French authorities hunting for rich tax dodgers’ secret pools using Google Earth

Tax authorities in France are hunting down rich tax dodgers using Google Earth by surveying gardens for undeclared outdoor pools.

France has more outdoor pools than anywhere bar the US, and having one adds €500 a year onto both council and property tax.

Now, the inland revenue is working with Google to develop software that can snoop for pools and other home improvements that may have gone under the radar.

The artificial intelligence program analyses satellite pictures along with land registry records to suss out suspicious spaces.

An official has described the tool as so accurate that "we can identify the ball on a caravan towbar on the back of a car".

A tax inspector said: "We are zooming in on each property that the algorithm believes it has detected to eliminate doubts. Is it a pool or a boules pitch, a garden cold frame or a simple tarpaulin?"

French tax inspectors have long been trawling through people's social media accounts, spying for expensive cars, holidays and pools that don't correlate to tax returns, due to a shortage of staff.

This new program, named Property Innovation, is a another way of compensating for that.

A scheme using aerial photography was piloted in 2017 in the southwestern town of Marmande – it discovered that 30% of the 800 pools there were undeclared.

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  Enormous asteroid double the size of the Empire State Building to enter Earth's orbit

A larger trial took place in 2019 and scoped out 3000 secret pools in the Côte d'Azur area, the Atlantic coast and the southeastern Drôme département.

Yet not everyone is pleased with the new scheme.

Apart from furious taxpayers taking to social media to vent at state spying, others have reservations over Google's involvement given their own spotty tax record.

Following a fraud investigation, in 2019 the tech giant paid a record €1 billion in fines and back-taxes to the French government.

Tax inspectors unions have been particularly vocal.

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The treasury wing of France's General Confederation of Labour said that it is "impossible to trust" that the French authorities will remain in sole charge of all tax data, or that Google is simply just providing the service.

The Force OuvriÈre union said: "This raises a number of questions on the partnership of the tax administration with a company whose conduct is questionable. It raises questions of data security."

In response, the finance ministry has insisted that it has complete control over the program that cost €12 million to develop.

Judging from the scale of tax fraud exposed in the two trial runs, Property Innovation could be a massive cash cow.

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