Employee benefits and household income

Hi Dean, You are correct in your assessment of how to model easement payments as household income. With a Labor Income Change Activity, you must enter loaded payroll, which includes benefits to workers. The software will remove payroll taxes, social insurance taxes, commuters, personal taxes, and savings according to the rates reflected in the SAM for your region. The following link will provide you with more information about a labor income change and to model it. http://www.implan.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=604:604&catid=248:KB28 The one-time payment to land owners for right-of-way easements can be model as a Household Income Change with a few caveats. However, it depends on what assumptions you make about what the landowners might do with the new income. If you assume the producer will spend the money rather than re-invest, you will probably want to model this as a Household Income Change activity type, as this will allocate some of the funds to personal taxes and savings. If you instead model this using an imported household spending pattern, you are making the assumption that every cent of the funds will be spent. Concerning the purchase of land, you are correct. These payments should not be included in the analysis. Land is an asset, and purchasing it is mostly just a swapping of assets (someone cash for your land). The principal of the swap causes no impact in the region. Any fees involved, realty, financing, lawyer etc. will need to be applied to the appropriate sector. The output of the real estate sector includes the fees paid for land deals, landlord management fees, and rent paid by businesses/households. It does not include the principal values of land sales. The approach, in this, case would be to model real estate fees using the real estate sector-360 and finance and legal using finance and legal sectors, 355 and 367, respectively. Please let us know if we can be of further help.