PolicyEngine arrives stateside

Today, we're beta-launching PolicyEngine US and several other new features.

Last October, we launched PolicyEngine UK, bringing free, open-source, web-based tax and benefit analysis to the UK for the first time. Since then, users have asked us one question more than any other: “When is it coming to the US?” This isn’t too surprising; after all, half our founding team (me) is American.

Well, fellow Yanks, the wait is over. Today, we’re beta-launching PolicyEngine US! To try it, visit **policyengine.org/us** or check out the big American flag at **policyengine.org**. Did I mention we’re also launching a **policyengine.org** homepage today?

PolicyEngine homepage

If you’ve used PolicyEngine UK, the US interface will look familiar, though without the society-wide impact page and with a different default screen. If you’re new to PolicyEngine, you can now see how to use it by clicking the question mark in the bottom left, which shows a brief demo.

In fact, here are all the things we’re launching:

• PolicyEngine US beta

• PolicyEngine homepage

• Demo walkthrough

• Counterfactuals, allowing you to change baseline policy (in the UK and US)

• UK forecasts in our microsimulation model

• API documentation (if you want to estimate taxes or benefits in your app, get in touch)

OK, back to PolicyEngine US. Why the beta? Well, it’s not nearly complete. Here’s what we have so far:

• Federal personal income taxes

• Payroll taxes

• Affordable Connectivity Program

• Lifeline

• Free and reduced school meals

• Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)

• California’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)

• California Clean Vehicle Rebate Project

This is only a subset of US benefit programs — many of which vary by state — and we don’t yet have state income taxes. We also don’t compute impacts on societal measures like poverty, inequality, and the budget. And while we’ve tested it extensively, it’s not yet as thoroughly vetted as the UK model (as always, consult a tax or benefit advisor, as our estimates aren’t official).

PolicyEngine US might not yet check all of PolicyEngine UK’s boxes, but it does break new ground. To our knowledge, it is the only app to compute both the full US tax system and benefit programs for households, and the only app to interactively model benefit policy reforms. We also have some benefits that other calculators don’t, like broadband and electric vehicle subsidies, and we’re the first open source benefit model in the country.

Most of all, we’re excited by the precedent PolicyEngine US sets. Even before we launched PolicyEngine UK, we were building PolicyEngine US, and we knew that if we could make it work in two countries, we could make it work worldwide. We now believe our multi-country progress demonstrates that UK residents won’t be alone in being able to compute the impact of their government’s policies for long. Whether it comes from us or another organization, everyone will eventually have transparent policy analysis at their fingertips — it’s just a matter of time and resources.

We have a long way to go to bring all our UK features to the US. The US tax and benefit system is, in many ways, 52 systems: one for each of the 50 states, DC, and the US overall. Some programs, like Housing Choice Vouchers and Child Care Development Fund subsidies, even vary by county. To stay updated on our progress, sign up for our mailing list or follow our social media accounts. You can help us make the rest happen with a tax-deductible gift, or by contributing to our code base. If you’re a developer or researcher, you can also use our microsimulation model programmatically via our OpenFisca US Python package.

To compute the impact of US tax and benefit policy on your own household, give PolicyEngine US a try at policyengine.org/us. You can also learn more about the product on Monday at 11:30AM ET at the Policy Simulation Library Demo Day. As always, feel free to reach out with any questions or feedback.

We’re grateful to other tax and benefit models, from the Policy Simulation Library’s open-source Tax-Calculator to snapscreener.com to the Atlanta Fed’s Policy Rules Database, and to our open-source contributors,_ for aiding in this launch._

max ghenis
PolicyEngine's Co-founder and CEO

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