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Drones Reveal Widespread Tax Evasion In Argentina
Tailhook (98486) writes "The Argentine government has used drones to reveal 200 homes and 100 pools in an upper class area about ten miles south of Buenos Aires that had not been detailed on tax returns. Tax officials said the drones took pictures of luxury houses standing on lots registered as empty. The evasions found by the drones amounted to missing tax payments of more than $2 million and owners of the properties have been warned they now face large fines."
But A. this isn't the US with a 4th amendment, and B. There's nothing invasive about doing standard surveying work automatically.
Only they were using aerial, then later satellite photos. We scanned the aerials, orthorectified them then registered them in a coordinate system for the city's GIS. They'd overlay a lot map and go plot by plot looking for pools, decks, and additions that weren't in the property tax database. These were mostly wealthy towns in Connecticut where this stuff added up to real money.
Now of course you can do that with Google Maps, if you don't mind waiting 1-3 years to catch people.
Just because you do *exactly the same thing* with a slightly different tool doesn't make it new. Back from those days one of the senior managers used to come into my office and say, "I just read about this patent where --" and I'd cut him off right there.
"This isn't going to be another one of those things where they take something people have been doing for ages with LORAN and substitute GPS, is it?" I ask.
"Well..."
"I don't want to hear about it. Whatever it is the patent is sure not to stand up to scrutiny, but I still don't want them holding treble damages over our head."
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So what if drones are doing it vs satellite or photos from a plane with a human at the controls.
In Lee County, Florida(and I'm sure others) they take 20+ aerial photographs a year, from above, N, E,S, and West 'birds eye', AND hire people to look for violations, New Roof, Fence, pool, WHATEVER? from previous years? Is there a permit issued? If not, send in the tax collectors... They also go after people with lawns that are too long, etc.
I bet most of these houses belongs to people somewhat related to government itself, and the thing will be forgotten as soon as possible.
What, Argentina can't just click on google maps to find pools, they need drones?
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
It'll certainly make things a little easier on the non-tax cheats who have to pay more to cover these assholes.
Argentinian here, the AFIP (our local IRS) has been doing this for a long time, but using satellite or aerial photographs. The drones were used this time because the area in question was small. A lot of country clubs (as they are called here) are emerging with wealthy people moving into them, building expensive houses, while the land is still declared as vacant. In a related matter, we still lack a law regulating drones down here.
The township has a certain set of fixed costs which it has to meet every year.
Taxes are set so as to raise that amount, apportioned as decided by the lawmakers and voters.
People who fail to pay on unreported improvements aren't adhering to the agreed-upon social contract, placing a larger requirement for payments/burden on those who are.
If you don't like the taxes in an area, move, or participate in your local government to get things changed.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
That's a drone i would love to see flying.
In Argentina we have drones watching general population private property for tax declarations.
We got camera domes on most corners, but nobody is monitoring them, and certainly not even police cars to dispatch to those locations.
We got a vice president who evaded taxes, declare nonexistant addresses, but nobody cares.
We had a commerce secretary -a real character, funny guy- he intimidated people -mafia like-, got taped and nothing happened.
We got a gunpoint robber, got caught on GoPro by the victim, he's not in jail, he's on the TV, he's a rockstar now.
We got some official car (senator) drivers that got caught trafficking cocaine....rofl, nothing happened.
We even got a NGO for human rights with more than 5000 bouncing checks, but it's not so NGO since it's heavly sponsored by the government, and those bouncing checks - for some reason - never got into the credit rating system (magic!)
We got a spike on meth precursors for 2 or 3 years, (10x efedrin imports from 6 tons to 60 tons) and the permits for that trace back to phone lines to the presidential building! yay! way to go Argentina, nothing happened besides 3 witnesses got killed -executed- and...yay! nothing happened!
We got no radars guarding our borders, the only smuggling small planes we know about, are those that crash land from time to time.
So, there's nothing new in a drone/plane/satellite catching tax evasion. I want the corruption spotting drone. That would make "news for nerds" or "stuff that matters".
This is a partial answer, and misleading, at best. A significant portion of the value of a given property is due to the services provided by the governemt - not just streets, but education, law enforcement, fire protection, etc... The same size house in Mississippi is worth orders of magnitude less that the same building in San Francisco. The owner derives benefit proportional to that value, and therefore has the social burden of paying for that benefit.
"The problems in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking which created them" --Albert Einstein
Basically everyone who's not a government official in the country needs three things.
Food, water, air.
Everything else is a "luxury item" and the government's committed to taxing people until they can no longer afford anything but the basic three things.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
It sounds like you guys have already done pretty good at spotting the corruption. Now you need anti-corruption missiles...I mean legal action.
I don't see how drones would help since the it sounds like the corruption has already been reveal. The citizens just need to decide how they're going to deal with it.
Stuff like street maintenance, right? Is a property's burden on the streets proportional to the property's value or the property's street frontage?
So if you highrise apartment block with 500 families occupying a 'city block' vs a 10 homes occupying another city block. The 10 families in the 10 homes should each pay 50x the property taxes as the high rise tenants?
Because the highrise properties burden on the towns resources is less?! Sure maybe for snow clearing on that particular street. But water? garbage removal? schools? Libraries? Recreation centers? Parks? Sewers? Why is the home owners share of all that 50x as much exactly?
Cities and towns usually get this answer wrong, and that causes a lot of problems such as those we saw in the real estate crash
I disagree completely.
Condo stratas tend to divide costs pro-rated by each units square footage. Cities tend to divide costs by an assessment of value. Within a strata that works out pretty close to being the same thing -- larger (more valuable) units pay slightly more... but across a city a penthouse downtown is woth 20x a home in the suburbs even if the home is larger.
Basically everyone who's not a government official in the country needs one thing.
air.
Everything else is a "luxury item" and the government's committed to taxing people until they can no longer afford anything but the basic one thing.
FTFY
I stand ashamed, but corrected.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!