIM an an AI not only devours the BIM model -- but this is how we are going to get to the sci-fi version of "Pull up a blueprint of downtown and show me all the air-ducts where John McClain is hiding!" and "There is a door on your left" -- But the rivers and lakes thing should be readily doable right n…

Probably worth mentioning that governments already have backlogs of infrastructure which is broken and can’t be fixed for a variety of reasons. Plenty of journalism about it. Making the discovery aspect “perfect” with AI won’t necessarily lead to improvements although I respect the passion.