Fix federal income tax calibration to use income_tax_positive #495
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Changes CBO income tax calibration target from `income_tax` to `income_tax_positive` to match CBO's receipts definition. CBO reports income tax receipts where refundable credit payments in excess of tax liability are classified as outlays (spending), not negative receipts. The `income_tax_positive` variable (added in policyengine-us) floors income_tax at zero to match this definition. Reference: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/43767 Closes #494 Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
MaxGhenis
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Jan 31, 2026
CBO reports income tax receipts where refundable credit payments in excess of liability are outlays, not negative receipts. Changes the calibration target from income_tax to income_tax_positive to match. Recreated from PR #495 rebased onto main. Closes #494 Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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Superseded by new PR rebased onto main (was targeting stale db-work branch). |
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Summary
income_taxtoincome_tax_positiveContext
CBO reports income tax receipts where refundable credit payments in excess of tax liability are classified as outlays (spending), not negative receipts. PolicyEngine's
income_taxcan be negative when refundable credits exceed liability.From CBO:
The impact is ~$81B (~4% of federal income tax receipts).
Dependencies
Requires policyengine-us PR: PolicyEngine/policyengine-us#7288
Test plan
income_tax_positivevariable exists in policyengine-us after PR mergesmake databaseto verify ETL executes successfullyincome_tax_positiveinstead ofincome_taxCloses #494
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