Property tax: this big mess around the hunt for undeclared pools

Swimming pools, garden sheds, outbuildings… Thanks to the use of new technologies, Bercy has launched a hunt for buildings that are not declared by taxpayers from 2021. Using public aerial imagery from the National Geographic and Forestry Information Institute (IGN). A program named: the “innovative land tenure”. And the first results are quite remarkable: the tax administration has already discovered no less than 120,000 swimming pools that their owners hid. This year, public finances hope to return 40 to 50 million euros to the state coffers in additional property tax.

But the problem is that the aerial imaging system, created in collaboration with consultancy firm Capgemini and giant Google at a cost of almost €26 million over almost three years, only works for the metropolitan department. To leave Corsica and overseas as stated by the Court of Auditors its report on the detection of tax fraud by natural personspublished this Wednesday, November 15.

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While the system was “extended to the entire continental territory at the end of 2022”, “in this regard, the lack of deployment in Corsica and overseas weakens the scope of the program and represents unequal treatment of taxpayers depending on their place of residence, which must be stopped quickly”warn the municipalities of rue Cambon.

Unequal treatment that he questions

This unequal treatment of taxpayers raises questions all the more because, according to a study by the Federation of Pool and Spa Professionals (FFP), the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur and Corsica region is home to more than 37% of all 3.4 million swimming pools in France . So many pools, which again, according to this professional federation, are 73% buried in the ground. And that’s not without tax implications…

Because, as the General Directorate of Public Finance (DGFiP) reminds us, “a swimming pool embedded in the ground or above the ground, with a wooden or solid structure, even if it does not contain any masonry element at the time of installation, if it cannot be relocated without its demolition, constitutes a built-up element of civic amenities forming dependencies, which must be taken into account when determining the housing tax and property taxes.

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