Viewing profile — MaxGhenis

I built an open-source Google Messages client with a built-in MCP server, so AI assistants like Claude can read, search, and send your texts. It uses the mautrix/gmessages library …

PolicyEngine simulates tax and benefit policies. Users can enter their household information in rich detail (hundreds of variables), and we estimate their taxes and benefits; they …

FWIW, we'll have Maryland income taxes, including local income taxes, by the end of July: https://github.com/policyengine/openfisca-us

Thanks for the suggestion, I added a link to our documentation ( https://openfisca.us ) to the readme.

And for all the complexity of the tax code, it often pales in comparison to the version of the tax code we subject low-income families to: rules for means-tested benefits.

France has also developed the OpenFisca framework [1] for tax and benefit rules as code, and its OpenFisca France [2] model is widely used (I think significantly more than mlang). …

We've also built an open-source tax and benefit calculator for the UK, which also lets you simulate custom policy reforms: https://policyengine.org/uk

Fantastic job making taxsim more accessible! We've built an open-source version of taxsim called OpenFisca US [1] which we expose in our (also open-source) web app, PolicyEngine US…

Agreed. We're building an open source version of taxsim (plus benefit rules) at https://github.com/policyengine/openfisca-us .

My team at PolicyEngine [1] is also now further reimplementing Tax-Calculator in the Python-based OpenFisca framework [2]. OpenFisca US [3] includes all tax logic in Tax-Calculator…

SmartAsset is only a rough approximation based on standard deductions/exemptions and the rate structure. It excludes tax credits and other provisions that make taxsim much more acc…

Our current static approach follows the bulk of public policy analysis, but we do plan to add dynamic responses. For example, https://compute.studio/PSLmodels/Tax-Brain which suppo…

PolicyEngine lets anyone simulate reforms to the UK tax and benefit system, and see the impact on society and their own household. We're working on building it for the US as well. …

>Our starting hourly wages are at least $15 per hour for all full time, part time, and seasonal employees and contractors. https://www.aboutamazon.com/workplace/employee-benefits

Yes I'd like to do that. Net tax burden (taxes - BI) still shouldn't change under the revenue-neutral approach, since they'd be equal between NIT and BI.

Agreed, though I'd hope that some lessons from basic income could be used in the disability benefit sphere too. The welfare cliffs are devastating and produce severe underemploymen…

As stated in the article, 50% was chosen only because it's the rate where calculations are simplest, it's not the proposal (it'd generate way more than the current government tax r…

Do you have sources for the Spain-beach-hitting? Several studies have found that cash transfers do not reduce work incentives, except in specific populations like new mothers and t…

Very interesting suggestion. I'm also not too familiar with the field, but it seems that most benefits are non-cash (e.g. health and housing), and cash grants tend to be As a count…

Pegging BI to tax revenue or GDP seems like a good idea to me, though I'd prefer to start with something revenue-neutral like I lay out. As it eliminates welfare cliffs, it seems s…

Separating (1) children (2) people with disabilities (3) retirees and (4) other adults, is I would say an upper bound on complexity. The PwD piece falls more under healthcare (whic…

The quote you selected concerns welfare cliffs, where smoothing out the payout curve may slightly reduce benefits of those near a cliff and increase benefits for those just past a …

Part of the reason I got into BI is because my brother is quadriplegic (spinal cord injury), so I saw firsthand how extreme the welfare cliffs are for the disabled: if he earns ove…

My goal with this piece is to deconstruct basic income into parallelizable, redistribution-neutral pieces: 1) Replacing non-cash benefits with cash 2) Smoothing the payout curve to…