Tax officials in Spain have discovered nearly 1.7 million houses in the country on which inadequate taxes have been paid after an extensive drone and satellite operation.
The drones were able to record improvements and extensions to houses and simple checks determined if these had been declared to the authorities.
In some cases, the sweep found whole houses not registered with the local town hall.
Spain’s tax office estimates that such fraud existed in 9% of the houses registered on the country’s municipal registers, or padrónes.
The unprecedented search, begun in 2014, looked into 4,340 municipalities. It is believed to have resulted in €1.3 billion in new revenue from Land Value Tax.
Two of Spain’s poorest regions, Andalusia and Galicia, were found to have the most violations, with 373,000 properties and 213,000 properties respectively.
Castilla y León followed with 164,000 undertaxed houses.
“For every euro spent on the project, the tax office recuperated 16 euros,” said a tax office spokesperson. The newspaper El Mundo calculated the project costs to be in the region of €80 million.
The operation is not yet complete. Authorities plan to send the drones to a further 2,000 towns and municipalities.
