How PRIA computes a household’s figures

Updated October 4, 2026

What an advisor gets

For each client, PRIA reads the household’s tax return and prepares a Household Policy Review and a quarterly policy brief in your firm’s brand. Each one says, in dollars a year, what federal and state law, and the bills before Congress, mean for that household’s taxes, benefits and holdings.

How a figure is made

Every dollar figure comes from PRIA’s simulation of the whole economy, run through the household’s own finances. A law or bill passes through six steps.

1. The text. PRIA reads the law or bill from its official source: the U.S. Code, the bill text Congress publishes, or the state’s own statutes. Each bill is tracked by number and by stage.
2. The federal budget. What the bill adds to or saves from federal borrowing, year by year. Official figures lead where they exist: the Social Security Chief Actuary’s estimate for each Social Security provision, and CBO’s score for a bill CBO has scored. PRIA’s own tax and benefit models supply the rest.
3. Borrowing and interest rates. PRIA’s model turns added borrowing into a change in the ten-year Treasury rate and in federal interest, using CBO’s published conventions for how borrowing draws on savings at home and abroad.
4. Wages, prices and markets. PRIA’s model carries the rate change, and any change in how much people work, into wages, prices, and the value of bonds, stocks and homes. Its responses of work to taxes and of spending to borrowing are CBO’s published figures.
5. Social Security and Medicare. Current law pays the share of benefits the Social Security Trustees project the trust fund can pay, and Medicare premiums follow the Trustees’ projections. These are the Trustees’ published figures.
6. This household. PRIA’s tax and benefit calculation runs on the facts from the household’s own return, with the published tax and benefit amounts for each year: its taxes, Social Security checks, Medicare premiums, and the income and value of what it holds. A bill is compared with current law; an enacted law is compared with the law that would have applied without it.

How PRIA’s results line up with the official scorekeepers

The economy. CBO’s dynamic estimate of H.R. 1 (the 2025 reconciliation act, now Public Law 119-21) is the public test. PRIA took CBO’s own estimate of the bill’s added borrowing ($1,756 billion over 2025–2029 and $660 billion over 2030–2034) and CBO’s path for added work (+0.9% in 2026 to +0.6% by 2034), ran them through its own chain, and compared the results with CBO’s. PRIA’s figures are its central case, with its range beneath.

Output in 2026 lines up: +0.93% against CBO’s +0.9%. PRIA’s rate rise is +7.8 basis points against CBO’s +14. PRIA’s rate follows the added borrowing; CBO adds a second push, from the bill adding workers faster than capital: “The resulting reduction in the amount of capital per worker would also increase interest rates.” PRIA’s interest figure averages 2027–2031, and CBO’s decade carries its larger later years ($703 billion of the $1,067 billion falls in 2030–2034). Average output sits 0.11 points below CBO’s: CBO also credits the bill’s investment incentives, which in its estimate leave the capital stock roughly unchanged by 2034, while PRIA’s capital follows output and borrowing. PRIA’s inflation uses the slope of CBO’s own small-scale model, about 0.1 point of inflation a year after each point of extra demand; CBO’s estimate for this bill is larger.

Congressional Budget Office, H.R. 1, One Big Beautiful Bill Act (Dynamic Estimate), June 17, 2025

Social Security. Social Security’s Chief Actuary publishes how each of dozens of possible changes would move the program’s 75-year balance, as a share of taxable payroll. PRIA runs each change through its own population of households and compares. Across all 61 changes, PRIA moves the balance the same way as the Chief Actuary on 59, lands within a tenth of a point on 24, and within a quarter of a point on 36. Four of them:

In each report, the national figure for a Social Security package is the Chief Actuary’s own, with PRIA’s beside it.

Social Security Office of the Chief Actuary, Summary of Provisions That Would Change the Social Security Program

PRIA’s validation standard counts a model as validated once its figures have been checked against answers published after PRIA sealed them. The comparisons above are calibration against answers already published, so the economy model’s status today is “not validated.” PRIA has sealed its H.R. 1 output and rate figures ahead of CBO’s next dynamic analysis, and every report prints each sealed figure with its miss once the answer is out.

What every report carries for a reviewer

• The date the report is as of.
• Every household fact the calculation used.
• For each bill: its number and its stage on the date PRIA checked it, with the source; the sections in the calculation and the sections outside it; and the official score for that version of the bill, where one exists.
• The calculation year by year, each effect on its own, in dollars and cents, with the range for each scenario.
• Numbered sources, with the arithmetic beside each.
• The version of PRIA’s engine that produced the figures.
• For a bill run through the economy, the CBO comparison above.
• PRIA’s record: figures sealed before the official answer is published, and the miss once it is.

How the quarterly brief is written

Each quarter PRIA’s analysts, working with Anthropic’s Claude, read the quarter’s record: what Congress, the agencies and the courts did, what the press reported, and the measured series for interest rates, prices and the cost-of-living index. They write one account of the quarter under the questions clients bring to their planners: Social Security, Medicare and healthcare costs, taxes, interest rates and prices. Each household’s brief is then written from that account, the household’s own review, and the brief it received the quarter before.

The analyst chooses and explains; the engine supplies every household figure. Before a brief is saved, PRIA checks each figure in it against the quarter’s account and that household’s saved calculation, and returns a draft with a figure found in neither to be corrected. Every figure in the quarter’s account traces to a quoted document, a measured series or the calendar. Reported plans and expectations are attributed to who reported them.

Why a figure moves between updates

A figure moves for one of three reasons, and each update says which:

• The law moved. A bill advanced, passed or changed, or a law took effect.
• The household’s facts changed. A new return, or a correction your firm made.
• PRIA improved its calculation.

Each update shows the figure before and after and names the reason beside it. When more than one reason applies, it gives the dollars from each; when the law and PRIA’s calculation changed together, it names both. A change is counted once.

Who is responsible for what

PRIA is responsible for its own work: reading the return, the calculation, how the rules are applied, and the coverage it promises. When any of that is wrong, PRIA finds the affected reports, corrects them, and tells each affected firm what changed and how. A fact someone supplies stays their responsibility; PRIA keeps where each fact came from, shows any conflict it finds, and lets your firm correct it. PRIA keeps the rule versions, facts, calculations and delivered reports, so a past figure can be reproduced and explained.

Your firm gives the advice. Every report says so: “This report is research, not advice. The advice stays with your advisor.”

PRIA for Advisors Terms, section 7

Questions

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