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A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code

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Re: A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code

#91

Post by an_opabinia »

mywittyname wrote: post #56
tester34 wrote: post #40

I've been asked to write parser of _my_country_law_ and something that's capable of doing diffs and putting it together (diff+original=>newest version) docs without knowledge in that domain after seeing sample doc I've estimated it on something like 1 week of work (XD) month later I've been crying and having like 20-30% done this shit has been so sensitive (insanely error prone) and debugging was time costly. I think…

I feel like legislation is a field that would benefit a great deal from the progress that software engineering has made in a number of fields. It's already evolved somewhat into a DSL. With some nudging and technical leadership, I suspect that we could move it over entirely into a format that can be readily parsed, tested, and version control. The tax code is especially well-suited to this, because it's a lot of rule…

It would be more valuable to write many fewer, simpler policies, but transparently document the why when it comes to decisions by stakeholders. For example, the only difference between getting something from the government (say, a California Public Records request) and a court is (1) cost and (2) the court almost always has to write a defensible opinion for why something happened some way, but a government agency does not. At the end of the day you wind up with the same possibilities of results.

Re: A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code

#92

Post by e12e »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #24
weinzierl wrote: post #2

> In France, income tax is computed from taxpayers' individual returns, using an algorithm that is authored, designed and maintained by the French Public Finances Directorate (DGFiP). This algorithm relies on a legacy custom language and compiler originally designed in 1990, which unlike French wine, did not age well with time. This interesting. When it comes to legacy code we think of COBOL and FORTRAN most of the t…

In my country, with an admittedly quite simple tax code, the authorities used to publish each year official COBOL code that computed income tax. They switched to Java in 2018-ish - and to Github instead of a random FTP server. Doing your taxes has also been a no-op for many people the past decade or so. You don't do anything except read the tax report, unless you spot some mistakes or items missing in the report that…

Recently helped my dad clear out his office - and we came across a binder with fan-folded, faded dot matrix printed copy of COBOL code he used in order to calculate taxes in the 80s - translating the code to BASIC. The original COBOL code came from the Norwegian tax office - I'm not sure if they still publish something similar.

Ed: ah, same country https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25210009

A little unfortunate that we threw it out.

Re: A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code

#93

Post by contingencies »

riffraff wrote: post #71
contingencies wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://theconversation.com/csiro-wants-our-laws-turned-into... claims law-as-code is a bad idea because its "dynamic"/"always changing" and "discretionary"/"requires or open to interpretation". The first argument is nonsensical (computers are great at changing data: in fact way faster and more accurate than humans, having the capacity for things like single source of truth, change logs, peer consensus, and dynamic v…

> The second argument is an outright straw man fallacy. Who cares if some laws require interpretation. Just write MAY instead of WILL (like RFC language) to make it clear the judge can decide, then provide statistical information regarding past case law. Nobody is saying "fire all the judges", they're just saying make the law clear. Right now it's not clear, and it's a big problem. But that is not how law works. A ju…

The straw man was "interpreted law is uncodifiable" - essentially throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We can interpret where necessary without claiming that because interpretation is required in specific cases that the whole concept fails.

Re: A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code

#94

Post by jcranmer »

an_opabinia wrote: post #91
mywittyname wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like legislation is a field that would benefit a great deal from the progress that software engineering has made in a number of fields. It's already evolved somewhat into a DSL. With some nudging and technical leadership, I suspect that we could move it over entirely into a format that can be readily parsed, tested, and version control. The tax code is especially well-suited to this, because it's a lot of rule…

It would be more valuable to write many fewer, simpler policies, but transparently document the why when it comes to decisions by stakeholders. For example, the only difference between getting something from the government (say, a California Public Records request) and a court is (1) cost and (2) the court almost always has to write a defensible opinion for why something happened some way, but a government agency doe…

> the court almost always has to write a defensible opinion for why something happened some way, but a government agency does not.

That's not true. Agencies that do rulemaking have to provide justification for why they're enacting or repealing particular regulations, otherwise those regulations can be struck down as capricious. This is a major problem the Trump administration had: a lot of their attempts to rollback Obama's policies or enact new ones foundered on the ability to provide this justification.

Re: A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code

#95

Post by contingencies »

smarx007 wrote: post #50
contingencies wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://theconversation.com/csiro-wants-our-laws-turned-into... claims law-as-code is a bad idea because its "dynamic"/"always changing" and "discretionary"/"requires or open to interpretation". The first argument is nonsensical (computers are great at changing data: in fact way faster and more accurate than humans, having the capacity for things like single source of truth, change logs, peer consensus, and dynamic v…

> law-as-code is a bad idea because its "dynamic"/"always changing" I don't think it was meant in classical terms of an SQL UPDATE. It was meant in a way that a new rule may affect the application of an existing rule. Academically speaking, it makes reasoning non-monotonic. This is exactly why https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeasible_logic is proposed. > The second argument is an outright straw man fallacy. I think t…

Yes, in the current system it's shifting goalposts. That is a bad system.

You cannot completely successfully codify something that is based on the vagaries of wishy-washy language, nor specific legal concepts like the intent of regulations or the context of prior judgements. Therefore, improve the language: don't give up!

Imagine if latitude and longitude weren't invented because "sorta over there a few days sail beyond the cape" was too hard to quantify. This is the same ridiculous argument. It just so happens that there are also a vast number of ingratiated rent seeking and powerful people and corporations interested in the status quo: literally all of them.

I believe that as engineers and as optimists within the greater human endeavour, over time in all fields we should seek to create means of trust and means of precision: in our measurements, in our communications, in our analyses, in our references and in our collaborations.

We don't need to fire all the judges. But maybe 90% of the solicitors and standard procedural lawyers, a large part of whose job is explaining to the average citizen what exactly is the done thing in some particular area or how exactly they can expect to be treated the hands of a system that cannot otherwise explain itself.

Also, in terms of community governance if it becomes crystal clear that a law is being abused through increased fidelity in the logging of police actions brought about by such a system, then the law can more rapidly be identified and repealed.

Re: A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code

#96

Post by e12e »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #82
danuker wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you tell? All "Languages" I get is "Java 100.0%".

The COBOL part is from memory. I'll have a look to see if I can find a copy floating around somewhere. Edit: the transition appears to be more like 2016, and one of the commits then refers to a file generated from COBOL: https://github.com/Skatteetaten/trekktabell/commit/5181d86c5...

I did find an awkward source that lists the 2017(?) COBOL code for the tables - the core program seems to be last updated 1993 (Norwegian only) : https://docplayer.me/38761458-Beregning-av-forskuddstrekk-in...

> IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.  PROGRAM-ID. FT7P200T. AUTHOR. PER J. RISTUN. DATE-WRITTEN. NOVEMBER 1993 ----------------------------------------------------------------  * BESKRIVELSE : PROGRAMMET BEREGNER FORSKUDDSTREKK FOR ÅR 2017 * (...)

Re: A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code

#97

Post by javajosh »

mywittyname wrote: post #56
tester34 wrote: post #40

I've been asked to write parser of _my_country_law_ and something that's capable of doing diffs and putting it together (diff+original=>newest version) docs without knowledge in that domain after seeing sample doc I've estimated it on something like 1 week of work (XD) month later I've been crying and having like 20-30% done this shit has been so sensitive (insanely error prone) and debugging was time costly. I think…

I feel like legislation is a field that would benefit a great deal from the progress that software engineering has made in a number of fields. It's already evolved somewhat into a DSL. With some nudging and technical leadership, I suspect that we could move it over entirely into a format that can be readily parsed, tested, and version control. The tax code is especially well-suited to this, because it's a lot of rule…

Laws are supposed to be systematic invariants, and to specify them requires a comprehensive vocabulary containing the union of all the things people do in a life. This language is necessarily bound to your time and place, and it may not translate well in the future. (I feel like laws that live long enough to outlast the language in which they were defined hasn't actually been solved! Certainly we should have to reword the Constitution at least once every 200 years!)

Re: A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code

#98

Post by gamblor956 »

mywittyname wrote: post #56
tester34 wrote: post #40

I've been asked to write parser of _my_country_law_ and something that's capable of doing diffs and putting it together (diff+original=>newest version) docs without knowledge in that domain after seeing sample doc I've estimated it on something like 1 week of work (XD) month later I've been crying and having like 20-30% done this shit has been so sensitive (insanely error prone) and debugging was time costly. I think…

I feel like legislation is a field that would benefit a great deal from the progress that software engineering has made in a number of fields. It's already evolved somewhat into a DSL. With some nudging and technical leadership, I suspect that we could move it over entirely into a format that can be readily parsed, tested, and version control. The tax code is especially well-suited to this, because it's a lot of rule…

This is mostly true, however laws are are already generally written as (legal) diffs, and many agencies issue regulations as diffs as well.

Cornell Law has providing version control releases of the federal laws for some time for free, and Lexis and their competitors have been doing the same for decades for commercially.

Re: A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code

#99

Post by pradn »

anticristi wrote: post #22
ape4 wrote: post #11

They opitimized it by removing dead code etc. So I wonder if that could be fed back into the original laws to simplilfy them.

I was rather thinking about fuzzying it to find gaps in tax laws.

Someone did do this - finding discontinuities in the tax law - using formal methods, for the French tax law:

https://blog.merigoux.fr/en/2019/12/20/taxes-formal-proofs.h...

Re: A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code

#100

Post by sjy »

paulvorobyev wrote: post #72
tester34 wrote: post #40

I've been asked to write parser of _my_country_law_ and something that's capable of doing diffs and putting it together (diff+original=>newest version) docs without knowledge in that domain after seeing sample doc I've estimated it on something like 1 week of work (XD) month later I've been crying and having like 20-30% done this shit has been so sensitive (insanely error prone) and debugging was time costly. I think…

Do you plan on open-sourcing it, or do you have any recommendations for similar projects/research? Very excited about the computational law space.

Check out http://austlii.community/wiki/DataLex. In Australia we are fortunate enough to have AustLII publishing virtually all Australian laws and court decisions (at least from this century) for free in a somewhat consistent HTML format. DataLex is the name for the “computational law” research AustLII staff have been doing since the 1980s. It’s interesting, but the real value of AustLII’s work is in getting the courts and legislatures to allow them to collect all the raw data and publish it in a free database with full text search. Just getting to that point is a huge improvement over what’s freely available in the US and the UK.
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