It’s not exactly the letter everyone dreams of receiving, but in recent days the Revenue Agency has started sending around 20 thousand communications to as many property owners. These are not just any buildings, but the so-called “ghost houses” not declared to the Land Registry and now discovered with artificial intelligence. The aim is clear: to ensure that taxpayers declare the existence of the buildings and pay all the charges. We understand who will receive the letter from the Revenue Agency and how the houses were identified.
Ghost houses busted by artificial intelligence
There are two types of taxpayers in the tax system’s sights: those who have undeclared properties and those who have carried out work on a building, resulting in a cadastral change, but have not certified it. For example, we are talking about the construction of a garage, the change of intended use, the construction of an extra floor in a house. The first communications are all for the owners of ghost houses.
Artificial intelligence and aerial and satellite photointerpretation systems played a decisive role in the checks. In essence, the official cadastral cartography is superimposed on the very high resolution images of the territory made available by the Agency for Agricultural Payments (Agea). Artificial intelligence compares the images and the differences are automatically reported to the competent offices for subsequent field checks, entrusted to a real inspector.
The owner then has two options: demonstrate that the detected discrepancy does not exist, or proceed with regularization by updating the cadastral income and paying the arrears and related sanctions. The updating of the cadastral archives will have an impact on local taxes, in particular on the Imu on second homes and on the Tari which are calculated on the basis of the cadastral income.