policyengine-us icon indicating copy to clipboard operation
policyengine-us copied to clipboard

Restructure EITC max to calculate from indexed earned income amounts

Open MaxGhenis opened this issue 4 months ago • 0 comments

Current Implementation

EITC maximum credit amounts are stored as static values in gov/irs/credits/eitc/max.yaml with uprating metadata.

Ideal Implementation

Per IRC § 32, EITC max should be calculated as:

  • EITC Max = credit percentage × earned income amount

Where:

  • Credit percentages (IRC § 32(b)(1)): Fixed at 7.65%, 34%, 40%, 45% for 0, 1, 2, 3+ children
  • Earned income amounts (IRC § 32(b)(2)(A)): Indexed annually with $10 rounding per IRC § 32(j)

Benefits

  1. Matches statutory structure: Statute doesn't index EITC max directly, only the earned income amounts
  2. Reduces manual maintenance: Only need to maintain earned income amounts, not calculated maxima
  3. More accurate: Avoids rounding errors from uprating derived values
  4. Clearer: Makes calculation transparent

References

Implementation

Would require creating variables that calculate EITC max from indexed parameters rather than reading directly from max.yaml.

MaxGhenis avatar Oct 19 '25 11:10 MaxGhenis