French tax officials use artificial intelligence to search for undeclared private pools

The French tax authority reported on the successful use of artificial intelligence (AI) to identify undeclared private pools. The experiment was carried out in 9 out of 100 French departments. According to the department, which cites Les Echoeshe made it possible to discover approximately 20 thousand undeclared pools and return € 10 million to the treasury.

France is the European record holder for the number of private pools, there are more than 3 million of them in the country. In the world, only the United States has more. According to French law, private pools must be declared and a special fee must be paid. Of course, not everyone does this, but the French tax authorities still have neither the means nor the ability to effectively deal with violators of the law. Now such an opportunity has appeared thanks to the project Foncier Innovation, which uses AI to study aerial and satellite imagery data provided by the National Geographic and Forest Information Institute. The AI ​​compared survey data with cadastral information and tax returns. All cases of non-compliance were then considered by the tax inspectors.

“The challenge is to deal more effectively with false declarations and respond to citizens’ demands for more equality and greater tax fairness,” the agency said in a statement.

According to representatives of the tax department, given the undoubted success of the experiment, the program will gradually be extended to the entire territory of France in the second half of the year. Moreover, in addition to illegal pools, other violations will be detected in the same way when rebuilding or expanding houses.

The project, according to the authorities, will be profitable: with a total cost of €24 million, the government intends to return €40 million to the treasury next year.

Andrey Kelekeyev