The Directorate General of Public Finances announced on Monday to AFP that its device for detecting swimming pools not declared by artificial intelligence had made it possible to collect around 10 million euros and that it was going to generalize it to all of France from September 2022. The administration has been working on this fraud detection technique since 2017.
The device, baptized “Innovative Land”, is developed with the ESN Capgemini and Google Cloud. Concretely, an artificial intelligence detects constructions or developments on aerial images provided by the IGN. Then the administration checks whether these goods have been declared and are correctly taxed.
“Any construction addition results in an increase in the rental value which serves as the basis for the establishment of the Property Tax and the Housing Tax, even when the construction does not concern the main part of the dwelling” indicates the Fisc on the website impots.gouv.fr.
Fraud detection in a buoyant market
Last year, the tax administration carried out an experimental phase in nine departments: Alpes-Maritimes, Var, Bouches-du-Rhône, Ardèche, Rhône, Haute-Savoie, Morbihan, Maine-et-Loire and Vendée. .
The result of this trial is not negligible. More than 20,000 undeclared swimming pools have been flushed out by the AI, representing an income of 10 million euros in additional revenue for the municipalities concerned. And the growth of this income should persist. Gains in local direct taxes should reach nearly 40 million euros in 2023, once the system is generalized to the whole of France. Enough to ensure the profitability of the project from its second year of deployment.
Because yes, such a project is expensive, 24 million euros over the period 2021-2023. And that the development of the AI is very progressive. For example, last year, false positives, that is to say detections of swimming pools when they do not exist, would have been 30%. As a direct consequence of these errors, several taxpayers had mistakenly received a tax letter asking them for more information on a swimming pool, with the key to a potential tax adjustment. Why these false positives? Agricultural tarpaulins, solar panels or non-taxable above ground swimming pools (only those that cannot be moved without demolishing them) were confused with the swimming pools sought by artificial intelligence.
But the detection of swimming pool non-declaration fraud also benefits from a very buoyant market. France has around 3.2 million private pools, including 1.55 million in-ground pools and 1.64 million above-ground pools. Above all, the Covid has given a boost to this activity. In 2021, the stock increased by 244,000 swimming pools and pool sales jumped 32% year-on-year.
Towards the detection of outbuildings, verandas and large garden sheds
In 2019, the French tax authorities had already tested similar technology with Accenture in the departments of Drôme, Charente-Maritime, and Alpes-Maritimes. The objective was then to succeed in identifying undeclared or illegally built swimming pools and verandas.
In 2015, it was only with Google Maps and their trained eyes that tax officials in the Lot-et-Garonne department tried to visualize undeclared swimming pools in the town of Marmande. Tedious work, but which had made it possible to detect 300 undeclared swimming pools, i.e. a shortfall of 100,000 euros for the tax authorities and the municipality.
After the generalization of the device for swimming pools, the DGFiP plans to eventually “optimize this new tool” to detect “other forms of undeclared buildings”, such as outbuildings, verandas or large garden sheds.