policyengine-us VS openfisca-france

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

Location: Boston, MA Remote: Yes (preferred)

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Python, SQL, Git, Gurobi, familiar with GluonTS (mxnet) for ts forecasting

Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholas-rodelo-aaaa18159/

Email: [email protected]

Background primarily in economics, with 3 years of general programming experience. Significant work experience in finance/policy, decided in the past year to go towards data and software.

Recently left a role where I was responsible, solely, for designing and implementing a production scheduler for an industrial client in Gurobi. Also designed the backend of a demand forecasting platform, using Amazon's GluonTS, from scratch.

Currently working on https://github.com/PolicyEngine/openfisca-us in my free time, helping to research and design a comprehensive tax and benefit simulation for policymakers that doubles as an eligibility calculator.

The french initiative started in 2013 is still alive (last commit a few days ago), and passes the gov test suite (they keep in touch with our version of the IRS): https://github.com/openfisca/openfisca-france

The way we got this is interestingly twisted.

French citizens requested the software used by the administration, and they managed to get it!

But, it's was written in Mlang is a proprietary language created by the french administration in the 90: https://github.com/MLanguage/mlang.

Someone then decided to create an OCaml compiler that takes mlang and emits python: https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.07966

As a result, we got we got open fisca. I know believe there are other techs in the mix...

A slide of the story: https://www.slideshare.net/Etalab/opening-up-the-french-tax-...

That line in the summary is a bit misleading. The authors didn't find a "bug" in any law - instead they found a corner case that wasn't included in an online tool hosted by the French government to estimate family benefits under French law:

> After close inspection of the OpenFisca code, a discrepancy was located with the Catala implementation. Indeed, according to article L755-12 of the Social Security Code, the income cap for the family benefits does not apply in overseas territories with single-child families. This subtlety was not taken into account by OpenFisca, and was fixed after its disclosure by the authors.

Here's the pull request for their fix to the benefits simulator: https://github.com/openfisca/openfisca-france/issues/1426