Refundable Credit Conversion Explorer
What if overlapping federal tax provisions became one refundable credit? Design the conversion, then trace its effects from a single household to the national budget.
Refundable Credit Conversion
This explorer models a federal income-tax reform that replaces a configurable set of existing tax provisions — including itemized deductions, the standard deduction, above-the-line deductions, the qualified business income deduction, the OBBBA individual provisions, the Head of Household filing status, the Child Tax Credit, the Child and Dependent Care Credit, and the Earned Income Tax Credit — with a flat refundable credit composed of per-taxpayer, per-dependent, per-household, and wage-credit components.
Each repeal can be toggled independently, so the user can score a full conversion or an incremental one (e.g., repeal only the itemized and standard deductions). The impact views focus on the federal reform surface.
Repeal options
| Toggle | Repeals |
|---|---|
| CTC | Child Tax Credit (IRC §24) |
| EITC | Earned Income Tax Credit (IRC §32) |
| CDCC | Child & Dependent Care Credit (IRC §21) |
| Standard deduction | IRC §63(c) + legacy aged/blind add-on |
| Itemized deductions | Schedule A (SALT, mortgage, charity, medical, …) |
| Above-the-line deductions | IRC §62 list except alimony |
| 199A / QBID | Qualified business income deduction (IRC §199A) |
| Head of Household | HoH filing status (IRC §2(b)) |
| Senior deduction | OBBBA $6k bonus for 65+ (2025–2028) |
| Tip deduction | OBBBA qualified tips (2025–2028) |
| Overtime deduction | OBBBA overtime premium (2025–2028) |
| Auto-loan interest | OBBBA car-loan interest (2025–2028) |
| Non-itemizer charitable | OBBBA, permanent from 2026 |
Credit options
| Component | Definition |
|---|---|
| Per taxpayer | Flat $ per filer (head + spouse if MFJ) |
| Per CTC dependent | Flat $ per CTC-qualifying child |
| Per other dependent | Flat $ per tax-unit dependent who is not a CTC-qualifying child |
| Per household | Flat $ per tax unit |
| Wage credit | Rate × capped earnings per worker |
Computation details
Full household and economy-wide runs are computed on Modal against the PolicyEngine bundle pinned at deploy time; the wizard's 2026–2027 instant estimates compute in the browser from precomputed, release-stamped artifacts on the certified populace_us_2024 dataset, which replaced the enhanced CPS in June 2026 (see the data-quality advisory). These are static estimates: they hold taxpayer behavior fixed and exclude labor-supply or avoidance responses.