The risks of a tax man entirely in the hands of artificial intelligence

The Union of Tax Lawyers warns of the problems that can arise from a complete automation of the processes of the Revenue Agency

(Photo: Rich / Ipa) A seven-point appeal to lawmakers for intelligence applied to the tax system maintain a human face: this is essentially the message of the National Union of Chambers of Tax Lawyers (Uncat), delivered to the parliamentary supervisory commission on the tax registry, on the occasion of the fact-finding investigation on "Digitization and interoperability of databases ". The principles of equality, defense, parity of the parties in the assessment procedure and in the tax process would be at risk, according to the lawyers, in the face of a careless application of AI systems of machine learning, deep learning, data lake and network science in the sector fiscal.

From the previous hearings of the representatives of the Ministry of Economy and the Revenue Agency, Uncat explains, the change of "digital" pace emerged with the launch of initiatives such as the creation of a data lake the only one in which to bring together information from tax databases and the A data driven approach to tax evasion risk analysis in Italy project, conceived by the Revenue Agency and already funded by the European Union, to enhance activities to combat tax evasion and tax avoidance.

The tax authorities ask for greater clarity on how "the mass of data collected and stored is composed for the purposes of the final result", "how the algorithm that originates the administrative act concerning the sphere of the citizen is formed" and what are the spaces of usability "to control that data and avoid passive awe", highlights Antonio Damascelli, president of Uncat.

In view of the creation of data sets, predictive and data analysis algorithms, standards and audits, Uncat asks for the involvement of all operators in the tax sector in the evaluation of methodologies and typologies, in a spirit of sharing. Taxpayers' advocates must also be guaranteed transparency, with access to the source code or the logic of artificial intelligence used for tax purposes.

To this is added the request to exclude that the Agency's assessment document revenue is the exclusive result of an automated procedure (human verification); to strengthen the obligation to motivate the assessment, maintaining a principle of responsibility of the tax administration and the prohibition of "scoring", more or less explicit forms of "social" tax score.

Regarding the possible creation of a database for predictive tax justice, Uncat asked that the data selection criteria (judgments, decrees, ordinances and other legal material) be shared with operators in a spirit of involvement, to ensure that the data set is non-discriminatory and takes into account the context of each case. Finally, he underlined the need to exclude "automated" judgments, that is to avoid that the Ai system can "package" the final decision of the judge, which must remain the result of his exclusive evaluation and therefore responsibility.


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Topics

taxation Artificial intelligence Italy taxes globalData.fldTopic = "taxman, artificial intelligence, Italy, taxes "

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