PARIS — For those looking to compensate for the increasingly hot French summers by building swimming pools, the tax authorities have a message: If you’re looking to save money by hiding your pool from property tax collectors, we’re watching from above.
Authorities said this week that artificial intelligence tools that scan satellite imagery of homes and backyards have detected more than 20,000 unreported pools in several parts of France since October last year.
According to officials, these discoveries will allow French tax authorities to collect around €10 million (about $10 million) in property taxes. The tool will be rolled out nationwide in the coming months, after being tested in nine administrative departments over the past year, including the Val region on the Mediterranean coast and the Morbihan region in Brittany.
“By optimizing the process of detecting undeclared construction and development”, the project will “combat irregularities more effectively” and promote “fairness and financial justice,” France’s Finance Directorate said in a statement. said it aims to meet the demands of
In France, permanently built pools increase the value of property and therefore increase property taxes. Pools are taxed according to size and local tax rates. The owner of an average 30 sqm pool, or a pool of about 323 sq ft, incurs taxes of about €200 a year. Property taxes are paid to local governments.
Only a minority of France’s 67 million citizens own swimming pools, but they have become increasingly popular in recent years. In France he has over 3 million private swimming pools, and in 2021 alone he will have over 240,000 built. According to the French Federation of Pool and Spa Professionalsan industry lobbying group.
Antoine Magnant, Deputy Director of Public Finance, welcomed the new software as an additional source of revenue for local governments, which is expected to generate around €40 million in taxes in 2023.
Mr Magnan told Le Parisienwhich report first Based on the tool’s results, artificial intelligence will be fine-tuned and improved to increase property values and identify other constructions that require registration with authorities, such as solariums.
“The software needs to be able to find buildings with large footprints, not kennels or playgrounds,” says Magnant.
The algorithm was developed by the French tax authority in collaboration with French consulting firm Capgemini and uses open source software from Google. Officials stressed that neither company has access to French tax data.
the tool scans publicly available Satellite photography is used to analyze the perimeter of constructed buildings and identify pools. Pools are often invisible on walls or hedges, but can be detected from above as white or blue rectangles or ovals. The tool compares those results to an existing database of officially declared pool owners and flags outliers.
Humans are verifying each finding to correct mistakes made by the tools, like a blue tarp that was mistakenly flagged as a pool, officials say.
The French tax authority said the algorithm was refined during testing through machine learning and that the current margin of error is small. He confirmed that 94% of taxpayers contacted by authorities after being flagged by the tool did in fact have taxable pools.
The 20,356 undeclared pools detected during the test period will result in the authorities recovering €5.7 million in back taxes and €4.1 million in taxes in 2022, officials said.
However, some unions representing finance sector employees are wary of this new approach. They challenge the accuracy of the system, as the government cuts staff and replaces the field work of tax collectors and surveyors with long-standing knowledge of the community with sketchy bureaucracy to scrutinize the algorithm’s findings. I am worried that
In an interview, Philippe Lage, a union official at the Confederation of Labor, which represents public finance workers in the Bouches-du-Rhône department, said in an interview that the tool is a permanent pool of taxables and a pool of taxables. He said that he is lumping together the temporary pools that will become. Dismantled and not taxed. He said face-to-face interaction with taxpayers is key to resolving situations like this.
“We’re not against technology,” Raggett said. “But in no case should artificial intelligence replace humans.”
The pool announcement wasn’t directly related to the fight against climate change or the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine, but devastating wildfires, severe drought and extreme heat have put Europe’s energy supplies at risk. These crises raise questions about whether modern comfort features like swimming pools were necessary in times like these.
France has already seen calls to limit or ban the use of private jets due to growing concerns about pollution and energy efficiency. And with drought and increasingly stringent water restrictions, some say France should regulate the use of swimming pools despite the scorching heat. General.
Julien Bayeux, State Secretary of the French Green Party, told LCI television station “If you want to organize an environmental transition, it has to be fair,” he said on Tuesday.
“By the way, if the richest people, who are the biggest polluters, get an exemption, we can’t accommodate the population,” Bayeux said.