An Introduction to Microsimulation Tax-Benefit Models

Mininum Income Benefit (£pw)
Tax Credit-type Benefit (£pw)
Basic Income (£pw)
Output Dashboard

Net Cost

Gainers and Losers

Marginal Effective Tax Rates

Replacement Rates

Changes By Decile

Lorenz Curve

Inequality

Poverty

Taxes on Income

Taxes on Spending

Spending on Benefits

Benefit Targetting

Benefits

PLEASE NOTE this model is incomplete and there are bugs in the interface (some arrows wrong way). Also, these inputs shouldn’t be zero.

Now, we invite you to experiment with just the state benefit system, holding taxes constant.

The inputs should be familiar to you from before, but bear in mind the extra complexity of the underlying benefit system.

Activity

we’ve discussed the inherent trade-off between targeting expenditure on those most in need, and imposing high marginal tax rates (poverty traps), and perhaps high replacement rates, on the poor. Try to find empirically the relationship between these things by varying the generosity of each of our three types of benefit. Create a table of your results.