In recent years AI or Artificial Intelligence has made some extreme strides across the globe in changing how we do things in our daily lives. In a recent experiment by the French Government, they used an AI drone that was partly developed by Google, to identify over 20,000 undocumented pools across 9 regions of France, to increase their tax revenue.
The Experiment And How It Worked
This large-scale experiment was able to identify 20,356 residential swimming pools across the 9 regions that previously, were undeclared. The program was developed to automatically detect pools in aerial photos basically by looking for blue rectangles and cross-referencing the address against a land registry database. If the AI finds a relevant address that doesn’t have a pool declared, then that homeowner is in violation of tax law. These discoveries opened up more than $10 million in additional tax revenue according to the French Tax Office. The reason these pools need to be declared by the residents is that any feature added that increases the value of a residential property, will increase the amount of taxes the homeowner must pay. This doesn’t apply to just pools however, it also counts towards any construction of an extension on the existing property such as a veranda.
This crackdown comes as France is dealing with one of the worst recorded droughts in the country’s history which is had made drinking water unavailable in many areas of the country. France has only seen .38 inches of rain last month making that the lowest they have seen since 1961. This drought is causing many of the country’s residents to install pools which is controversial because of the lack of water.
The Future Of The Technology
The French government hopes to make improvements on the AI. to be able to identify a multitude of other undeclared improvements/additions to residential homes such as gazebos and patios, to boost tax revenue. As it stands the technology isn’t perfect, and sometimes the system confuses solar panels with swimming pools with an error rate of about 30 percent. However, the government does hope to keep improving its AI system for future uses similar to this go around.
Wrap Up
Technology has come a long way over the years and is now creeping into the tax space to help governments catch anyone who may be trying to stay under the radar. There is a chance this could be only the beginning of a worldwide movement of increased technological advancements in the tax space. We will be keeping an eye on this to see how it progresses.