French tax investigators discover 20,000 undeclared private swimming pools

France says it has recovered £8.5m in missed taxes

File: people relax in a swimming pool on a summer day (REUTERS)

Investigators in France took a deep dive into how many people had undeclared private swimming pools and managed to collect £8.5m in unpaid taxes.

They found that there were more than 20,000 previously undeclared private swimming pools across the country, by using artificial intelligence (AI).

The pools were spotted using satellite imagery as part of a new tool created by Google and the French consulting firm Capgemini.

The technology was trialled in nine regions of France last October.

The results were then cross-checked with land registry databases, before the Direction Generale des Finances Publiques (DGFiP) chased payments.

Ten months later, the country’s public finance authority said it subsequently recovered €10m (£8.5m) in tax.

An average pool adds roughly €200 (£170) a year to a homeowner’s tax bills, according to Le Parisien newspaper.

Given the success of the AI project, the French government could roll it out to the whole of the country. This could lead to €40m (£34.3m) in new taxes being levied against private pools next year, the DGFiP said.

Ministers also hope to use the software to identify other undeclared building works such as extensions.

"We are particularly targeting house extensions like verandas,” Antoine Magnant, the deputy director general of public finances, told Le Parisien.

"But we have to be sure that the software can find buildings with a large footprint and not the dog kennel or the children’s playhouse," he said.

France is in the grips of its worst drought in decades, with just 0.38 inches (9.7 mm) of rain falling in July, the lowest monthly amount since 1961.

The crisis has led to hosepipe bans in some parts of France, and to a reappraisal of water consumption.

Julien Bayou, the national secretary of Europe-Ecology-the Greens (EELV), said the French needed “a different relationship with water”.

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