firm-microsim-paper

Synthetic firm-level microsimulation of the UK VAT registration threshold.

This repository builds an open, firm-level synthetic population of UK businesses — calibrated to official ONS and HMRC aggregates — that resolves the turnover distribution at the individual-firm level around the VAT registration threshold, where published statistics only report coarse bands. It supports bunching estimation, static revenue costings, and dynamic firm re-optimisation around the threshold notch.

Layout

firm-microsim-paper/
├── data/                 # official inputs + generated output (see data/README.md)
│   ├── raw/              # pristine ONS + HMRC source workbooks
│   ├── processed/        # derived band tables, by vintage (2023-24, 2024-25)
│   └── synthetic/        # generated synthetic population (regenerated, not committed)
├── src/firm_microsim/    # installable package
│   ├── config.py         # vintage, VAT threshold, paths, hyperparameters
│   ├── generate.py       # synthetic-population generator
│   ├── static/           # static threshold-reform results
│   ├── bunching/         # reduced-form bunching estimator
│   ├── notch/            # structural notch diagnostics
│   ├── dynamic/          # conditional behavioural costing
│   └── analysis/         # paper table and diagnostic scripts
├── pyproject.toml        # package metadata, dependencies, console scripts
├── paper/                # Quarto/LaTeX manuscript sources and checked PDF
├── results/              # generated figures + calibration_accuracy.txt
└── requirements.txt

Method (data generation)

A two-stage synthetic-population pipeline, parameterised by a single VAT threshold:

1. Draw base firms from the ONS business structure — sample continuous within-band turnover, employment, and intermediate inputs for individual firms so the population has firm-level resolution the official bands lack.
2. Calibrate firm weights by multi-objective optimisation (Adam, symmetric relative-error loss) so weighted totals reproduce the official targets — HMRC VAT-registered counts by turnover band and by sector, ONS employment-band totals, and HMRC VAT-liability totals — with turnover bands weighted most heavily. VAT registration is then assigned: mandatory above the threshold, voluntary below at the HMRC-calibrated rate.

The result is ~2.94M firm rows weighted to ~2.5M UK firms. Because the population is calibrated to the HMRC aggregates, agreement with them is an internal consistency check, not external validation.

The official target surface is also being mirrored into PolicyEngine Ledger and Populace. This repository keeps the paper's archived CSV inputs and generator for reproducibility, and includes a Populace/Ledger comparison command so the pinned migration snapshot can be audited without silently changing the published paper population.

Data vintages — single version, one-line switch

The pipeline is single-version: there is one VAT_THRESHOLD, not separate 85k/90k scripts. Two coherent official-data vintages are available and selected with a single switch (see data/README.md):

Vintage	Data	Threshold	Role
2023-24 (default)	ONS 2024 + HMRC 2023-24	£85,000	Paper baseline
2024-25	ONS 2025 + HMRC 2024-25	£90,000	Latest gov data

Usage

Install the package in editable mode, then run the package entry points:

uv venv --python 3.13
uv pip install -e ".[dev]"

firm-microsim          # ALL DATA: every vintage + calibration report + figures
firm-microsim-static   # ALL STATIC RESULTS: threshold-reform figures

firm-microsim with no arguments runs the full data build — it generates synthetic_firms_<vintage>.csv for every vintage, writes results/calibration_accuracy.txt, and renders the descriptive figures. Single steps are still available:

firm-microsim --vintage 2024-25             # one vintage only (£90k)
firm-microsim --threshold 88 --seed 7 --output my_run.csv
firm-microsim-report                        # calibration report only
firm-microsim-figures                       # descriptive figures only
firm-microsim-populace-ledger               # Populace/Ledger comparison

import firm_microsim
df = firm_microsim.generate()                      # baseline
df = firm_microsim.generate(vintage="2024-25")     # latest
df, report = firm_microsim.generate(return_report=True)

Output is written to data/synthetic/synthetic_firms.csv (sic_code, annual_turnover_k, annual_input_k, vat_liability_k, employment, weight, vat_registered).

Paper

The manuscript is rendered with Quarto, while preserving the existing LaTeX section files and template:

cd paper
quarto render index.qmd --to pdf

The PolicyBench-style web paper is generated from the same LaTeX sections and rendered with PolicyEngine design tokens:

cd paper
python3 build_site.py

The deployable static site is written to paper/site/. Quarto writes PDF render artifacts to paper/out/; the checked-in submission PDF is paper/main.pdf. The legacy direct-LaTeX entrypoint paper/main.tex remains available for debugging and uses the same shared frontmatter/body inputs.

The current Vercel deployment is https://firm-microsim-paper.vercel.app/.

Calibration accuracy

The population is calibrated to five official ONS + HMRC target groups; the validator scores each dimension as accuracy = max(0, 1 − |synthetic − target| / |target|). The displayed error is the clipped complement of that score, not a signed relative error. Overall is the simple mean over the five calibrated dimensions below. Reproduce with:

firm-microsim-report

Calibrated dimension	85k (2023-24)	90k (2024-25)
HMRC turnover bands	93.0%	92.7%
ONS population	91.1%	94.2%
Employment bands	78.2%	89.7%
Sector distribution	92.5%	94.5%
VAT liability by band	94.6%	81.4%
Overall (5 calibrated dimensions)	89.9%	90.5%

VAT liability by sector is not a calibration target — it is reported as an informational diagnostic only (47.1% / 44.5%). The model fixes firm inputs and sets liability = turnover − input but does not yet calibrate the input/output tax structure, so per-sector net liability is structurally unhittable and is gated off via Config.calibrate_vat_liability_sector = False. Restoring it after input/output calibration is tracked in issues #1 and #2.

Populace/Ledger migration check

firm-microsim-populace-ledger reports the current migration comparison. The checked reference run used the 2024-25 Ledger target surface from PolicyEngine/ledger#67 at cd98b5cb7b1604fbf7750689a429bbc356e5603a and Populace's experimental UK firm generator from PolicyEngine/populace#223 at fa20daf75ff023e5e88731a140f456f58e0b864e. Both upstream PRs merged on June 30, 2026: Ledger at merge commit ac643afa0c1d45fc4abd0268dc5aa7c843440b38, and Populace at merge commit 8271d767244161631253ad1d9ad792a82e2b96b4. The reference population uses 1,000 calibration iterations:

firm-microsim-populace-ledger \
  --output results/populace_ledger_comparison.txt \
  --json-output results/populace_ledger_provenance.json

When populace-build is installed from the Populace source tree, the same command can recompute the table and paper-CSV parity from Ledger consumer facts:

firm-microsim-populace-ledger \
  --facts-jsonl /path/to/uk_firm_consumer_facts.jsonl \
  --iterations 1000 \
  --output results/populace_ledger_comparison.txt \
  --json-output results/populace_ledger_provenance.json

The current reference comparison shows exact parity between the Ledger-backed targets and the paper's processed 2024-25 numeric inputs: six normalized source tables checked, zero mismatches, max numeric difference 0. It does not exactly replicate the paper's generated synthetic population: Populace's shared optimizer lands at 93.8% overall accuracy under its own validator versus the paper's 90.5%, but that overall pair is not like-for-like: HMRC turnover-band accuracy uses different band sets, and sector distribution reflects different calibration-target definitions. The directly comparable rows are ONS population, employment bands, and VAT liability by turnover band. The Populace/Ledger path is now based on merged upstream inputs, while remaining a migration check rather than a silent replacement for the paper's archived generator/results.

Figures

Figures follow the project house style: single clean panels (no embedded titles, source notes, or logos — captions and side-by-side layouts are composed in LaTeX), teal palette, saved as snake_case PNGs to results/ at 300 dpi. They are produced by the in-package firm_microsim.figures module and generated for both vintages (two full sets, suffixed _85k / _90k):

firm-microsim-figures          # regenerate every figure, both vintages

results/ then contains:

Figure	85k (2023-24)	90k (2024-25)	Source
All UK firms by turnover band	firms_by_turnover_band_85k.png	firms_by_turnover_band_90k.png	ONS
VAT-registered firms by turnover band	vat_firms_by_turnover_band_85k.png	vat_firms_by_turnover_band_90k.png	HMRC
Full-range turnover distribution	turnover_distribution_85k.png	turnover_distribution_90k.png	synthetic

The turnover-distribution figures require the matching synthetic CSV (data/synthetic/synthetic_firms_<vintage>.csv); generate it first with firm-microsim --vintage <vintage> --output synthetic_firms_<vintage>.csv.

Note on ONS counts: firm-count figures sum the per-SIC rows only — the ONS band tables include a Total summary row that must be excluded, or every firm is counted twice (a bug present in earlier drafts that doubled the ONS panel).

Static threshold reform results

The firm_microsim.static module costs VAT-threshold reforms mechanically (turnover held fixed; only registration status changes), reproducing the paper's static results. Run:

firm-microsim-static          # -> results/{vat_threshold_revenue_impact,revenue_impact_2025_26,firms_impact_2025_26}.png

• vat_threshold_revenue_impact.png — the £85k→£90k anchor reform vs HMRC's published costing, by fiscal year. Built on the £85k / 2023-24 vintage — the pre-reform basis HMRC actually had at the 6 March 2024 costing (the threshold was still £85k until 1 April 2024). Model −171/−175/−110/−38/+72.5 vs HMRC −150/−185/−125/−50/+65 £m; both turn positive by 2028-29. Affected firms ≈ 32.6k registered, next to HMRC's published 28,000.
• revenue_impact_2025_26.png / firms_impact_2025_26.png — the forward static sweep of registration thresholds (£70k–£120k) vs the current £90k baseline, on the £90k / 2024-25 vintage.

Two vintages, two exercises. The anchor reform uses the £85k vintage, where the affected [85,90)k band sits above the £85k registration threshold and is cleanly populated with registered firms — so a simple band-sum suffices (no de-bunching). The forward sweep uses the current £90k vintage; there the [85,90)k firms are below threshold and the calibration concentrates weight on them, so the sweep instead fits the clean above-threshold firm/liability profile and extrapolates it across the threshold (StaticVATModel._counterfactual_bins, unaged turnover scaled to the fiscal year by a nominal-growth factor). Revenue and the anchor reform match the paper and HMRC closely; the forward-sweep firm-count magnitudes run low because the regenerated population has a lower near-threshold VAT-paying-firm density.