Nino sat in her kitchen, staring at the appeal form. She had the right to a human reviewer. But the backlog was six months.
But truth, she realized, was different when an algorithm demanded it in neat, digital boxes. Some truths were messy. Some were private. Some were just a teacher trying to help a kid with math without the state asking for a receipt.
One rainy Sunday, Nino logged on. declaration.gov.ge asked for her digital ID. Then her bank account numbers. Then her utility bills. Then the IMEI codes of her phone and laptop. Then the QR code of her apartment’s land registry. declaration.gov.ge
The Declaration
“What discrepancy?”
“You declared 50 lari from tutoring. But your social media shows you tutor three students. The AI cross-referenced your posts. The system estimates undeclared income of 1,200 lari over six months.”
She laughed, then stopped laughing. “That’s absurd. Those posts were from two years ago.” Nino sat in her kitchen, staring at the appeal form
The form was surprisingly intuitive. It auto-filled her salary from the Revenue Service. It detected the $200 she had received from her cousin in Chicago for her mother’s medicine. It even flagged a 50-lari payment from a student’s parent—“Thank you for tutoring”—as unverified income source .