Death, Taxes, and GUIs

Transcript

1. Death, Taxes, and GUIs Anderson Frailey and Hank Doupe Open Source Policy Center – American Enterprise Institute
2. About Us • Hank Doupe ◦ Core maintainer: COMP, ParamTools • Anderson Frailey ◦ Core maintainer: Tax-Brain 2.0, TaxData 2
3. State of Open Source Policy Analysis • Open Source Policy Center, est. 2013 ◦ Open Models == Better Policy Analysis ◦ Better Policy Analysis == Better Policy • Incubates a wide range of open source policy models • Many other groups, like the CBO and NY Fed, have released code and data in recent years • Policy Simulation Library, est. 2018 ◦ Home to a number of open source models for policy analysis 3
4. Tax-Brain 2.0 https://github.com/PSLmodels/Tax-Brain
5. Tax-Brain 2.0 • Integrates multiple tax models into one interface • Built with COMP in mind to make the models available to everyone • Also works as a simple Python package for those who want to code 5
6. Included Models • Tax-Calculator • Behavioral-Response • More to come! 6
7. Tax-Calculator • Individual income and payroll tax microsimulation model • Used by presidential campaigns, journalists, policy analysts, students, etc. • Backend of Tax-Brain 1.0 • Core Maintainers: Martin Holmer (Policy Simulation Group), Matt Jensen (AEI) 7
8. Behavioral-Response • Python package for partial-equilibrium behavioral responses to changes in federal income and payroll tax system • Core Maintainers: Martin Holmer, Matt Jensen 8
9. Problems 1. You need to know all of the models well to use them 2. There’s no way for non-technical users to take advantage of the models 9
10. 10 Without Tax-Brain
11. 11 Without Tax-Brain
12. 12 With Tax-Brain
13. 13 Live Demo https://www.compmodels.com/PSLmodels/Tax-Brain
14. COMP https://github.com/comp-org/comp
15. 15 COMP • An open-source utility for running and sharing computational models • Empowers analysts who need to use and share results from these models, but aren’t able or willing to use the programming APIs • Provides access to models too resource intensive to run locally or that use sensitive data • Modelers share for free, and compute costs are paid for by users or is sponsored by a benefactor
16. 16 Why we did it • Tax-Brain 1.0 is sweet! Every model should have its own webapp!
17. 17 Problems 1. No standard publishing process 2. Custom inputs and outputs technology 3. Too much of the modeling process was in the web developer’s hands 4. Dependency hell
18. 18 Making of COMP • Standard inputs and outputs • Three python functions: - Get the inputs - Parse and validate the user inputs - Run the model with the user inputs • Custom environments that are decoupled from the webapp
19. 19 COMP Tax-Brain Page loads Get Default Values views.py User modifications Parse & validate inputs If errors: Display errors Else: Call Run Model Create tables, graphs, etc. Display Output {Default Values} {User Inputs} {Parameters, errors} {Tables, Graphs, etc.}
20. 20 How to publish on COMP • https://www.compmodels.com/publish
21. Road Map What’s next for these projects?
22. COMP Road Map • Automatic publishing process • Richer model inputs and outputs pages • Scalable infrastructure • REST API • Your models! 22
23. Tax-Brain 2.0 Road Map • General refactoring • Performance improvements • Automated tax analysis reports • More models! 23
24. OG-USA • Overlapping generations model used for fully dynamic analysis of tax policy reforms • Outputs macroeconomic effects of tax policy • Core Maintainers: Jason DeBacker (University of South Carolina), Rick Evans (University of Chicago) 24
25. Business-Taxation • US corporate and pass-through business tax model • Core maintainer: Cody Kallen (University of Wisconsin- Madison) 25
26. 26 Tax-Calculator OG-USA Behavioral-Response Business-Taxation
28. How to Get Involved • Low hanging fruit: COMP website design • Use the projects! We need feedback • Help with code architecture 28
29. Thank you. Contact Us Anderson Frailey Twitter/GitHub: andersonfrailey andersonfrailey@gmail.com Hank Doupe GitHub: hdoupe henrymdoupe@gmail.com https://github.com/PSLmodels/Tax-Brain https://github.com/comp-org/comp