Should be trivial to spot by just looking at their water bill, no?
I would assume watering a garden consumes more than a swimming pool.
Gardens must be taxed too then.
French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)
41–50 of 174 posts
Re: French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It costed more to create the AI with capgemini then they recoverd. One of the reason many of us hate taxes is because they always have a "punishment" mindset. They rather lose money and punish someone. Why tax swimming pools anyway?
You misunderstand, this is 10M euro extra tax revenue each year and it was only a pilot project covering a small part of France. The payback time is basically less than a year.
Re: French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)
#43You 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…
Mmmmm strict bureaucracy....
Re: French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)
#44You 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…
Working class and even middle class people in France (and most of the world) definitely don't have swimming pools. No doubt you're right about the general case, though.
Re: French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)
#45"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
Nice to know Capita (or Crapita as Private Eye know them) aren't alone in their dreadfulness.
Re: French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)
#46What an exciting future lies ahead of us
Well "they" are being creative using AI, I say we follow suit...
Re: French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)
#47Earlier 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.
> Sadly the only way to curb this spending incontinence seems to starve the state of revenues.
Or reform the broken democracy at the crux of it all.
Re: French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)
#48I'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.
Re: French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)
#49It’s interesting they have time for this, but going after the big fish is too much. In the Netherlands we lack the capacity to go after tax evasion using non profits. Untold millions go to waste every year, but they have enough capacity to go after small fish and their “fraud”. (https://nl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toeslagenaffaire, this is a big one where thousands of families were sent into 30k-150k debt for a “mistake”. People’s children were taken from their families because this pushed them over the edge. I know this case is complex but it’s not hard to see who is at fault.)
Tax evasion by the big fish is well known and clearly not in the spirit if the law: https://nos.nl/artikel/2440715-vermogenden-gebruiken-eigen-g...
They set up non profits and get rid of their taxable assets. This is well known, in my opinion not hard to get into court, but nobody “cares”. Of course we all know what is holding them back.
Color me unimpressed by fining some middle class people out of their pools.
Re: French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)
#50Earlier 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.
The power balance between state and individual is quite delicate and everything that changes it makes people uneasy. Most people want a situation where law and order is more or less upheld, but the state is otherwise unable to precisely know or control how people live.
Enforcing property taxes is hardly a substantial change to that balance though, realistically.