Limit charitable deduction value to 28% rate. Raises ~$200B over 10 years.
Ten-year deficit effect, conventional-$174.9Breduces the deficit
With macroeconomic feedback and debt service-$196.3BFRB/US-Lite (Federal Reserve calibrated)
Checked against
Published score -$200.0B; this estimate is 12.5% away (unfitted reconstruction). Unfitted reconstruction, 12.5% from -$200B (Obama/Biden proposal) — no constant is fitted to this figure.
Typical error for this kind of policy: -$187.4B to -$162.5B, from 2 out-of-sample tax expenditure cases.
Out-of-sample accuracy, tax expenditure: 2 pre-registered rows miss their published scores by 7.1% on average (median 7.1%), worst 12.8% — 1 of the 2 falls inside the average. On this figure that is -$187.4B to -$162.5B typical, -$197.3B to -$152.5B at the worst row. Read off the out-of-sample tier only — not the calibrated tiers, whose agreement is by construction. It is the observed spread of this model against published scores for this class of policy, not a confidence interval.
Approximate bracket method: this policy cannot run through the return-level microsimulation, so read the shape as directional rather than as a validated table. Groups are ranked by adjusted gross income per return. Average change is in dollars per return; positive means the group pays more tax.
Economic effects
difference from the CBO baseline
GDP, summed over the window-0.22percent-years
Jobs at the largest effect-28K
Deficit effect of the GDP change+$15.4Bless tax collected
Deficit effect of interest on the debt-$36.8Bless debt, less interest
Fiscal year
GDP level
Jobs
Unemployment
10-year rate
GDP change, deficit
Interest, deficit
2026
-0.038%
-24K
+0.02 pt
-0.00 pt
+$2.7B
-$0.6B
2027
-0.044%
-28K
+0.02 pt
-0.00 pt
+$3.1B
-$1.2B
2028
-0.039%
-25K
+0.02 pt
-0.01 pt
+$2.7B
-$1.9B
2029
-0.031%
-20K
+0.02 pt
-0.01 pt
+$2.1B
-$2.6B
2030
-0.023%
-15K
+0.01 pt
-0.01 pt
+$1.6B
-$3.2B
2031
-0.016%
-10K
+0.01 pt
-0.01 pt
+$1.1B
-$3.9B
2032
-0.011%
-7K
+0.01 pt
-0.01 pt
+$0.8B
-$4.7B
2033
-0.008%
-5K
+0.00 pt
-0.01 pt
+$0.6B
-$5.4B
2034
-0.005%
-3K
+0.00 pt
-0.02 pt
+$0.4B
-$6.2B
2035
-0.004%
-2K
+0.00 pt
-0.02 pt
+$0.3B
-$7.0B
FRB/US-Lite (Federal Reserve calibrated). Demand effects fade over five to seven years as monetary policy responds; there is no supply-side channel. The dynamic score is the conventional score, plus the deficit effects of the GDP change and of interest on the debt: -$174.9B + $15.4B - $36.8B = -$196.3B.
Other scoring models
exploratory
Model
Ten-year deficit effect
Method
CBO-Style
-$174.9B
Static + ETI behavioral response + optional FRB/US dynamic feedback
TPC-Microsim Pilot
Cannot score this
Cap Charitable Deduction at 28% (TaxExpenditurePolicy) does not map onto current microsim pilot reforms (income-tax rates, CTC, EITC, SALT, std deduction, AMT exemption).
No pilot model returned distributional output; the comparison is aggregate-only.
CBO-Style is the model behind the headline above. The TPC-style microsimulation is a pilot: where the two disagree, the gap tells you how much the answer depends on method. It is not an official range.
Limitations
holdout labels follow the locked post-2026-05-02 regression protocol; they are not retroactive historical out-of-sample claims.
Target revised (target_revisions.eliminate_mortgage.v2) to a published RANGE [-$495.0B, -$367.9B] with Tax Foundation's -$367.9B as the carried anchor. The percentage this row reports is a distance from one modeller's point, not a measurement of accuracy; read `within_published_range` and `distance_to_published_range_billions` instead. No agency has scored repeal: CBO has published no post-TCJA option, JCT publishes the tax expenditure, and there is no FY2027 Green Book.
Yale's own 'close to $1.2 trillion' is not a bound: it is scored against pre-P.L. 119-21 current law, where TCJA's larger standard deduction lapses and the itemising population roughly doubles.
The record's annual_cost = 25.0 is a pre-P.L.119-21 level. JCT's JCX-45-25 puts the capped expenditure at $45.5B in FY2025 rising to $54.9B in FY2029, because raising the SALT cap to $40,000 took itemising claimants from 11.8M to 17.8M returns; Treasury's FY2027 edition gives $23.9B falling to $14.1B on the same statute. Choosing between them is an owner decision with a visible consequence for this row, not a provenance lane's.
The target and this benchmark's twin `eliminate_salt` state opposite baselines: repeal is priced against a permanent $10,000 cap and elimination against CBO's world where the cap has lapsed. Both are now stated rather than hidden; reconciling them needs a baseline-vintage concept the expenditure module does not have.
P.L. 119-21 sec. 70120 replaced the $10,000 cap with $40,000 for 2025-2029 (indexed 1%/yr, phased down above $500,000 of MAGI, never below $10,000) reverting permanently to $10,000 in 2030, so 'repeal the $10,000 cap' describes no live reform for most of the window. JCT's own row for that provision is +$946.2B over FY2025-2034 and is already carried as `pl119_21_salt_cap_40k`.
CBO measures the option on a baseline where the $10,000 cap lapses after 2025. P.L. 119-21 has since replaced that world with a $40,000 cap through 2029 reverting to $10,000 in 2030, so the target's baseline is no longer current law -- a model gap, not a target one, and one that needs a baseline-vintage concept the module does not have.
Reclassified rather than retuned: the module's behavioural magnitude for a charitable benefit-rate ceiling was an unsourced 0.40, and this annual had been chosen so that static x 1.40 lands on -$200.0B. Lane H7 derived the magnitude from CRS R40518's central price elasticity of giving (0.5) through the deduction's own SOI distribution, giving 0.220780, and the row moved 0.3% -> 12.5%; no constant was moved to close it.
The -$200B target is itself `secondhand` and sits in EXAMINED_NOT_REVISED: the 28% limitation it points at is a real Green Book proposal with a real score, but that proposal limits the value of ALL itemized deductions plus several exclusions, so its $645,538M is not a charitable-only cap. The residual is therefore a distance from an unsourced figure rather than a measurement against a document.