AI to scan for swimming pools
The Independent Authority for Public Revenue (AADE) is responding to tax evasion with artificial intelligence and with special inspection crews for businesses that show high activity but not the corresponding revenues.
In an interview with Kathimerini, AADE head Giorgos Pitsilis says, “These businesses will be inspected by specialized audit crews, which will monitor in real time their transactions and the fulfillment of their obligations.”
The head of the tax administration also reveals AADE’s new weapon for undeclared swimming pools: An AI tool is being designed which locates the swimming pools on satellite maps of the country, giving geographical coordinates that allow, through cross-referencing with the land registry, the identification of the owners of the properties and checks to see if they have legally declared their pools.
Pitsilis took over at AADE in 2016, at a hard time for the economy and for taxpayers. Since then, he says, a lot has changed: first of all “our relationship with citizens and businesses. We’ve improved our self-remediation processes through our Dispute Resolution Department. We expanded digitization across our entire range of services and developed very large digital projects, such as electronic invoicing and myDATA.”
