Max Ghenis

Bumping the cap to $62k/124k would benefit 22% of US residents in the top income decile and 1.2% of those in the bottom 90%.

The SALT cap would raise taxes on 22% of Americans in the top income decile, and 3% of Americans in the bottom nine deciles.

Chatted with @kimberlyadams.bsky.social of @marketplace.org about the Ways & Means draft to extend 2017 individual tax cuts. The full bill is now out—SALT tweak, tip & OT deductions, and more. Crunching the numbers in @us.policyengine.org—stay tuned for results. 🎧 www.marketplace.org/story/2025/0...

JCT projects the Ways & Means draft would add $4.9 trillion to the debt by 2035. Tuesday's number could be lower (SALT cap) or higher (exemptions of Social Security, tips, overtime, etc.) on the individual side. And higher if provisions ending in 2028 are extended. www.jct.gov/publications...

PolicyEngine Uprating Calculator Streamlit app to apply uprating to certain values

For the modelers out there: we built a tool to inflation-index policy parameters based on CBO's latest projections. You can use it here: policyengine-inflation-index.streamlit.app

Reform #83114 | Policy | PolicyEngine US

Charts from @us.policyengine.org

CTC: policyengine.org/us/policy?fo...

Refundable CTC: policyengine.org/us/policy?fo...

PolicyEngine chart showing the trend in the maximum refundable CTC under current law and House Ways & Means

The draft also continues to inflation-index the maximum refundable CTC. Similarly applying CBO's inflation projections yields these values:
2024-26: $1,700
2027-28: $1,800
2029-31: $1,900
2032-33: $2,000
2034-35: $2,100

PolicyEngine chart showing the maximum CTC under current law and the House Ways & Means draft

The new W&M draft increases the maximum CTC from $2,000 to $2,500 from 2025 to 2028. From 2029 onwards, it then sets it to $2,000, inflation-indexed with a 2024 base year. Applying CBO inflation projections yields:
2029-30: $2,200
2031-33: $2,300
2034-35: $2,400

That said, this is only a draft, so the absence of a SALT cap does not necessarily mean the Tuesday markup will also not have a SALT cap.

What's the SALTernative? | PolicyEngine US Introducing PolicyEngine’s free SALT‑AMT calculator — an open‑source web app to model next year’s SALT‑cap sunset, tweak AMT parameters, and see the budget, distributional, and household impacts in se...

Ways and Means draft: docs.house.gov/meetings/WM/...

Our work on AMT's effective SALT caps: policyengine.org/us/research/...

New Ways & Means draft extends TCJA's AMT provisions while letting the SALT cap expire. Since AMT limits SALT benefits, filers would gain more from SALT than they did pre-TCJA.

For example, a joint filer with $250k income faces these effective SALT caps in 2026:
Current law: $38,876
W&M: $72,747

Long-Term Care: Are Older Adults Ready? The majority of people age 50 and older do not think they will need long-term care, and many have not taken steps to plan for their future long-term care needs

www.healthyagingpoll.org/reports-more...

New poll from @umich.edu Institute for Healthcare Policy & Innovation: 62% of adults age 50+ think Medicare would pay for their care if they need to permanently move into a nursing home. People age 65+ & those with disabilities disproportionately believe this.

Medicare doesn't cover long term care.

ChatGPT - Trade Deficit Reduction Policies Shared via ChatGPT

Here's my chat: chatgpt.com/share/681b32...

Cutting the trade deficit is a controversial goal. But if you did want to, what levers would you pull?

I asked o3 to identify some, along with estimates and CIs. It estimated that tool usage would shrink its CIs by 20-40%.

Motivating for our work arming AI with models via MCP.

Legislation Drafter This app was built in Streamlit! Check it out and visit https://streamlit.io for more awesome community apps. 🎈

Yesterday at the Future of Think Tanks Hackathon, @pavelmakarchuk.bsky.social, Daphne Hansell and I built a prototype tool to generate legislation from
@policyengine.org simulations using LLMs. We hope to integrate this into the platform soon.

Try it here: policyengine-legislation.streamlit.app

My latest for Earth Day 👇

Try it yourself here: maxghenis.github.io/fruit-letter-counter

We all know the difficulty of counting the r's in "strawberry", but what about other fruits, or even other letters?

This combinatorics problem grows exponentially, but with the help of Claude Code, I've built a tool to solve it, at least for common fruits.

Here it is in action:

Just back from EA Global SF with the @policyengine.org team! Incredible conversations with folks tackling the world's most pressing problems. With AI transforming society at unprecedented speed, our work on transparent policy simulation feels more urgent than ever.

apps.bea.gov/itable/index...

DC residents have income higher than any state and 53% higher than the national average.

$20 / $4,328 = 0.005 = 0.5%

EITC benchmark

docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

A single parent of one with $14,200 earnings can claim a $4,328 EITC in 2025, per @policyengineus.bsky.social.

Deepseek and Claude estimated this most accurately (though Deepseek thought about it for over three minutes!); Gemini estimated least accurately.

kalshi.com/markets/kxde...

Would @kalshiofficial.bsky.social say that Biden "reduced the national debt" because it fell 0.35% from Q2 to Q3 2021?

Specifically, FTP access for the 1- and 5-year microdata, in all years, is gone: www2.census.gov/programs-sur...

Linked here: www.census.gov/programs-sur...

The Census Bureau has taken down American Community Survey microdata.

Thankfully we had a local copy, and now store it on @policyengine.bsky.social servers.

Public data powers research, innovation, and evidence-based decision-making across our economy—its integrity and availability should never be compromised.