A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code · HackerPapers discussions

A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code — mentioned by wahern

Thu, 21 May 2026 04:53:09 GMT

> [US] tax law drafting style follows default logic, a non-monotonic logic that is hard to encode in languages with first-order logic (FOL). https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.07966.pdf Most law generally is non-monotonic. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-monotonic_logic) The French tax code is one of the few exceptions.

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A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code — HN submission

Mon, 22 Jul 2024 18:14:01 GMT

A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code (2021)

2 points; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code — mentioned by mdaniel

Fri, 17 Feb 2023 21:23:58 GMT

I briefly actually tried to read up on the laws that governed me, since I once heard "ignorance of the law is no excuse" and also was curious what, exactly, it would take to really, no kidding, translate the tax code into python or Mlang (https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.07966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34579236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25208853 ) However, once I realized that -- as you said -- it's not just the law it's the court (and presumably IRS) rulings that supplement the law, that was too much for me and I noped out. My 2nd idea was to become an Enrolled Agent and then…

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A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code — HN submission

Mon, 30 Jan 2023 13:22:51 GMT

A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code (2020)

189 points; 49 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code — mentioned by fsflyer

Thu, 30 Jun 2022 00:20:10 GMT

France has an open source implementation of their tax code [0]. The paper [1] gives an overview of the implementation language, mlang. [0] https://github.com/MLanguage/mlang [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.07966

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A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code — mentioned by BiteCode_dev

Tue, 05 Oct 2021 10:55:59 GMT

The french initiative started in 2013 is still alive (last commit a few days ago), and passes the gov test suite (they keep in touch with our version of the IRS): https://github.com/openfisca/openfisca-france The way we got this is interestingly twisted. French citizens requested the software used by the administration, and they managed to get it! But, it was written in Mlang, a proprietary language created by the french administration in the 90: https://github.com/MLanguage/mlang. Someone then decided to create an OCaml compiler that takes mlang and emits python…

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A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code — mentioned by wahern

Tue, 05 Oct 2021 07:11:28 GMT

AFAIU, the French Tax Code is effectively defined in terms of an algorithm. There was a recent HN thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25208853) on a new open-source compiler for the tax code (https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.07966). The paper for the compiler references some interesting literature on the computability of legal codes. For example, > [U.S.] tax law drafting style follows default logic, a non-monotonic logic that is hard to encode in languages with first-order logic (FOL).

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A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code — mentioned by paulvorobyev

Mon, 17 May 2021 23:48:57 GMT

Adding to this list: * https://catala-lang.org/ -- DSL for translating/annotating legal texts * https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.07966.pdf -- A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EshxZVMURt4 -- Formal Methods and the Law

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A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code — mentioned by benrbray

Sun, 14 Mar 2021 02:21:48 GMT

You might be interested in Merigoux et al 2021, "A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code" [1]! [1]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.07966.pdf

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A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code — mentioned by wahern

Wed, 16 Dec 2020 01:50:06 GMT

In general the law is absolutely not so rigorous. It's more like general philosophical literature in terms of logical rigor--diverse, disjoint, etc. But certain subdomains of the law can be closer to a formal system. The French tax code is peculiar (though I'm not sure its unique) in literally being defined by the rules encoded in an official program. A recent paper on a new language for compiling those rules, "A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code" (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.07966.pdf, via HN a couple of weeks ago), contains a blurb at the very end, > Closer to the topic of this paper…

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A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code — HN submission

Wed, 25 Nov 2020 13:14:22 GMT

A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code

188 points; 130 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.