[pyrale]

Why? Taxes is what sends children to school, pays for hospitals and funds the infrastructure everyone uses. People love to hear about AI breakthroughs that could transform education or health, why should they not be happy about this?

I have many doubts about the actual technical solution, but I wouldn't discard the work because it's for taxation purpose.

[cm2187]

Taxes are pissed away in France in gigantic useless bureaucracies, useless projects and vote-buying redistribution, to the point that core state functions (police/justice, army, education or healthcare system) are paradoxically starved of funds and dysfunctional. Sadly the only way to curb this spending incontinence seems to starve the state of revenues.

[hkt]

> Sadly the only way to curb this spending incontinence seems to starve the state of revenues.

Or reform the broken democracy at the crux of it all.

[skinnymuch]

When has reforming worked? No less with democracies (which are all broken anyway)

[hkt]

Some countries manage. Finland and Switzerland are personal favourite examples of successful reform. There are others, too.

Plus it is impolite to call for a revolution, even if we're talking about France

[ElFitz]

You forgot jet flights because, you understand, there were no business class seat available on commercial flights at the right time. I thought it was an isolated incident (the random undersecretary who otherwise couldn’t have made it on time for the government’s school book picture), but it appears to not be so isolated [1] [2].

On some random weird "missions" [3] paid €9.000 a month, or life-long supposed "postings", granted at the discretion of the government, such as our dear ambassador to the penguins [4] [5] (lovingly called "ambassador to the poles", although the previous one, "Michel Rocard", a life-long politician, was apparently also known as "Rocky the Penguin").

And that’s just off the top of my head.

If we were to focus less on the rather questionable spending, and more on the doubtfully useful, we could cite the public health system, where it seems that more than a third of the money goes to the administrative side, and not actual healthcare workers [6], with a significantly bigger share of bureaucratic employees than most European countries.

And I’m pretty sure starving the state of revenue will not curb any of this. It’s not like they’ve shown they were sensible, or acting in good faith.

[1] https://www.ladepeche.fr/article/2010/03/29/806733-ministre-...

[2]: https://la1ere.francetvinfo.fr/vol-350000-euros-autres-gouve...

[3]: https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2010/06/09/boutin-c...

[4]: https://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/frais-d-ambassadrice-des-p...

[5]: https://www.liberation.fr/checknews/2019/09/18/est-il-vrai-q...

[6]: https://www.challenges.fr/entreprise/sante-et-pharmacie/a-l-...

[rahen]

Why "sadly"? Starving it also gives it less power, and more power and freedom to the individuals. This is even truer in France.

[skinnymuch]

The state only has as much power as it can wield and as what the people will take. Individuality the way you’re implying does not exist in societies where not even food, shelter, and basic dignity is guaranteed and provided to all.

[darkr]

From my understanding they paid CapGemini €24M for this project in order to net €10M in taxes.

[cinntaile]

That's 10M extra per year. You pay property taxes each year.

[ShadowBanThis01]

If it's anything like the big consulting firms' rip-offs in the USA, it might well be every year.

Look at the disgraceful fleecing of our national parks by Booz Allen: https://www.wsj.com/articles/national-park-fees-booz-allen-6...

[pyrale]

The $10m comes from about 10% of France's territory that was used as an experiment.

[arp242]

The article says "The public finance authority DGFiP said the AI programme would now be rolled out nationwide, potentially leading to €40m in new taxes on private pools in 2023".

So total revenue is not that significantly higher than €10m.

[prepend]

So it will likely need $300M in fees to CapGemini to expand to the other 90%.

And the model will need to be rebuilt in 2 years.

[TMWNN]

Most of that will be fixed costs. It won't cost nearly so much the next time.

[Traubenfuchs]

...when will the next 20.000 swimming pools be done?

[_Microft]

Another commenter pointed out that having a pool influences the property value and thereby tax, so they should be able to collect the tax yearly, not just once.

[im3w1l]

The power balance between state and individual is quite delicate and everything that changes it makes people uneasy. Most people want a situation where law and order is more or less upheld, but the state is otherwise unable to precisely know or control how people live.

[hkt]

Enforcing property taxes is hardly a substantial change to that balance though, realistically.