Skip to content
New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

credits for child tax & other dependents tax calculation of the year 2021 #2700

Closed
bodiyang opened this issue Oct 20, 2023 · 18 comments
Closed
Labels

Comments

@bodiyang
Copy link
Contributor

bodiyang commented Oct 20, 2023

There is an issue in child tax credit calculation for the year 2021. (noticed from the validation work with taxsim35 ~ many records are showing differences in child tax credit between Tax-Calc and Taxsim, as documented in PR 2698 )

Currently, Tax-Calculator's child tax credit calculation follows the IRS Publication 972, as in calcfunctions.py. The years before 2020 all follows IRS Publication 972.

Since 2021, child tax credit has been changed to follow IRS Sch 8812 in 2021. The tax logic is also changed for the year 2021, while to be noticed only for the year 2021. Year 2022's child tax credit still follows IRS Sch 8812, but the tax logic is the same as the years before 2020 which are under Publication 972, as can be seen in IRS Sch 8812 in 2022

As a result, the child tax credit calculation is correct for all the years except 2021. Tax logic has to be rewritten for the year 2021, following IRS Sch 8812 in 2021

@jdebacker
Copy link
Member

@bodiyang Thanks for digging into this.

Can you provide an example of a case where Tax-Calculator fails to give the correct child tax credit amount?

@feenberg
Copy link
Contributor

feenberg commented Oct 21, 2023 via email

@bodiyang
Copy link
Contributor Author

bodiyang commented Oct 21, 2023

Of course Jason and Daniel, I'll gather some sample records with different characters and attach the comparison of calculations from Tax-calculator, Taxsim and IRS Tax Forms

(issues noticed so far: not including the child age at 18 (taxcalc); a rounding rule to the next $1,000 (probably in taxsim); ... )

Bodi

@feenberg
Copy link
Contributor

feenberg commented Oct 21, 2023 via email

@bodiyang
Copy link
Contributor Author

bodiyang commented Oct 23, 2023

case record:

taxsimid 58 year 2021. state 0. mstat 1 page 62 sage 0 depx 4 dep13 4 dep17 4 dep18 4 pwages 177,000 swages 0

non_refundable_child_odep_credit is $8,775 from taxsim; $8,000 from tax-calculator

I've tried to manually calculated the child tax credit and credit for other dependents, the result is $8,750 from Sch 8812 of the year 2021; $8,000 from Publication 972 in 2018

~ my thought:

  • Tax-Calculator follows the 2018 Publication 972 (their results match) instead of 2021 Sch 8812;
  • Taxsim probably didn't implement the $1,000 rounding rule --- referring to (page 4 of the doc) line 5 Worksheet line 9 if more than zero and not a multiple of $1,000, enter the next mulitple of $1,000 2021 Sch 8812 instructions
    . By my manual calculation, the result will be $8,775 if this rule is not considered, while the result should be $8,750 otherwise

@bodiyang bodiyang changed the title child tax credit tax calculation of the year 2021 credits for child tax & other dependents tax calculation of the year 2021 Oct 23, 2023
@feenberg
Copy link
Contributor

feenberg commented Oct 23, 2023 via email

@jdebacker
Copy link
Member

@bodiyang, I see that Tax-Calculator gives a CTC amount of $8775 for this filer (the same at TAXSIM-35), if you add together c07220 with the ctc_new variable. ctc_new was created to handle the different logic of the CTC in 2021, and takes on the value of the difference between the "standard CTC" and the 2021 amount.

It may be good to add these together in taxcalc in the c07220 variable going forward, but I'm not sure of the reason why there were kept separate when the ctc_new variable was added in 2021.

@jdebacker
Copy link
Member

In any case, the point about the rounding may still be an issue. I'll let you and Dan settle that, but will be following the discussion.

@bodiyang
Copy link
Contributor Author

bodiyang commented Oct 23, 2023

IMG_4939 copy

@feenberg this is the calculation by tax form of the case record, with the result $8,750

taxsim looks like not considering the $1,000 rounding rule in line 5 worksheet

Bodi

@feenberg
Copy link
Contributor

feenberg commented Oct 23, 2023 via email

@feenberg
Copy link
Contributor

feenberg commented Oct 24, 2023 via email

@bodiyang
Copy link
Contributor Author

bodiyang commented Oct 24, 2023

Is this webpage perhaps relevant to the 2021 taxpayer? https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p972.pdf I have attached the worksheet for Line 5 of Form 8812 as prepared by TaxAct, which seems to agree with the Taxsim calculation. If I have entered the wrong data, or you disagree with the calculation, can you send me your version of the 8812 worksheet? It will help a lot for me to understand what the difference is. I did add code to stop the smoothing which can be turned on by setting opt1 to 88 and opt1v to 1. I use that option to turn off smoothing when it causes difficulties, but I haven't gone through all the code looking for places it could be used.

On Mon, 23 Oct 2023, Bodi Yang wrote: case record: taxsimid 18 year 2021. state 0. mstat 1 page 51 sage 0 depx 5 dep13 1 dep17 1 dep18 3 pwages 8000 swages 0 non_refundable_child_odep_credit is $5,000 from taxsim; $4,000 from tax-calculator I've tried to manually calculated the child tax credit and credit for other dependents, the results are - $9,800 from Sch 8812 of the year 2021; - $800 from Publication 972 in 2018 ~ note on this: the child tax & other dependents credit is non-refundable, so it is capped by the iitax. if there is no cap, the result would be $4,000. $800 = min (iitax = $800, child tax & other dependdents credit = $4,000) Based on this calculation, Tax-Calculator follows the 2018 Publication 972 instead of the 2021 tax form, while I didn't check how taxsim get thte $5,000 -- Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: #2700 (comment) You are receiving this because you commented. Message ID: @.***>

This record should be good. taxsimid 18 year 2021. state 0. mstat 1 page 51 sage 0 depx 5 dep13 1 dep17 1 dep18 3 pwages 8000 swages 0 non_refundable_child_odep_credit is $5,000 from taxsim

Just had another check dep18 = 3 in taxsim actually represent the EITC qualifying child (under age 19), not the child under the age of 18. So dep18 = 3 should not be taken consideration into the child tax credit calculation. So for this record, the total number of child under the age of 18 is only 1 (dep 17 = 1). The child tax credit calculation should be $5,000 then.

But the other example do have an issue, please refer to my comment above about the rounding rule.

Another notice is to use 2021 form 8812 for the calculation, with instructions. I think the link you sent above is the IRS 2022 form 8812. The 2021 form and 2022 form are different. ~ tax logic of 2022 is same with all years before 2020; 2021 tax logic is an outlier

Bodi

@feenberg
Copy link
Contributor

feenberg commented Oct 24, 2023 via email

@bodiyang
Copy link
Contributor Author

@feenberg

I saw your comment "It turns out the Form 8812 doesn't reduce the Line 5 amount below 8,750"
~ just want to make sure we are talking about the same $1,000 rounding rule. There are two rounding rule appearances in the form: one in form 8812 Part 1-A line 9, the other one is in Form 8812 Instruction -- (at page 4) Line 5 Worksheet -- line 9

I'm referring to the 2021 Form 8812 Instruction -- (at page 4) Line 5 Worksheet -- line 9. Subtract line 8 from Schdule8812 line 3 * if more than zero ....enter the next multiple of $1,000

would be easier to refer to my manual calculation for details.

This is where the rounding rule got applied:
line 5 Worksheet -- line 9: 177000 - 112500 = 64500; then apply the rounding rule 64500 -> 65000

Bodi

@feenberg
Copy link
Contributor

feenberg commented Oct 24, 2023 via email

@bodiyang
Copy link
Contributor Author

I agree, attached is the worksheet for line 5 which shows 65,000 on line 9. The taxsim.f file I sent you is no good. I'll send a working one if you like. Can you remove the one I just sent from github? That would be helpful. Thanks dan

On Tue, 24 Oct 2023, Bodi Yang wrote: @feenberg I saw your comment "It turns out the Form 8812 doesn't reduce the Line 5 amount below 8,750" ~ just want to make sure we are talking about the same $1,000 rounding rule. There are two rounding rule appearances in the form: one in form 8812 Part 1-A line 9, the other one is in Form 8812 Instruction -- (at page 4) Line 5 Worksheet -- line 9 I'm referring to the 2021 Form 8812 Instruction -- (at page 4) Line 5 Worksheet -- line 9. Subtract line 8 from Schdule8812 line 3 * if more than zero ....enter the next multiple of $1,000 would be easier to refer to [my manual calculation](#2700 (comment)) for details. This is where the rounding rule got applied: line 5 Worksheet -- line 9: 177000 - 112500 = 64500; then apply the rounding rule 64500 -> 65000 Bodi -- Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: #2700 (comment) You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Message ID: @.***>

Of course Dan. I think you may need to remove the previous taxsim.f from your git account. I can't do it on my side

@jdebacker
Copy link
Member

Relates to Issue #2701

@jdebacker jdebacker added the bug label Oct 31, 2023
@jdebacker
Copy link
Member

Resolved via PR #2704

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment
Labels
Projects
None yet
Development

No branches or pull requests

3 participants