Deus Tax Machina - An inquiry into the use of AI by tax administrations in the EU and its implications for taxpayers' privacy and data protection rights

This researcher proposes to study the use of artificial intelligence (AI) by tax administrations and its implications for taxpayers' privacy and data protection rights in Member States of the European Union. Tax administrations are increasingly using AI to collect data (e.g. through internet scraping), to process data (e.g. data mining), and to communicate with taxpayers (e.g. through chatbots). Tax administrations who make use of AI have reported positive results, e.g. through the reduction of overhead costs or by operating a more accurate selection of taxpayers to be audited. However, the cases of SyRI, RoboDebt or COMPAS highlight the fact that the use of AI as a governance tool can create a number of risks such as the risk of surveillance, unwanted profiling, discrimination, wrongful correlations, purpose elasticity of data collection or a lack of transparent decision-making. This research will advance knowledge on the privacy and data protection risks triggered by this new technology by developing an AI tax governance tools taxonomy and an analytical framework to assess the risks associated to each tool. Also, the research will comparatively evaluate how EU Member States' rules regulating such use properly safeguard taxpayers' rights.

Keywords:TAX LAW

Disciplines:Human rights law, Tax law