household feature will permit a user to define the characteristics of a household with Lotus 1–2–3). Customers who wish to obtain SPSD/M for years after 1986 must purchase another license.
Currently, about 25 organizations have purchased a full license for the SPSD/M. Several other organizations have received evaluation copies of the software at no cost.
The SPSD/M license states that technical support is not included in the package and that Statistics Canada will consider supplying advice and support services under a separate cost recovery agreement. Users are expected to develop their own in-house expertise on using the model. In practice, Statistics Canada has provided extensive technical advice to the current small base of users.
Future Work
The SPSD/M package is still under development. The following facilities were planned for future distribution to licensees, and all have been delivered, with the exception of the COMTAX model:
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A new SPSD based on 1986 data.
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A new output function that will provide a numerical evaluation of the effective tax function as a function of income for specific family configurations.
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A hypothetical household facility that will permit a user to create data for a set of individuals in a household. These data will be input to SPSD/M instead of the standard database to permit scenario analysis on the hypothetical household.
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A goal-seeking facility whereby the model will run until a particular target (e.g., a revenue-neutral tax reform) is met.
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The expression facility used in creating user-defined variables will permit the use of parameters and variables for other family members.
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The expression facility will permit the user to specify the name of the resulting variable, thus permitting algorithmic changes to existing operating characteristics in the glass box mode of use.
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The completed commodity tax model (COMTAX), which will permit simulation of alternative commodity tax regimes such as changes in existing tax rates, changes in existing tax exemptions, or changes in the ways different taxes interact.
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Further documentation (e.g., SPSD/M Programmer’s Guide).
