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Villas in La Teste-De-Buch in southwest France: telltale pools?
Photo: Perrogon / IMAGO / Andia
In the future, France's tax authorities will be relying on the evaluation of aerial photographs in search of swimming pools and extensions that homeowners have kept secret from the tax office.
The evaluation of satellite images is to be used in the land registry offices for possible adjustment of the value of real estate recorded there, as can be seen from the plans of the tax authorities.
With the use of artificial intelligence, investigations by tax officials on site are to be reduced to a minimum.
An automated procedure is intended to enable municipalities to specifically write to those affected when claiming property tax.
As the French news broadcaster BFMTV reported on Wednesday, the evaluation of aerial photos is initially being tested in nine departments.
In a first test in the Alpes-Maritimes department, 3,000 swimming pools that had been hidden from the tax authorities were discovered within a few weeks.
In addition, since a change in the law last year, the tax authorities are likely to be looking for tax fraudsters to evaluate all information that those affected make publicly available on their profiles on social media.
The tax investigation with satellite images is meanwhile also reflected in the job advertisements of the central tax authority.
For the new project, data experts are being recruited who specialize in »filtering out useful information from the images«, as stated in the job description for a position.
mik / dpa-AFX
