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Description
Summary
PolicyEngine currently has a single marginal_tax_rate variable that computes the all-in effective marginal rate based on household_net_income (including benefit phaseouts). For comparison with TAXSIM-35, we need separate marginal tax rate variables for each tax component:
federal_marginal_tax_rate— marginal change in federal income taxstate_marginal_tax_rate— marginal change in state income taxfica_marginal_tax_rate— marginal change in FICA liability
Context
TAXSIM-35 outputs three separate marginal rates (frate, srate, ficar), computed by perturbing wages and measuring the change in each tax component independently. PE's existing marginal_tax_rate measures something fundamentally different — the fraction of marginal income that doesn't increase household net income, which includes benefit cliffs, transfer phaseouts, etc.
These component-level rates would enable apples-to-apples comparison of marginal rates in policyengine-taxsim and would also be independently useful for policy analysis (e.g., showing how much of a marginal rate comes from federal vs. state taxes).
Suggested approach
Follow the same counterfactual pattern as marginal_tax_rate but measure Δincome_tax, Δstate_income_tax, and Δemployee_payroll_tax separately instead of Δhousehold_net_income.