How France uses artificial intelligence to find secret swimming pools and raise more taxes

The discovery of thousands of private swimming pools hidden in France has given an unexpected boost to the European country’s tax revenue.

Thanks to an experiment using artificial intelligence (AI), French tax authorities discovered more than 20,000 hidden swimming pools, which had not been declared by property owners.

According to the French press, the discovery allowed the collection of an extra 10 million euros (more than R$ 50 million) in revenue.

Having swimming pools in France forces homeowners to pay a higher property tax because this type of construction increases the property’s value, which is why they must be declared to the treasury under French law.

The 20,000 pools were detected during a test in October 2021, which used software developed by Google and French consultancy Capgemini with aerial images of nine regions of the country.

The regions of Alpes-Maritimes, Var, Bouches-du-Rhône, Ardèche, Rhône, Haute-Savoie, Vendée, Maine-et-Loire and Morbihan were part of the experiment.

Now, French tax officials ensure that the strategy can be implemented across the country.

In 2020, there were already more than 3.2 million private pools in France, according to data from the Federation of Pool Professionals, and sales in this sector were already on the rise before the Covid-19 pandemic.

With the arrival of the coronavirus, there has been an even greater increase in pool facilities as people have had to spend more time at home.

According to the newspaper Le Parisien, for an average pool of 30 square meters, you have to pay about 200 euros (R$ 1 thousand) to the tax authorities per year.

system failures

The French Directorate-General for Public Finance (DGFiP) used specific algorithms that made it possible to extract the contours of pools and aquatic structures on land from aerial images. From there, it was possible to verify which areas paid (or not) the stipulated taxes.

The owners of irregular properties were then invited to regularize the situation and pay what they owed to the public treasury.

Tax authorities say the software could also be used in the future to find unreported extensions of homes, such as patios, terraces or garden gazebos, factors that also increase the value of the property tax.

“We particularly target the extensions of the houses, such as the terraces,” Antoine Magnant, deputy director of DGFiP, told Le Parisien.

“We need to make sure that the software will be able to find buildings with large surfaces, not the doghouse or a children’s toy,” he added.

French media reported that, at the moment, artificial intelligence software configured to identify the pools still cannot find residential extensions with the same accuracy.

“How can you be sure that a rectangular black patch, seen from the sky, is a terrace and not a tarp laid on the ground?” asks Le Parisien.

Ban on new swimming pools?

The French government’s heavy hand against undeclared swimming pools comes after Julien Bayou, secretary general of the environmental party Europa Ecology – The Greens and parliamentarian for the Île-de-France region, did not rule out implementing a ban on new private swimming pools.

Speaking to the BFMTV channel, Bayou said that France needed a “different relationship with water” and that the ban on the construction of new swimming pools would be a “last resort”.

“The challenge is not to ban swimming pools, but to ensure our vital water needs,” he added.

The comments gain even more relevance at a time when France is experiencing the worst drought on record, in which more than 100 municipalities have been left without drinking water.

In July, the country had just 9.7 millimeters of rain – the driest month since March 1961, according to Meteo-France, the national weather service.

The crisis is so serious that irrigation has been banned in the northwest and southeast of the country to try to save water.

France is the second country with the most swimming pools per capita in the world, after the United States. And this market in the country is booming there.

In 2021 alone, the French built nearly 244,000 swimming pools, according to the Federation of Swimming Pool Professionals.

This text was originally published here.