Installation of Taxsimtest

-taxsimtest-is a Stata .ado file for calculating US Federal and State income tax liabilities. Unlike -taxsimtest.ado- the actual calculation is done by a binary executable on the user's computer. No data is sent over the Internet. This is useful for large files or confidential data.

Normal Install

net from https://taxsim.nber.org/stata net install taxsimlocaltest,all Stata will automatically choose the Windows, OSX or Linux version of the Fortran executable. Please test the install with the following program: infile mstat year ltcg 2 1970 100000 end taxsimtest,replace The value of fiitax should be 16,700.04. The most likely failure is not an incorrect dollar amount, but no result at all. You can check for what is wrong by opening a terminal window and changing to the directory where the taxsimtest files have been stored. The -which taxsimtest- command will give you the directory path. Once in that directory issue commands to type taxsimtest.ado type taxsimtest.hlp "type" would be "cat" in Linux or OSX. Those commands should send several pages of ASCII text to the window. If they don't, check that the files exist and are generally readable. Next test the executable ./taxsim.exe mstat,year,ltcg 2,1970,100000 You should receive a 2-line csv file in reply. If not, check the existence and permissions (Linux and OSX) on the executable.

Firewall Interference with the Installation

One of the files that must be installed on your computer is the binary executable - windows.exe. -net install- attempts to put it in the same directory as -taxsimtest.ado-, but a local or institutional firewall may interfere with the download. There is typically no error message during the install, but -taxsimtest- will fail with TAXSIM: not found The best solution is to somehow get the executable into that directory. One way is to ask your IT group for help. Many IT departments pride themselves on never helping with user concerns, so you may have to find a workaround. You can perhaps download the executable at home, and transfer the file on a thumb drive. The file is available at one of these URLs: depending on which kind of computer you will run -taxsimtest- on. (These are all 64-bit Intel binaries). That file must be renamed to taxsim.exe on your machine. You can find the directory to place the file in with the Stata -which taxsimtest- command. That would typically be in the ado/plus/t subdirectory of your home directory.

Desperation measures

If you don't have write permission in the default location for Stata .ado files, you can install -taxsimtest.ado- and taxsim.exe anywhere you chose, such as your home or download directory. Once there, you will have to use the -adopath- command to tell Stata where to look. If those files are in "/path/to/dir" then use adopath ++ /path/to/dir to add that to the Stata search path. I have, on occaision, made the Fortran 90 source code available. C language source is also available.
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last update 17 June 2024 by drf