Thousands of French households are facing an unexpected tax bill after the use of an artificial intelligence tool found over 20,000 unreported swimming pools.
The tool, which was only trialed in a handful of regions, discovered that many pools had been built in recent years without being declared. Under French tax law, installing a swimming pool greatly increases the value of the property and therefore increases the amount of property tax which homeowners pay on a yearly basis.
This will come as a big shock to those households who simply wanted to escape the summer sun and enjoy a dip in the pool. Not only will they need to pay up at the next tax bill, but they will also have to pay back taxes from when the pool was built.
The race is now on… For the government they will want to refine the software and roll out across other regions, earning as much tax revenue as possible. For households with a rogue pool, they will either have to pay up or find ways to hide their pools from the preying AI eyes of the satellites above.
Q1. Is the French property tax a type of direct or indirect tax?
Q2. What will be the impact of this discovery on the fiscal balance?
Q3. Explain how this tax helps to redistribute income.
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